John H. Clark was born in 1829 in Union Township, the scion of one of Champaign County's oldest families,[2] and after studying at the Starling Medical College, he began practicing in the nearby village of Mutual in 1853.

Although he moved to Decatur, Illinois in 1859, he returned to Champaign County two years later, and from then until his 1901 death was a prominent Mechanicsburg resident, except for his membership on the United States Sanitary Commission during part of the American Civil War and his superintendency over Ohio's insane asylum at Dayton from 1874 to 1876.

[6] One of Mechanicsburg's numerous historic Italianate residences from the late nineteenth century,[7]: 2  it was built during the village's postwar boom; the population nearly doubled between the 1870 and 1890 censuses.

[7]: 5  It is a well-preserved example of the high style of the day,[7]: 8  due to common architectural elements such as a cornice with pairs of brackets, arched windows with hood molds, and an ornamental frieze.

It was part of a multiple property submission of approximately twenty buildings,[1] scattered throughout the village in such a low concentration that a historic district designation was not practical.