The Museum of Victorian Life and Joliet History was first simply just known as "the home of Hiram and Mrs. Scutt on Broadway street".  That was the way everyone knew their home that way or in a less auspicious home it would have been known as 206 North Broadway Street.  The people did not refer to their homes as estates,  or any thing more.  In fact many of the large homes were referred to as farms.  Many of these homes, built overlooking Bluff Street and the Canal with all of the activity of the city.  
    Mr. Scutt was originally from Long Island, New York.  He did Serve in the Civil War with a statement from a member of an Illinois Battery writing of Mr. Scutt when both were in a hospital after both were wounded.  It is also known Mr. Scutt was in DeKalb but that time is vague.  He did return to Long Island to marry his sweet heart return to Joliet, lived on Cagwin Street about five blocks away where he lived while his house on Broadway was constructed. 
    The grounds of his home were expansive and included barns where his horses lived and grazed on the grounds. 
     This was a country house for him, his wife and his son.  Bluff Street, on both sides of the street and both sides of the canal was the area of industry. 
There were mills both wood and steel, stables, coach works, hotels (where even President Lincoln stayed, brewies, dressmakers, and everykind of work businesses you could imagine.  A bank on the east bank of the canal was the last business standing along the banks of the canal.  
    Broadway had it's own history of which some still remains.  The stone vernacular Greek revival teetering ever so precariously at the edge of Western and Broadway housed Governor Joel Mattson who lived in Joliet and who there was no record of until Magosky searched who lived in this impressive home so early.  There was the German Lutheran school, small Greek revivals, The large home next to the Scutt home where the man who not only was mayor, founder or the fire department, and innovator of Soda Pop, J.D. Paige, the beautiful stone Greek Orthodox church, the last commercial limestone building, and on through the next block.