The Gundelfinger House

Few know the story of the gray apartment building on the southwest corner of Broadway and Elm. It begins with Daniel Gundelfinger, son of Bavarian immigrants and well-known High Street hardware merchant. He built it as his home in 1892, three years before the Herman Tanner residence on the south end of that block was built. The newspaper said the two houses were “very elegant,” noting that they bookended what was becoming “one of the [city’s] most impressive residential blocks.” The spacious, two-story brick Gundelfinger home had a deeply recessed, arched entrance on Broadway; prominent stone lintels; ornate, dentiled cornices; mansard roof with decorative metal parapet and a hexagonal turret; and two huge metal urns flanking the entrance that identified it as a hardware merchant’s home.


Left: Gundelfinger House ca. 1920 (Schroeder family collection); right: Gundelfinger Building, 2018 (courtesy Matthew Holland).

All the other houses in the 600 block postdate the Gundelfinger house and are now on the National Register of Historic Places, but the Gundelfinger house is not. Daniel built the house for his wife, the Bavarian-born Margaretha Hoehler (age 17 when married), and the happy couple moved in. But she became seriously ill, and in a few months, in 1893, she died. Her funeral was held in the parlor of the new house.

Daniel then married Bertha (Bessie) Roesen in 1895, and family life resumed in the big house; they had two sons in short time, Daniel W. and Karl H. But tragedy struck again: in July 1906 a probate jury declared Daniel of “unsound mind and incompetent of conducting his affairs.” He was committed to the State Hospital in Fulton and died there in November 1907. What would become of Daniel’s dream house?

The Roesen family was intermarried with the Moerschels, who had the big Capitol Brewery. Brewery owner Jacob Moerschel lived in the Gundelfinger house while he was building his Villa Panorama mansion on Swifts Highway in 1907–1908. A much smaller home was built on the property, 602 Broadway, for Bertha and sons. (Now it’s a driveway.) In 1916 the “Bertha Gundelfinger property” (two houses at 600 and 602 Broadway) was sold for $2,500 to neighbor Nelson C. Burch. The widow moved to rural Columbia to live with her son Karl, who, incidentally, committed suicide at age 44.

Between 1931 and 1935 the Gundelfinger house was transformed from a spacious single-family residence into four apartments. The Broadway entrance was eliminated, and a new, pointed-arch, canopied entrance was opened facing Elm Street to access the two apartments on each floor. The lintels were removed and all windows made smaller, changing its appearance from Victorian to Craftsman. The mansard roof, dentiled cornice (minus parapet), and turret were retained. Also, a two-story addition was fused to the back of the house, with a matching pointed-arch, canopied entrance for the two new apartments.

Today, the six-apartment Gundelfinger Building looks as if it has been this way all along, but its history is betrayed by the roofline—the addition lacks a mansard roof. The building’s address was changed from 600 Broadway to 301 and 301½ W. Elm. The original brick exterior was faced with tan stucco, mirroring the tan stucco just added to the catty-corner brick German Methodist Church building that had also been converted into apartments. The Gundelfinger’s stucco has since been painted gray.



Since the 1930s the apartments have served as rental residences of Missouri state office professionals, including an assistant attorney general, lawyers at the Supreme Court, state representatives, and professionals with the Tax and Public Service commissions, State Auditor, Education and Revenue departments, Board of Health, and Missouri Highway Patrol.

The 126-year-old building is now owned by Matt Holland and Eric Hemeyer (H&H Property Management), who are renovating it inside and out to make it once again a sought-after residence in Munichburg, Jefferson City’s historic Southside.

©Walter A. Schroeder, 2018

This piece originally ran in the Jefferson City News Tribune as an ad for Oktoberfest on September 23, 2018.

Hickory Street Neighborhood Park

Lots in the Southside’s Woodcrest Addition, between Monroe and Jackson streets and Hickory and Union streets, went on public sale in September 1914. The potential growth in this first platted addition to Jefferson City after cars became common prompted the Jefferson City School Board to consider opening a new elementary school there. The School Board purchased land for a new school in the 1200 block of Monroe. In 1919 Dr. Charles P. Hough donated four lots in the new Woodcrest Addition to the School Board for a playground, stipulating that it be named the “George W. Hough Playground” to honor his father. Hough also donated $1,500 for playground equipment. These four donated lots are on the southeast corner of Hickory and Adams streets.



