Five Ames homes will be featured in a Charity Home Tour on Saturday, including one built by a former ISU professor.

The Jay Brownlee Davidson house, built in 1929 at 909 Brookridge Ave., is perhaps the most exceptional of the five, exhibiting an English Tudor style and claiming a history that includes poetry readings by Robert Frost.

Davidson died in 1957 after founding the agricultural engineering program at Iowa State and serving as head of the agricultural engineering department from 1905 to 1915 and 1919 to 1946. In 1975, Davidson Hall was named in his honor.

The home — with four bedrooms and a basement — was considered progressive because it had two full bathrooms, one on the main floor and one upstairs.

Joan Cooper, who has lived in the home for 25 years, said it was rare for houses built at that time to have more than one full bathroom.

The Davidson home had a number of unique features, including an underground garage that wound around the side of the house.

“We never got to use the garage because at the time that it was built, people were driving the old Model T cars, and a modern car is much too big to fit in it,” Cooper said.

She said the house was built with concrete on steel and has central heat.

“That was very smart,” Cooper said.

“Just the way an engineer would think.”

There are still four bedrooms in the house, three upstairs and one on the main floor. The bedroom on the main floor was called the owner’s bedroom when Davidson built the house.

The Coopers have made some revisions to the house, but, for the most part, it has remained in its original condition.

“We did remodel the kitchen,” Cooper said.

“We brought in new cabinets to match the ones in the original dining room.”

The current entryway, main bathroom and living room are all original and the fireplace and some of the light fixtures are still from the Davidson home.

“When we added on to the home, we also used bricks, and we painted them the same color as the original,” Cooper said.

ISU women’s basketball coach Bill Fennelly’s home will also be showing his home in the tour.

These homes and three others will be featured in the Charity Home Tour run by Cristen Schmalz.

“There is no order for the tour,” Schmalz said. “People are allowed to just tour the homes at their leisure.”

Admission is free with free-will donations welcome. All proceeds will be given to two ISU student organizations: Campus Crusade for Christ and Dance Marathon Children’s Miracle Network.

The homes will be open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday.