BELLEVUE, Iowa — Every piece of furniture, knickknack and painting in Mont Rest Inn has a history, and owner Chris Baker can tell you all of them.

In the house’s formal dining room, for example, the massive fireplace mantle originally came from the Davenport, Iowa, mansion that was the childhood home of jazz musician Leon Bismark “Bix” Beiderbecke.

Some of the room’s lights came from a Moline, Ill., mansion, and the large wooden cabinet housing antique china was salvaged from a Dubuque home and restored.

“That cabinet was painted, by the way, taxicab yellow when I got it,” Baker said, chuckling.

Baker, 75, has owned the Bellevue bed-and-breakfast since 1986. The powder-blue mansion towers over the downtown Bellevue area, rising from the hillside at the corner of Spring Street and North Third Street, and offers sweeping views of the Mississippi River below.

“It’s a great way to make a living,” Baker said. “You couldn’t pay me enough money to trade the experiences I’ve had (with) the guests, the loving atmosphere and the fun of it.”

According to innkeeper Naomi Kueter, the house was constructed in 1893 by land developer Seth Baker at a total cost of $6,000 — and lost by him in a poker game two years later.

Over the next 90 years, the building had several owners until Chris Baker purchased and restored it in 1986.

“Chris opened Mont Rest Inn on April Fool’s Day in 1987, which she always told me was so that she would remember what a fool she was for doing it,” Kueter said, laughing.

As crazy a venture as it might have seemed, Baker already had experience refurbishing and operating a B&B.

After majoring in art at University of Iowa, Baker worked in Chicago before returning to her hometown of Tipton, Iowa, and converting a Victorian-era mansion into an inn. That building now is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

“I’ve been an antique collector since I was 11 years old,” Baker said. “I wanted to live an artful life, and it found me.”

Ten years into Baker’s ownership of Mont Rest, tragedy struck when a fire gutted the house on Christmas Eve in 1996.

That night, Baker had been out of town with family. When employees called her with the news, she initially figured the blaze couldn’t be too bad, but as she and her brother drove back to Bellevue, her heart sank when she saw the pillar of smoke.

The fire took seven hours to extinguish and left the building little more than a burned shell with a compromised foundation and a tower that had crashed through the roof.

Despite advice from engineers and insurance representatives that she should cut her losses, Baker decided to rebuild.

“Everybody was telling me to come in there with a bulldozer and just scoop stuff up and take it to the dump, but I said, ‘Not so fast,’” Baker recalled. “I treated the house almost immediately like it was an archaeological dig, and I started cleaning out and salvaging everything I could.”

Over the next 18 months, crews reconstructed and expanded the house, adding features like a large stained-glass dome, additional rooms, private bathrooms and more. Baker traveled the country and world to collect antiques to replace those that had burned.

Today, the house’s 13 guest rooms each sleep two people, and the vast majority of rooms have whirlpool tubs and fireplaces.

“This would have been the old maids’ quarters in the house,” Kueter said, stepping into the blue-and-gold Great River Room.

Up an iron spiral staircase is the rebuilt circular Angelic Tower Room, where Seth Baker’s ill-fated poker game took place. It leads to an outdoor rooftop deck and hot tub that are accessible to all Mont Rest guests during the day.

Each morning, guests are treated to homemade breakfast featuring egg dishes, breakfast meats, pastries and breads, fresh fruit, juice, coffee and more. Returning guests will often request their favorite dishes, from rhubarb coffee cake to breakfast potatoes to quiche.

“This weekend, there were some that said, ‘Oh, we have to have the homemade beignets,’ and then there were some that said, ‘Well, we have to have the cinnamon rolls,’” Kueter said, referencing a weekend in May. “So we had both.”

Mont Rest Inn also hosts murder mystery dinners on weekends and themed dinner experiences on Friday nights, with themes ranging from “Downton Abbey” and “The Great Gatsby” to “Midnight in Paris” and the Titanic.

At each dinner, guests are provided with period-appropriate costumes from the inn’s costume closet, and Mont Rest’s staff wear costumes as well.

Menus are carefully curated for each occasion, including a 10-course meal for the Titanic dinner that is based on the final first-class meal served on the doomed ship, from beef consommé and Cornish game hen to Waldorf pudding.

In 2023, Baker opened Field of Chocolate Dreams, a chocolate shop and bakery located at 106 S. Riverview St. that offers everything from homemade chocolates, sweets and baked goods to popcorn, gelato, jams and gift items like blankets, bath salts and wine.

Field of Chocolate Dreams also houses the Bakery Suite, a 2,000-square-foot upstairs space that sleeps up to 6 guests in a three-bedroom, two-bathroom suite.

Recently, the business began offering a sleepover princess party package for children at the Bakery Suite, featuring a pizza party, chocolate-making class and plenty of other goodies. It’s a younger version of the adults’ “pajama party” offered at Mont Rest that includes massages, a cooking class and more.

However guests find their way to Mont Rest Inn, Kueter said, she and the rest of the staff pride themselves on offering a welcoming, restful experience.

“It always sounds like a sales pitch when I say this, but from the minute you walk through the door, you’re just at home,” Kueter said. “It has that comfort.”