Purchase Price $67,000
2 bed · 1 bath · 750 sqft
Clean, tidy, and charming home with beautiful hardwood flooring and carpeted bedrooms. The home has tall ceilings with arched doorways and a formal dining room! The basement is big enough for storage and accessed from inside. Enormous kitchen with a breakfast area that could be expanded with cabinets or an island. Detached one-car garage and off-street parking. Cute front porch with a built-in mailbox! Updated full bathroom and crown molding.
Contact: Levi McClure at Century 21 Crossroads
Call: (660) 365-0607
House History & Gallery
The charming frame cottage at 2828 Seneca was built around 1905 by James R. Cook, an agent for the Prudential Insurance Company. At the time of its construction, that part of the city was just developing into a desirable residential neighborhood. The Sanborn Map from 1897 show that there were only two houses and Wyatt Park Baptist Church (no longer there).
James Cook did not remain in the house for long, by 1908 it was owned by the barber George L. Greer and his wife Lizzie Wykert Greer. George is a shadowy figure, there is not much information on him, but there are tantalizing hints that Lizzie was an interesting woman in her own right. The St. Joseph Herald reported in July 1891 that she had filed for divorce from her first husband Charles Jenkins, whom she had married in Kansas in 1884. She alleged that he was a drunkard and a vagrant and that he had deserted her. She requested that her maiden name of Wykert be restored. About three years later she married the barber George L. Greer. It is unclear when George died, but the 1920 census shows Lizzie as the owner of the house and that her younger brother Noah Wykert was living there with her. Sometime between the census and July 1922 she ended up at State Hospital #2 where she died of arteriosclerosis – her death certificate states that she was married.
After the Greer/Wykerts left the house in the early 1920s, Guy and Hazel Wainwright moved in for a short period. Guy was a miller for the Larabee Flour Mills and Hazel was a clerk in a grocery store. They only lived at 2828 for two years before moving on.
Albert and Ella (Ellen) Hodler were in the house by 1928. Albert was an auto mechanic and worked in his relative Roy Hodler’s garage. Ella was a beautician. They appear to have left the home when the marriage broke down. Ella filed for divorce in 1932. Both remained in St. Joseph – Albert continued to work at Hodler’s Garage and in the 1937 Ella had a beauty shop at 2631 Lafayette.
By the mid-1930s, News Press reporter Norman Steward had purchased the house. He lived there for well over two decades. He started work for the newspaper in 1929 and it is those earnings that made the purchase possible. Norman was a respected figure in St. Joseph where he had lived his entire life. When he died in 1993 he bequeathed $100,000 to Missouri Western State College.
Walking the lovely grass-lined sidewalks of Seneca Street one is immediately struck by the charm of the neighborhood. Small frame homes make up the walkable streetscape and it is easy to imagine oneself back to the 1910s, or the 1930s, or the 1950s when hard working families called this part of the city home.
