This gem in the heart of Springfield was built in 1881 by J.E. Tolfree. Two years later, Springfield banker and businessman, James E. Keet, purchased the house from Tolfree and transformed what was originally a fairly standard two-story, Italianate brick structure into the extravagant beauty now known as the Keet-McElhany house.  

Front porch

James Elijah Keet was born in Washburn, Missouri, in 1849 to Josiah Thomas and Elizabeth West Keet. At that time, Washburn was known as Keetsville and was named after Josiah and his brother, James T. Keet.  Josiah later moved his family to Springfield where he became a merchant, first in partnership with William Massey, and subsequently with Newton Rountree. Their business became the well-known Keet-Rountree Dry Goods Company. James E. Keet worked for many years as the secretary and treasurer of the family business and eventually served as its president.

Front porch detail

By 1886, James Keet and his wife, Katherine Holland, had made substantial changes to their new home. The porch was enlarged and became considerably more elaborate. They added the turret on the west wing, as well as an additional building in back that contained a kitchen and servants quarters. They later added a third floor to the house with a Queen Anne-style roof.

The turret, along with a bedroom and fireplace, were added to the west side of the house in 1886.

Though the primary renovations were done in a couple of different phases, there were ongoing changes to the house that are typical of long term home ownership. Since the Keet family was prominent in Springfield business and social circles, some of those changes were considered newsworthy. 

Springfield Leader, November 30, 1887

Door bell by the front door. I don’t know if this is electric, but it certainly is a beauty!

Stained glass above the front door.

Springfield Leader, June 1, 1886

And indeed he did have a “substantial” cellar, one that included a tunnel!  The tunnel extends from the basement of the house to the servants quarters in back. Its arched roof is visible above ground. 

What a beautiful brick archway!

Now let’s take a look inside the house. 

Front door knob with intricate design.

The house contains over 6,000 square feet, including the basement and tunnel area. It contains 5 bedrooms, 5 baths, and numerous fireplaces. Though it is over 100 years old, the house has been excellently maintained and even retains many of the original features.

Detail on the beautiful front parlor fireplace.

An original gas lamp, converted to electric.

Another original lamp in what was once the dining room.

It may have been in this dining room that the Keet’s held their Thanksgiving dinner in 1899. The Springfield Republican reported that “Mr. and Mrs. James E. Keet’s guests at Thanksgiving Dinner were; Mr. and Mrs.  J.L. Holland, Mr. and Mrs. Lee Holland, Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Holland, Mrs. E.J. Robberson, Mrs.Arthur Taylor, Miss Lida Robberson, Miss Emily Otterson and Mr. Jamie Holland.” The Holland family were prominent in Springfield business and banking and were relatives of Katherine Keet. 

One of many beautiful fireplaces in the house.

The activities of the Keet family were consistently reported in local newspapers. In June 1888, an “elegant reception” was held in the home of Mrs. L.A. Campbell “at the home of her father, Major McElhany.” Mrs. James Keet wore “blue and white French gingham, puffed sleeves and front fichu style, garnished with picot edged ribbon.” Major Robert J. McElhany was a Springfield banker; his grandson, Claude, would later marry Katherine E. Keet, one of the daughters of James and Katherine.

Another beautifully detailed fireplace.

Three prominent Springfield families, the Keets, Hollands, and McElhanys, all three bankers and merchants, intersected in this one house. Though this beautiful home is now surrounded by businesses and parking lots, she was once surrounded by numerous beautiful homes. Those homes are no longer extant. Somehow,  this house alone survived the expansion of the central business district.
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James E. Keet died in July 1900. The St. Louis Republican took note of his passing: “James E. Keet, one of Springfield’s most prominent businessmen, died today. He was president of the National Exchange Bank, president of the Keet-Rountree Wholesale Dry Goods Company, and a moving spirit in a number of other [illegible] concerns.” 

In his 1895 will, James stated that he had complete “faith and confidence in [his] wife, Kate,” and believed that she would ensure the welfare of their children; therefore, he left the entire estate to her. In a codicil, written barely a month before his death, he bequeathed one thousand dollars to each of his siblings. 

