Purchase Price $495,000
5 bed · 4.5 bath · 4,500 sqft
The August Nunning House is situated one block from the historic downtown St. Joseph and is located within the Museum Hill National and Local Historic district. It is a two and a half story red brick Queen Anne Victorian. With five bedrooms and four & a half baths, this house can do it all: within the last two decades it has served as a single family home, a legal office, and a successful bed and breakfast. With it’s close proximity to both Liberty Cap and River Bluff breweries, as well as many restaurants, entertainment, and shopping venues, the Nunning House provides the perfect living experience for someone who wants history on a grand scale and the amenities of modern urban living.
The house features original hardwood and encaustic tile flooring, original woodwork, seven original fireplaces, massive pocket doors, a three-story tower and hand-etched wall patterns. It has a new slate roof, three en-suite bathrooms, a large kitchen, mud room, and generous porches both in front and back.
For Sale By Owner
Call: 816-752-6530
House History & Gallery
August Nunning, the son of prominent St. Joseph brewer Henry Nunning, built the house at 1401 Jules just after he married his sweetheart Mary Blair in 1887. Sparing no expense, he had the most important architects in St. Joseph design a fashionable Queen Anne house with spectacular amenities including a more than 10 foot tall stained glass window (one of approximately 30 in the house), wonderful woodwork characterized by the use of a different wood in each of the downstairs rooms and frescos throughout the house. This was to be the house in which the young couple made a life and a mark on St. Joseph society.
Unfortunately, before the house was complete Mary died of pneumonia in the arms of her distraught husband; the couple had been married less than 6 months. August completed the house, including a stained-glass depiction of Romeo and Juliet as a memorial to Mary. He remained unmarried until close to the end of his life when following a stroke in 1907, he married his housekeeper before he died in 1909.
Following August Nunning’s death the house remained with his widow, May, who quickly remarried to Robert H. Atkinson President of Robidoux Real Estate Company on May 27, 1910. The couple owned the house until 1912 when they sold the house to Joseph L. Frederick and moved to Pueblo Colorado. Frederick was the president of the J.L. Frederick Grain Co. By 1923, the house was being let as furnished rooms by Mrs. E.C. Hickerson. It was a nursing home during the 1940s. In the 1950s, it was split in to 7 apartments. It remained apartments into the 1960s.
Since that time the house has been lovingly and carefully restored and has earned its keep as a bed and breakfast and a legal office as well as a single-family home. Within walking distance of historic downtown, the Nunning House is a wonderfully livable piece of history.
The Nunning House is in the Museum Hill Local and National Historic District and as such is protected by design guidelines and is eligible for local grants such as the Save Our Heritage grant program.
