Below is the legal description provided to the Minnesota State Historical Society in request for being placed on the National List of Historic Places in 1979. The application was approve resulting in the house gaining official historical status.
The Ames/Florida House, located in a wooded setting in the City of Rockford, is an interconnected complex composed of a house, summer kitchen, and barn. The rectangular shaped main house, which was built in 1856, is partially constructed into the sloping bank of the Crow River. The house also overlooks the town. The main house has timbered framed construction sheathed in clapboard. The principal facade is four bays wide and dominated by a columned porch which runs the full length of the building. One single-stacked brick chimney is located on the ridge of the low pitched gable roof.
A rectangular shaped barn, running parallel to the main house, is of wood frame construction with clapboard siding. The barn is two stories tall; it has a low pitched cedar shingle roof. A single stacked brick chimney is centrally located on the roof ridge. The dominate feature of the barn’s front façade is a flat roofed columned porch with decorative spandrels. The main house and barn are connected by a two story wood frame summer kitchen.
The cedar shingle gable roof contains a single-stack brick chimney. The summer kitchen and the barn were constructed shortly after the main house was built. The original barn stood northwest of the house, across Bridge Street, and was destroyed by fire. The windows on the three interconnected buildings are six over six and double hung. Each window has louvered shutters. The clapboard siding is of uniformed size and painted white.
A rectangular, wood framed, clapboard-sided garage is located on the south side of the house and was constructed about 1910. Mill stones which are located in the front yard along the driveway, were from the Ames flour mill.
Statement off Significance (in one paragraph)
The Ames/Florida House was built in 1856 by George F. Ames, one of the founders of the City of Rockford. Shortly after their arrival in the state in 1855, Ames, Joel Florida, and Guilford D. George formed a partnership to develop a millsite on the Crow River. They were successful in establishing a townsite by 1856 and had built a dam and water power mill by 1857. Later a machine shop for woodworking manufacturing was added, and by 1870 Joel’s son, George, erected a woolen mill on the west side of the river. With the death of Ames in 1878, George W. Florida acquired title to all the Ames property and remodeled the lumber and flour mills. Rockford had become the industrial center of Wright County. Ames modeled his Greek Revival style house after an example he had seen in his native Vermont, which accounts for the pronouncedly “Yankee” plan and detail. The house was purchased in 1936 from the Florida family by Mr. and Mrs. Clinton Stork, who restored it to the excellent state of preservation seen today.