Purchase Price $64,500
4 bed · 3 bath · 2,360 sqft
Beautiful Italianate style home. Four bedrooms, three full baths. Large lot, across the street from a City Park. Wonderful wrap around front porch. Spacious kitchen features custom cabinetry. Extra-large main floor laundry.
Contact: Brandon Sale Team with Keller Williams
Call: (816) 839-6837
House History & Gallery
The Kelly-Harkins House at 1024 N. 10th has had a long and challenging history. In 1871, Joseph Kelly built a single-family wood frame house on the site. He retained the property for three years before selling it to the lumber dealer John B. Conklin and his wife Lucy who made significant alterations to the house. Most notably they had a brick veneer placed over the wood and had the distinctive wraparound porch and bay windows added creating a fashionable Italianate structure that sat proudly in the neighborhood we now call Cathedral Hill.
The Conklins sold the house to Edward Brick, a contractor. Edward was born in Ireland in 1841 and moved with his family to Canada when he was a child. He eventually ended up in St. Joseph where he made a very good living. He died as a result of an accident in Manitou, Colorado in April 1887. The newspaper reported that at the time of his death he “amassed a fortune estimated at about $150,000. He owns, in addition to real estate3 in this city, 1,400 acres of land in Doniphan county, Kansas and a well stocked ranch in Colorado.” His wife Bridget and their children Theresa, Geneva, and Edward continued to live in the house until 1906.
Like so many of our substantial houses, the Kelly-Harkins House was made into apartments and saw many families move in and out. The transformation of this property was done by the Brick family following the death of Edward. The longest term tenant was Anna Harkins, a dressmaker who lived here from about 1901 to 1942. Anna was famous in St. Joseph for being the first to pay her taxes each year – each year she got her 15 minutes of fame in the newspapers.
Anna wasn’t the first dressmaker to live in the house. In 1888 Miss Bessie Graham advertised herself as a “Fashionable Dress-Maker! Perfect Fit Guaranteed.” Unfortunately we don’t know any more about Bessie. There were others who were involved with fashion and sewing. From 1907-09 Sylvester Brown, a shoemaker, lived here. In the 1920s Mrs. Paul Floyd was a member of the Progressive Art Needlework Club.
Through the 1940s until 1951, the house was owned by Osta Lebow. Ms. Lebow was born in Andrew County in 1886. She never married and made her living as a cook for a private family. That income gave her the means to purchase the house. In September 1947 she applied for permission to install cafeteria equipment in the house; her application was denied. According to the tenants who lived there the property was too much for her to maintain and the house began to slide in to disrepair. In 2002 it was the subject of an article in the News Press entitled “Forlorn House Typifies Troubles” that discussed the problems associated with the failure of Neighborhood Housing Services that had purchased the property.
But what a difference two decades can make!
There is absolutely nothing forlorn about the house now! It has been wonderfully restored!