Katherine Holland Keet lived in the house until her death in 1920. James and Katherine’s daughter, Katherine E., was already living there with her husband, Claude McElhany. Claude died in 1956 and Katherine E. remained in the family home until her death in 1983. 

On November 22, 1903, the Springfield Republican announced the imminent construction of “a very fine residence” for Paul Nicholas. The builder was A.R. Bowman who projected a cost of $16,000 to complete the beautiful home that would be known as Humboldt Place. Work was completed in 1904.

Porte cochere on the west side of the house.

Paul Nicholas was born in England on Christmas day, 1855. He arrived in the US in 1877 and was naturalized in 1890 while living in Graham County, Arizona. In 1893, he married Roselle Tierney in Morenci, Arizona. Nicholas was almost 38 years old and Roselle was 18. 

Though Nicholas was the “superintendent of mines” at the Arizona Copper Company, a trip through Springfield in 1902 led him to buy land west of town and to be a farmer in addition to his work as an engineer. Today, his 176-acre farm is no more, but the house still sits peacefully in a park-like setting on the remaining seven acres.

In the late 1890s, while working for the copper company, Nicholas began to “prospect near Humboldt hill,” which was located near the town of Morenci. It is from this mining operation that Nicholas found the name for his new home in Springfield. Initially, the copper vein in Humboldt turned out to be “small and the ore poor in grade.” However, the mine eventually made a fortune for the Arizona Copper Company and likely for Nicholas as well.

Even while living in Springfield, Nicholas continued his work in Arizona, where he went on occasional visits to “look after his copper interests.” Nicholas and his wife were also busy in the local social scene; in 1908, Nicholas was listed as an “old member” of the Springfield Club, a social organization formed in 1901. 

In addition to their frequent activities at the Springfield Club, Paul and Roselle participated in numerous other social events with Springfield’s leading citizens. In April 1909, they attended a party at the home of the Frank Fellows family on East Walnut. The guest list also included F.X. Heer (Heer’s Department Store), H.B. McDaniel (McDaniel Bank), Holland Keet (Holland Bank), J.T. Woodruff (Woodruff Building), and Miss Annie Abbot. ​ 

The couple were members of the Country Club and they also attended numerous events at the Colonial Hotel. Paul Nicholas just happened to be on the board of directors of the Colonial Hotel Building Company. This social whirl appears to have been the norm for the Nicholas family throughout their lives.

In the autumn of 1911, Paul and Roselle took their daughter Murillo to Boston where she planned to attend Chevy Chase College and Seminary. The school opened in 1903 and was known at the time primarily as a finishing school. I don’t know if Murillo graduated, but two years later she was back in Springfield attending a bridal shower given for her (and two other young ladies) at the Colonial Hotel. Later that week, the three young women were entertained again at the home of Mrs. Holland Keet.

On October 5, 1915, Murillo Nicholas married prominent Springfield banker James Claud McDaniel in her parents “spacious suburban home…west of the city. The wedding was a quiet home affair, but beautiful in its simplicity. The drawing room was beautifully decorated in palms, ferns and baskets of Southern smilax, with large baskets of pink roses.”

The wedding march began at 3:30 and the bridal procession descended the stairs (pictured above). Then the bride appeared, with her father, looking “exquisitely dainty in her gown of white satin, made short and draped with tulle, over which the court train of white, embroidered in silver and seed-pearls, hung in graceful folds. She wore a tulle veil with clusters of orange blossoms encircling the head. Her bouquet was of white orchids and lilies of the valley.” 

The wedding cake was “made in the form of a ring” and was a “marvel of the confectioner’s art, with a monogram of the bride and groom upon it in icing. Its center was filled in with white roses and lilies of the valley, out of which a dainty miniature bride emerged.”

The wedding was attended by about 150 guests and was likely one of the main social events of the season. 

View of the east side, which shows the greenhouse addition.

Nicholas is said to have loved plants and added a small greenhouse (pictured above) to the east side of the house. 

