Designed in the Stick or Eastlake style of Queen Anne style architecture, it was built in 1883 by local banker and real estate speculator, H. O. Fishback.

Dr. William Maxwell Blackburn and his wife, Elizabeth Powell Blackburn, who had come to Pierre from Grand Forks, North Dakota, where he had been president of the University of North Dakota.

Dr. Blackburn, a Presbyterian minister, scholar and author became the founding president of the Presbyterian University of Southern Dakota, which later became Pierre University and served as such until his death in 1898.

The Kings ran a grocery store and he was a local politician while she was a poet.

This article about a property in South Dakota on the National Register of Historic Places is a stub.