As the years passed, the School Board never built a school on the Monroe Street land and sold it in 1946 to the Missouri Osteopathic Association to build Still Hospital, which has since become Capital Region Medical Center. The School Board, however, did not sell its playground at the corner of Hickory and Adams—it conveyed it to the City of Jefferson for management as a neighborhood park, an arrangement that continued for many decades. Then, in April 2016, the Jefferson City School District, concerned with potential issues of liability, deeded the land to the City of Jefferson for $10 for continued use as a playground.

Now 99 years old, the Hickory Street Park is one of the oldest tracts of public land in Jefferson City specifically designated as a park. (Charles’s brother Arthur Hough donated the land for Hough Park in 1917.) The well-maintained, shady, popular playground in Jefferson City’s Southside is today a shining example of what a neighborhood park should be.

By the way, Hickory Street was not named for the tree but for the 7th US president, Andrew Jackson, nicknamed “Old Hickory.” “Jackson” was already in use for the next street east of the park. Adams Street is named for the 6th president. The next street south of the park is named for the 10th president, John Tyler. The next street west of the park is named for the 5th president, James Monroe. Children using the playground are surrounded by US history—four presidents!

©Walter A. Schroeder, 2018

This piece originally ran in the Jefferson City News Tribune as an ad for Oktoberfest on September 16, 2018.

The Broadway Street Sextuplets

The Broadway Street sextuplets are at least 110 years old this year! Six nearly identical houses are located in a half block of Broadway, at numbers 711, 713, 715, 717, 719, and 721. Passersby notice their similarity even at a glance! The sextuplets were built at the beginning of the nineteenth century and by 1908 all had been occupied as rental residences of Southside families of modest incomes. In time, they were sold to individual owners.



The six were built before cars were planned for by homebuilders, resulting in them being so closely set on 30-foot-wide lots that the few feet between them allows no space for a driveway. Instead, when their inlot (901) was subdivided, a 10-foot-wide alley was designated behind all of them, from Tanner Way to Ashley Street. The alley—originally used for horses and wagons—still gives the residents access to the back of their narrow properties. Each lot had a wagon shed, now a garage, in the rear. The two houses on the ends were built slightly larger on their back sides than the other four.

The six are styled like many other small houses for working-class families at that time in Munichburg. Each is a red brick, one-and-a-half-story structure with stylized window framings and doorways. Each has a gabled projection on its north side that is complemented by a small inset porch on the south.

Just as human sextuplets will evolve different personalities as they mature, these architectural siblings, under individual ownerships, have also evolved differently over the decades. Some have been enlarged by second-floor rooms, and some have new siding, new porches, or additions in the back. As property values are increasing in Munichburg, several of the sextuplets are being updated and renovated to be comfortable, small, owner-occupied residences or investment properties. Their original similarity as sextuplets continues to attract the attention of people passing by.

©Walter A. Schroeder, 2018

This piece originally ran in the Jefferson City News Tribune as an ad for Oktoberfest on September 9, 2018.

Buddy’s Stories: Growing Up in Jefferson City in the 1940s

Everyone has a story. This is Buddy’s.

Meet Buddy: a bike-riding, towheaded, everyday kid growing up on Elm Street during World War II. Everyone he knows is a proud American, including his German-immigrant grandparents. Life on the Southside isn’t rosy, but people do what they can to get by—and Buddy and his friends grow up learning to reduce, reuse, and recycle . . . to be self-sufficient . . . and to help others.

Generous with details, the geographer and historian Walter A. Schroeder—nicknamed “Buddy” in his youth—shares his personal memories of growing up in Jefferson City, Missouri. His descriptions will resonate with people who remember those simpler times, and they will cause others to reflect on what we lost as the years went by.

