Benjamin F. Harber was born in Livingston County in 1858 on his father's farm. He spent his boyhood on the farm and later worked in an implement business established by his father in Eureka with his two brothers. His home at 1102 N. East Street was built sometime before 1904, when it appeared in the vanity press album, Art of Bloomington. The brothers moved to Bloomington in 1886 to establish their own implement business and were the first to build large warehouses in the warehouse district.
The Harbers sold out to the Moline Plow Co. in 1910. This sale occasioned much attention in Bloomington. The owners of the Moline company were hundred of miles west of Bloomington, and what interest would they take in the concerns of Bloomington? Aside from running the businesses of Bloomington, the city's businessmen were vitally important to the city for the work they did with organizations like the Association of Commerce and the Men's Business Club and numberless charity and booster concerns in the city and county. Harper assured the Pantagraph that he and his brother intended to remain in Bloomington, where they would continue to take an active interest in the welfare of the City of Bloomington.
Harper was retiring from business at age 53 due to poor health and afterward suffered from rheumatism. He died at St. Lukes Hospital in Chicago April 20, 1919 after contracting meningitis. He had two daughters Mrs. Louis O. Eddy of Bloomington and Mrs. W. B. Hart of Chicago. His wife was Jennie L. Ewins. Besides running his own business, Harber was a director of the Third National Bank, 1st National Bank, and a trustee of Illinois Wesleyan University.
His home became Blackstock Hall on the Illinois Wesleyan campus in 1937. The hall was named for Mary Hardener Blackstock, a major benefactor of the University. This hall is home to theater students at Illinois Wesleyan and has a capacity of 29 students. At one point in its history, the hall housed the printmaking studio of the School of Art as well.