Stately with its two-story, semicircular entrance portico supported by giant Ionic columns, this Georgian Revival house, complete with a variant of a Palladian window, belonged to one of Hillsdale's most successful business families. Frederick W. Stock (b. 1825) came to Hillsdale in 1869 and bought a flour mill. In succeeding years, Stock developed his mill at 101 E. Bacon Street into the largest soft-wheat flour mill in the city. He also built in 1883 the Litchfield Roller Mills, a huge, rambling, Second Empire structure. By 1900, Frederick Stock and Sons Flouring Mill, known as the Hillsdale City Flour Mills, was the largest flour mill in south-central Michigan. The firm remodeled the mill buildings as needed and supplied them with steam power, improved machinery, a roller system (1882), and electricity, and added a grain elevator (1887). The house is adjacent to the mill and was built by Stock's oldest son, August.