These 42 brief essays cover an array of topics about Jefferson City places, everyday life, the effects of World War II, and expressions of patriotism. How did families make ends meet? How did kids participate in the war effort? What was it like to have bread, eggs, milk, and coal delivered, to make sauerkraut in the basement, to be fitted for shoes with commercial X-ray machines? What did kids do for fun? How did the old Missouri River Bridge rotate, and what was it like to go to the dime store?

Engagingly written, enhanced by the judgment of a professional historian, and illustrated with 72 photos, maps, and scrapbook mementos, Buddy’s Stories is a vibrant perspective on Jefferson City history . . . and a fond commemoration of the way things used to be.

“I helped my grandfather make beer while Doctor Hill came to our house and brought my brother Walter Albert Schroeder into the world. He cost twenty-five dollars. My parents got a bargain, and I got a ‘buddy.’”

—Richard A. Schroeder, older brother

“This book is a real treasure. Buddy treats us to recollections of our community. It is as if he, Richard, and I are sitting together talking about the old days.”

—Thomas K. Schroeder, younger brother

COPIES WILL BE AVAILABLE AT JEFFERSON CITY'S OKTOBERFEST,
SEPT. 28 AND 29, 2018

AUTHOR SIGNING 10:30 a.m. to Noon Sept. 29
at the Old Munichburg booth

Published in 2018 by the Old Munichburg Association

200 pages; 70 photographs, maps, and illustrations

$15

When a Steamboat Docked on Dunklin Street

What? A steamboat in the heart of Munichburg? How could this possibly be?

It’s true, and here’s how it happened.

The Nieghorn family of Cole County has in its family history an intriguing story of German immigrants coming to Jefferson City in 1844. This story was told to me by Gary Schmutzler of Jefferson City, a Nieghorn descendant. Gary heard it from his great uncle Andy Nieghorn, who heard it from his immigrant grandmother Hartenstein. It’s so unusual that it could not have been made up.

The Nieghorns and Hartensteins were among the first Bavarian immigrants to Cole County farms. The Hartensteins came through the port of New Orleans, then up the Mississippi by steamboat, then up the Missouri, also by steamboat. For the Missouri River part of the trip, they traveled in small, short steamboats more like a river ferry, not monsters like today’s Delta Queen or Admiral. The immigrants had to come by river, of course, because Missouri had no railroads in the 1840s.

When they reached the little town of Jefferson City, barely twenty years old, the boat left the Missouri River, entered Wear’s Creek, and continued upstream into its East Branch to where Central Dairy facilities are now, and then it moved south one block to Dunklin Street. That would put the boat with its immigrants into what is today the low "backyard" of Busch’s Florist. This is what that area looks like today.



The immigrant Hartenstein party got off the boat, transferred to wagons, and traveled southwest overland a few miles to the Zion neighborhood, where they settled among Nieghorns and other German Lutheran immigrants and became farmers.

If that family account is to be believed, how can it be explained?

The family account says the Hartensteins arrived in 1844. In that year, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Missouri River experienced its greatest flood ever in recorded history, by volume of water. The Great Flood of 1993, though somewhat less in volume, actually rose higher because of later channel engineering and levees. But the 1844 flood happened before the river had been so deeply channeled and walled in. The floodwater created ten-foot-high sand dunes in the river bottoms, and the river channel changed its course in several locations. Historical records tell of river pilots navigating their steamboats over the tops of submerged trees and croplands in the Missouri River bottoms.



With the Missouri River at such a high flood stage, water backed up into Wear’s Creek, as it always does in any Missouri River flood. If you remember the Great Flood of 1993 in Jefferson City, you remember water backing up in Wear’s Creek and flooding the Capitol Plaza Hotel and the parking lots around it. In fact, river backwater continued upstream in the East Branch channel past Central Dairy and even beyond Monroe Street. So the boat carrying the Hartenstein family could have come up into the Southside using the quiet Missouri River backwater just like moving into the arm of a big lake. In 1844 there were no bridges over the creek, either for a railroad or for wagons. The creek was totally unobstructed and would have been open water.



