Mont Rest was built in 1893 for $6,000 by Seth Luellyn Baker. He was a wealthy land developer who owned hotels, gold mines and paddle boats on the Mississippi. Baker was a true entrepreneur. He developed the town of Glen Ellyn, Illinois, and he loved to gamble. Seth Baker was originally from Bellevue and came back to buy what was known as the north bluff of Bellevue. And as so many newly rich Victorians did he erected a monument to his stature in life. He named the property Mont Rest. The locals almost immediately started calling Mont Rest "The Castle" because of its unusual architecture and its towering presence over the town. Baker built the round room at the top of the house for high stake poker games. Professional gamblers used to ride the steam paddle wheelers from points south of St. Louis just to get into gambling games in the tower at Mont Rest. You had to be a high roller just to be invited to these high stake games. Several local farms exchanged hands late at night in the round room at the top of Bellevue's Castle. The gamblers would walk up an inside stairwell, step out onto the roof of the house and climb through a hatch to gain entrance to the gambling room.