A vintage American Red Cross “Blood Mobile” sign, sealed behind drywall for who knows how long, turned up inside Michele Mayberry’s 1858 Victorian in Wheeling, West Virginia, after she and her husband started tearing into the walls last year. It wasn’t the only relic waiting behind the plaster. A stained-glass window and door pulled from an 1880s addition, a bentwood chair, and a run of antique mirrors, including one traced to an early-1900s Wheeling art store, all came out of hiding spots the couple hadn’t touched since they moved in.

A house with two past lives

Mayberry, a patent attorney who splits time between Blacksburg, Virginia and the West Virginia property, documents the renovation on TikTok as @henryklisthouse. In the video posted June 29, 2025, which has since climbed past 636,000 views according to Newsweek’s coverage of the renovation, she narrates the walkthrough herself: “Here’s some old things we found in our 1858 Victorian home that we are renovating,” she says as the clip opens.

The Blood Mobile sign points to one of the house’s earlier identities. Before Mayberry bought the property, the building had served as the Moundsville chapter of the American Red Cross for part of the mid-20th century, per Newsweek’s reporting on the house’s history. Go back further and it was the Lyceum School, which is likely where the bentwood chair came from. Partway through the video, Mayberry stops at a window sealed inside a closet that no longer makes obvious sense in the house’s current floor plan: “There is an exterior window that they covered up in this closet, it goes back to the same stairwell. But it’s in the middle of the house, so I’m really not sure why there’s an exterior window here,” she says in her own narration.

Key Points

• Michele Mayberry, who posts as @henryklisthouse, is renovating an 1858 Victorian in Wheeling, West Virginia.
• Finds documented in her own TikTok include a vintage Red Cross “Blood Mobile” sign, a stained-glass window and door from an 1880s addition, antique mirrors, and a bentwood chair.
• The house previously operated as the Lyceum School and later as a Red Cross chapter location, per Newsweek’s reporting.
• Her June 29, 2025 video has drawn more than 636,000 views.

Old houses keep receipts, and Mayberry’s is still handing them over one stud bay at a time. For a building that’s been a school, a blood drive stop, and now a slow-motion restoration project, the walls apparently had more to say than anyone expected.