In 1894, when Crescent Hill was incorporated as a small town, Mary M. Mercke finished building a huge Victorian house on North Hite Avenue that has become a landmark.

Mercke and her husband, Casper, who died in 1887, had five sons, and four generations of Merckes lived in the house before they sold it in the 1940s, said Allen Mercke, a descendant who lives in Rolling Fields.

The home's history is recounted in "Crescent Hill Revisited," by Samuel W. Thomas, featured in the June 16, 1929, edition of the old Herald-Post newspaper as one of the "Beautiful Homes of Louisville" after Crescent Hill was annexed.

Now the house will be sold at auction at 10 a.m. Saturday by Alvin and Joyce Voit. They bought it 36 years ago, when it was a boardinghouse for men, renovated it and reared their five children there.

They made the house at 131 N. Hite even more distinctive by painting the exterior reddish orange and dark brown.

Joyce Voit said the colors are reminiscent of ones used in Williamsburg, Va., and on Victorian homes known as "painted ladies" in San Francisco, where she and her husband once lived. Inside, it has bright, contemporary colors and furnishings.

Deciding to sell it "was a hard, hard decision," she said, but they are ready to move to a smaller place.

When the real estate company selling the house opened it to potential buyers and curiosity seekers on Thursday and Sunday, more than 170 people went through it, said Julie Bex, the auction office manager for RE/MAX 100, which is handling the auction.

"A lot of people have been wanting to get in that house, just to see the inside of it," she said.

For the Voits, it's been a house that had room for everything.

"We lived in that house to the hilt," said the Voits' daughter, Leslie Enander, of the Highlands-Douglass neighborhood.

The halls were so big she and her four brothers used to play basketball at a goal upstairs, she said.

"Dad said there was always at least one window boarded up, waiting for repair" as a result of their play.

When Enander was married in 1990, all the food was prepared at the house and about 30 people slept there, Joyce Voit said.

It's 2½ stories tall and has nearly 6,000 square feet, plus a basement. The auction brochure says it has up to six bedrooms, eight fireplaces, two large porches and an "architecturally unique cupola" that is a "focal point of the neighborhood."

"It's a spectacular Victorian structure," said Richard Jett, the city's preservation administrator. It "has always attracted attention."

Allen Mercke, who works for Rueff Sign Co., said his father, Charles, who owned Jefferson Woodworking Co., left the original blueprints for the house and a box of photos of it, showing elegant furnishings. The Voits have some of the photos on display at the house.

At the time of the Herald-Post story, it was the home of Clarence and Stella Mercke, Allen Mercke's grandparents. His great-grandparents, Casper and Mary Mercke, had lived in Butchertown and operated a grocery in the area.

Joyce Voit said her husband, an architect, has painted the house four times by himself. It takes 60 gallons per paint job, she said.

It needs painting again and there have been bats in the attic over the years, she said, but the wood and foundation are "very, very solid."

Reporter Martha Elson can be reached at (502) 582-7061.