Purchase Price $12,000
2 bed · 1.5 bath · 1,754 sqft
Charming two bedroom Victorian 1.5 baths, formal living room with fireplace, kitchen, main floor laundry, partial basement. Selling As Is! Repairs are needed.
Contact: Katherine Farris-Buckley at Re/Max
Call: 816-387-1115
House History & Gallery
Built in the waning years of the 19th century when St. Joseph was growing quickly, this charming house at 720 Green Street would have sat at the very northern edge of the city. It always would have been a stylish standout among the other modest houses of the neighborhood by virtue of its mansard roof. This style became popular in the city in the 1870s but was never used extensively, so any structure with the distinctive roofline is special.
The lovely mansard cottage was home to a number of working-class families, several of whom were recent immigrants to the United States who had come to St. Joseph to make good lives for themselves and their families. One of the first recorded residents at 720 was Nathan Gordon and his wife Hermine. They had emigrated from the area along what is now the Poland/Russia border in 1888. Their Jewish faith would have made life in Eastern Europe dangerous and they joined a substantial Jewish community in St. Joseph. Nathan was a dairyman who became one of the leading purveyors of milk in the Northend. However, he seems to have played a bit fast and loose with the rules and was in trouble with the authorities more than once for selling his product without a proper license. The Gordons and their two daughters and son lived at 720 Green St. from about 1901 to 1906.
When the Gordons moved out, the Ebersolds moved in. Charles and Marie Ebersold and their four children and Marie’s father Jakob Eberhard lived here until about 1920. Charles, Marie, and Jakob all had been born in Switzerland and so joined the large German-speaking community in St. Joseph. Charles was a policeman and a saloon/restaurant keeper. He died in 1915 at the house after a long illness. Just after his death, his daughter Gertrude married Harry Zerbst of the Zerbst pharmacy family in a subdued ceremony at the house. Marie and her father stayed on until Jakob’s death in 1918. After that, Marie moved to Kansas City to live with a married daughter.
The next recorded residents of 720 were George Luster Clark and his wife Lilly Estalla Violett Clark. George was a self-employed carpenter who had been born in Leon, Iowa. Lilly was one of the eldest of the 13 children of William Knox Violett and Laura Jane Kelly Violett who married in Andrew Country before moving to southern Iowa. The Clarks lived here only about two years before moving on.
Following the Clarks William and Rosa Pfaff moved in to the home in 1932. The Pfaffs would have been very familiar with the charms of the cottage with the distinctive mansard roof; they had been living on Green Street since before 1900. William was a German immigrant who worked for more than three decades as the letter-carrier for much of north St. Joseph. He remained at 720 until his death in 1933 (he died in Southampton England on his way home from a visit to Germany). Rosa remained in the home until 1938, but she must have had wonderful memories as she returned for a short time in 1941 until her death in 1944.
Between Rosa’s times of occupancy, Clayton and Inez Howard called it home from 1938 to 1941. Clayton was a sheet metal worker at Quaker Oats. He was not native to St. Joseph, having been born in Springfield, Illinois but Inez had been born in St. Joseph – she was the daughter of Orin E. Compton and Nancy Ray.
From the late 1940s into the 1960s Raymond S. Tracie and his wife Bunny lived here. Raymond worked for Wyeth Hardware and later as a clerk for Ross-Frazer. Bunny made the news in 1977 (after they had moved out of the home) with her tragic death – she fell down the elevator shaft at the Kirkpatrick Building in downtown St. Joseph.
The charming house with the mansard roof is just as much a standout in its neighborhood now as it was when it was built. It was a place that people were proud to call home.