If you stand on the Dunklin Street sidewalk behind Busch’s greenhouse and lean over the railing, you will see how low the ground is there.



A small creek, visible in an 1892 photo, used to flow behind Busch’s greenhouse. Water from a flooded Wear’s Creek readily backed up into that low ground. In fact, the 100 block of East Dunklin, between Jefferson and Madison, was originally at that low level you see behind Busch’s.



It wasn’t until 1912 that the city decided to fill in the north side of Dunklin ten feet or so, to build up the street and make it relatively flat in that block.

If you lean out over that sidewalk railing and look back under the Dunklin Street sidewalk, you will see the original 1912 limestone retaining wall the city built to hold up the dirt fill that Dunklin Street is built on.



My conclusion is that the Nieghorn family story of the Hartensteins coming all the way to Dunklin Street by steamboat in 1844 is entirely believable. It shows that the stories we hand down from generation to generation may not be distorted or inaccurate retellings, tall tales, or figments of someone’s imagination, but actually could have happened, however unbelievable it seems at first.

But wait! There’s more to the story! When John Nieghorn (1819–1899), who came to Cole County about the same time as the Hartensteins, retired from his business as a tailor and farmer in the Zion community at age seventy-one, he came back to the same place on Dunklin Street where the Hartensteins disembarked from the boat in 1844. He built a three-story brick hotel there in 1892, called the Nieghorn Haus, and he spent his final retirement years living in it.



That hotel building, at 120-122 East Dunklin, and later called the Bassmann Apartments, was thoroughly renovated and updated by Phil Kolb and Steve Rollins in 2010 and is now on the National Register of Historic Places as the Nieghorn Hotel. Thank you, Nieghorns and Hartensteins, for giving us great Munichburg memories!

Hugo Busch and Busch's Florist

In 1890 German immigrant Hugo Otto Busch and partner Charles Purzner bought Mathias Nagel’s florist and landscape business on the corner of Madison and East Dunklin. Nagel had been in business there since at least 1873. Busch bought out his partner in 1902 and expanded the business, calling it Capital City Greenhouse. In 1909 he purchased 25 acres of farmland between the 1400 blocks of St. Mary’s Blvd. and Missouri Blvd. to raise plants and flowers. That land today is occupied by Jefferson Plaza and Busch St. In the 1930s Busch had eight large greenhouses: six were on Missouri Blvd., and two were connected to the sales room on Madison Street. He had a total of 50,000 square feet under glass. Busch annually raised thousands of poinsettias, roses, and carnations for his business and for wholesaling. Busch’s Florist served the general public with cut flowers and bedding plants and also decorated for weddings, funerals, and church events and for state government functions at the Capitol and governors’ inaugurations. Busch’s began FTD service around 1920 and rose to rank among FTD’s national leaders. Busch’s has long been considered Jefferson City’s premier florist.

Hugo and his German immigrant wife Lina (Carolina Jung) lived at 117 East Dunklin (part of the business property), where they raised eight sons and two daughters. Six of the sons worked with their father at some time. Son Arthur began working in the 1930s and in 1955 assumed control of the business when his father died at age 89. Art and wife Leota were known for their personal attention to customers and for their friendly, skilled employees. Art died in 1990, and Leota continued until 1997, when the business left the Busch family after 107 years. John Pelzer then owned it, proudly continuing the name Busch’s Florist. The business is now owned by Reid Millard, who in 2018 has renovated the landmark greenhouse on “the most beautiful corner in Jefferson City.”

Hugo Busch was a founding member of Southside Boosters that formed in 1912 to promote the Southside. Busch’s Florist has been an anchor to its business community for more than a century and is an active member of the Old Munichburg Association.

This piece originally ran in the Jefferson City News Tribune.

Copyright 2018, by Walter A. Schroeder

Photo of Hugo Busch, age 79 (1945), courtesy Trinity Lutheran Church, Jefferson City, Missouri

Mr. Hugo Busch’s Pansies

On June 8, 2013, the Old Munichburg Association unveiled The Historic South Side Mural, which the group had commissioned local artist Jim Dyke to paint. The 48-feet-long mural is designed as a pair of panoramic streetscapes; it depicts the long history of the Munichburg neighborhood via an overlapping potpourri of images from different time periods.



