Their faces are on the corner of Burnett and Fifth. They are hard to the touch, but feel surprisingly warm on such a cold day. You tell yourself it’s just the sunlight, but then their eyes catch yours, and for a brief second you’re not sure.

Maybe it is the sunlight’s warmth, but maybe it’s something else, something deep inside Nancy and Archie Martin.

The Martins’ strength and kindness enabled them to house black college students during the years they were not allowed to live in the ISU residence halls.

In honor of the Martins’ act of generosity, a terra-cotta and brick pier displaying their house and faces will be unveiled at 10 a.m. Saturday on the northeast corner of Fifth and Burnett Streets in downtown Ames.

“He was just a really nice man,” said Pauline Martin, Nancy and Archie’s granddaughter. “Grandma – she was a tough little lady. She didn’t stand for any monkey business.”

There is no official record of when Iowa State began integrating its residence halls, but the best guess offered is the late 1940s or early 1950s.

The Martins’ generosity and hospitality lives in their granddaughter.

Pauline Martin issues a welcome into her warm, clean home with instant apologies for its messiness. She sits at the dining room table, smiling at memories of her grandparents’ house.

The Martins housed 14 male students through the years, and Pauline’s aunt, Nell Shipp – one of their 12 children – took six women into her nearby home.

“It was just like a boarding house,” Pauline said. “My cousin Thelma remembers waiting tables on these students. I don’t think she liked it very much.”

Pauline, who was in junior high when most of the students were renting from her grandparents, did not spend much time with the students, but she remembers them as friendly.

“We were supposed to stay out of the adults’ way,” she said. “That was just the rule.” She smiles, and continues, “I remember one of them always played this classical piece … it was really nice.”

ISU students continue to live in the house, found at 218 Lincoln Way. Five of them rent it from Pauline Martin’s cousin, who lives in Maryland.

It’s easy to miss the house when driving by, and if you brake to look for house numbers, the stream of cars behind you rides up onto your bumper.

The white two-story house is now sandwiched between businesses, but its wide front porch still welcomes visitors.

Besides the muted television greeting visitors in place of classical piano music, the house remains virtually unchanged.

The solid front door opens to reveal a spacious room with white walls and dark wood floors. A narrow set of steep stairs leads the way up to the three bedrooms where the black students had their late-night conversations and shared the frustrations and joys of their world. The large spaces boast closets the size of half an ISU dorm room.

A few Ames residents recognized the impact the Martins had and wanted to include them in the historical piers in downtown Ames.

When the residents approached the Ames Public Arts Commission with the idea, however, they were told that the pier project was finished and no more money was available.

The group was not willing to take no for an answer. Instead, they formed a non-profit organization to raise the money – the Archie A. and Nancy C. Martin Foundation.

Joanna Courteau, president of the foundation, said she was shocked when she first learned that there was no pier to honor the Martins.

She said the omission was “an oversight” on the commission’s part.

“I had read about the Martin family, and it was so obvious that they did so much for human relations in Ames,” said Courteau, university professor of foreign languages and literatures.

The foundation members made phone calls, visited businesses and sent out a letter to raise the $12, 500 they were told the pier would cost. Their efforts raised $9,000.

When they asked the City Council if the city would contribute the remaining funds, the answer was a unanimous yes.

Mayor Ted Tedesco said he is proud to have the Martins as part of Ames history. If the Martin family had not been willing to house black students, they probably would not have come to Ames, he said.

Archie and Nancy Martin moved from Georgia to Ames in 1913 seeking better job opportunities. When black students first approached them about renting rooms in their house, they recognized what was at stake.

Archie, born in 1857, didn’t reminisce a lot. But he told his grandchildren he saw Abraham Lincoln when he was seven years old.

No one knows for sure whether or not the story is true, but perhaps such an experience was his motivation for helping Iowa State’s black students.

What is known, however, is that he cared enough to speak with ISU President R.A. Pearson twice about integrating dorm housing.

George Jackson, president of the Ames branch of the NAACP, said he feels the impact of the Martins’ action reached far beyond them, because the couple created an opportunity for others to educate themselves and be as productive as possible.

“Any time opportunities meet with intelligence, it has a productive outcome,” he said.