Detail on two of the six columns that support the prominent front gable.

Paul Nicholas died in 1936 of pneumonia. He was 80 years old. Roselle continued to live in the family home until around 1944, when she sold Humboldt Place and moved to a home on S. Weller. She died of pancreatic cancer in 1954 at the age of 81.

Humboldt Place is a two story brick structure and was built in the Neoclassical Style with a main central block and two wings. The front gable is supported by six Corinthian columns. The gable is decorated with a round, stained glass window. This is an uncommon house style for the Springfield area and we are fortunate that this beautiful house is still extant. 

Sources:

Ancestry.com. Census Records and Springfield City Directories.
Colquhoun, James. The History of the Clifton–Morenci Mining District. London:      William Clowes and Sons, 1924.
Missouri Digital Heritage. “Missouri Death Records, 1910-1964.”
Patton, James Monroe. “The History of Clinton.” M.A., 1945.
Springfield Republican.
Taylor, Mabel Carver. “Cavalcade of Homes, Part 15.” Springfield Magazine.

Photos courtesy of Alyson Yen. Used with permission.

Springfield News-Leader, 1894: “Harry Garlick has purchased a fine residence on Washington Avenue and will occupy it in the near future.”

The beautiful house at 1451 N. Washington was quite new when the Garlick’s bought it 1894, but it was already inhabited. Harry Garlick, an insurance salesman, bought the already built home in March, but Reverend Joseph C. Plumb and his wife, Elizabeth, were already living in the house. (You may remember the Plumb’s from my book about Emma Molloy. Reverend Plumb was one of her main supporters and Emma stayed with him and his wife briefly when she first moved to Springfield.)

By October 1895, the Plumb’s had moved to Kansas and the Garlick’s finally moved into their new home. They lived there until 1901 when they sold it to Austin Blodgett, a tie and timber inspector for the Frisco railroad. By 1913, the Blodgett’s had moved to Alabama and the house once again had new owners. Walter W. Constance, a foreman at the southside Frisco shops, and his wife Viola moved in. Walter was also an award-winning coach for a Frisco baseball team. Their daughter, Rae Josephine, married Fred Hays in the home in September 1920. The lovely scene is described below:
     
“The house was lavishly decorated with potted plants and masses of goldenrod and other flowers, while an altar was improvised on the same…Miss Helen Moore…played the wedding march as the bride entered on the arm of her father…She wore a Frenchy gown of rose-taupe de chine and carried a bouquet of bride roses. She was attended by her sister, Miss Grace Constance, who wore a dainty frock of white organdy…Following congratulations, a wedding breakfast was served in the dining room, covers being laid for twenty. Mr. and Mrs. Hays are spending their honeymoon at Lake Taneycomo. Later they will go to St. Louis, where Mr. Hays will resume his studies at Washington University.”

(As a side note, Grace Constance later worked as a bacteriologist in Mexico. She married Clyde Hyslop in Greene County in 1923.)

By 1925, ownership passed to Charles F. LaBounty and his wife Emma. Charles worked as a machinist at the north side Frisco shops. They lived there for many years, until 1947, when Charles died. The house then went to Warren R. Hoffman and by 1959, to Albert E. Moorman.

Albert Moorman and his wife Evelyn lived in the house until they moved to Canada in 1968. Albert had been a biology professor at Drury since 1947, but the couples unhappiness with the Vietnam War led them to move to Canada where Albert accepted a position at a university. 

For more pictures of this lovely home in Springfield’s historic Midtown Neighborhood, click here.

Sources:
Newspapers.com
     Springfield News Leader
     Springfield Democrat
     Springfield Leader and Press
     Springfield Republican   
     Springfield Daily Republican 
     Springfield Daily News
Greene County, Missouri, Tax Books, 1895-1898
Springfield City Directories
Find A Grave
Greene County, Missouri, Recorder of Deeds, Marriage Records
Missouri Digital Heritage, Death Certificates, 1910-1969
Missouri Department of Natural Resources: Greene County National       Register  Listings,  Mid-Town Historic District