The location of the mural, 117 East Dunklin Street in Jefferson City, originally held the residence of Hugo and Carolina (Lena) Busch and their family of ten children. Built around 1900, the modest-looking brick house was one and a half stories above the street, but it had a full lower floor because the land the house was built on lay ten to fifteen feet below the street level. The house was really a two-and-a-half-story house. It is prominently shown in the mural and labeled as the Busch house.

The building that the mural is in was put up in the 1950s by Milo H. Walz to house Missouri state offices. Later, it was bought by Central Dairy/Prairie Farms and converted into a warehouse, with the first floor removed so that now, if you were able to open the sealed front doors and enter, you would drop ten to fifteen feet to the ground below. The mural is installed in the windows of this 1950s building. This building is not shown in the mural.

Hugo and Lena Busch, nineteenth-century German immigrants and members of Trinity Lutheran Church, were leaders in Muenchberg/Munichburg. In 1890, Hugo and partner Charles Purzner bought an existing florist and greenhouse on the corner of Dunklin and Madison. In 1902, Purzner sold his interest to Busch. Most of the ten children (eight sons, two daughters) worked in the business at some time, which was a tradition in Munichburg in those years.

The Busch family operated the business continuously until son Arthur Busch died in 1990 and widow Leota sold it in 1997. Reid Millard purchased the business in 2017 and retains the name “Busch’s Florist.” For more than a century Busch’s Florist has been Jefferson City’s premiere florist. The “Busch corner” of Madison and Dunklin is perhaps the most beautiful street corner in Jefferson City.

My mother liked pansies. In spring she always had pansies with their smiling faces in flower boxes at the front door. She and Grandpa sometimes called them by their German name Stiefmütterchen, or “little stepmothers.”

Pansies are hardy and among the first flowers to bloom in spring. Mom’s birthday was March 22, and it became a custom for me, when I was about eight to ten years old, to give her a dozen pansies for her birthday. I got them from Busch’s.

Mr. Hugo Busch, who by then was almost eighty years old, helped me out personally. His hot beds sat those ten to fifteen feet below the Dunklin Street sidewalk between the greenhouse on the corner and the Busch house on Dunklin. I went to them by walking down a ramp from the street sidewalk. The hot beds, each about eight feet square, were held in by 2 x 12 boards standing upright. The beds had heavy wood frames of glass panes for a cover, much like the roof panes of the greenhouse. The frames would be placed over the top of the beds in winter to protect against freezes. Mr. Busch set out his pansies in the fall, so that in mid-March, he could remove the frames from the hot beds and the pansies would be big enough for transplanting to brighten yards with their colorful stepmother faces.



Mr. Busch helped me pick out the pansies one by one. He sat on a board placed diagonally across a corner and patiently waited while I looked over the dozens of plants in one bed. When I picked out one, he gave his approval with a slight German accent, “Yes, Buddy, that’s a nice one.” He scooped it out with his trowel and carefully placed it with just enough dirt in a shoebox. He kept the shoebox tilted so that the little plant with its dirt stayed in place. Then I chose another and then another. We moved to a different bed and again inspected dozens of plants.

It was so hard to make choices! I wanted the showiest for my mother’s birthday, and I needed Mr. Busch’s expert approval for each. The whole process took at least half an hour. Mr. Busch’s patience was inexhaustible. He knew my family and knew that the pansies were for my mother’s birthday.



After we filled the shoebox with a dozen plants—they cost a nickel each, and I had sixty cents to spend—I walked up to the sales room at the back of the greenhouse, paid the clerk, and walked the four blocks home with my shoebox birthday gift of pansies. When I got home, Mom thanked me and planted her pansies in the concrete flower boxes at the front door so that all who passed by would see the bright, colorful faces of the “little stepmothers.”

Copyright 2013, 2018 by Walter A. Schroeder.