The Nicholas Jarrot Mansion is a Federal-style brick house at 124 East First Street, built around 1810 by Nicholas Jarrot, a French-born land speculator and merchant who became one of the wealthiest men in territorial Illinois. The house is one of the oldest brick structures in Illinois and represents the transition from French colonial to American Federal architecture in the region.
Jarrot arrived from France in the 1790s and acquired large land grants in the Illinois Country. His mansion shows the ambitions of the early American frontier elite: a two-storey brick house with Federal detailing, out of place in a village of log buildings, designed to announce success. The building is maintained as an inactive historic site and is not always open for interior visits, but the exterior is accessible and worth seeing.