"Inquiry Leads to Research On Possible Historical Home"

A few months ago, the Library received a letter from a man in Spokane, Washington.  He was researching houses built in the 1880’s and 1890’s from plans advertised in the local newspapers of the time.  The designer of these house plans was an architect by the name of George F. Barber.

The researcher said that he had developed an interest in identifying all of the surviving homes that had been built using Barber’s designs.  The man had a list of Barber’s clients.  He knew that in the 1890’s, a Clinton C. Gray of Columbus, Nebraska had ordered a set of Barber’s architectural drawing.  The Spokane man wanted to know if the house still exists. 

From the newspaper ads for these home plans, a person could send eighty-five cents to Barber’s company and would receive in return a staple-bound fifty-six page booklet entitled “Modern Artistic Cottages, or the Cottage Souvenir, Designed to Meet the Wants of Mechanics and Home Builders”.   The first of these publications contained brief designs for twenty-five different houses.  The reader was invited to correspond with the architect, who would provide all the necessary plans and specifications for building the house of the reader’s desire.  The cost of the plans would depend upon the size of the home to be built as well as any re-design work requested by the would-be builder. 

Barber’s second publication, “The Cottage Souvenir, No.2, A Repository of Artistic Cottage Architecture and Miscellaneous Designs”, printed in December 1890, contained not only home plans but plans for barns, chapels, churches and store fronts.  This booklet included an estimate of the prices for the materials and labor for each of the designs. 

Given only the name of the homeowner, Clinton C. Gray, the researching ability of the staff at the Library was greatly handicapped.   There are no city directories that go back that far in time.  While Margaret Curry’s book, “History of Platte County” lists the Grays, no address is listed.  A visit to the Platte County Recorder of Deeds also failed to locate a home owned by the Clinton C. Gray family.   Neither the cemetery nor  the funeral home information provided an address. 

In the research that was done, it was learned that at one time Myron, the son of Clinton C. Gray, owned a home on the south side of town.  In reading Curry’s Platte History book it was learned that Clinton and his wife moved to Omaha in 1913 and left their son, Myron to run the family dry goods business in Columbus.    One might speculate that perhaps the father and mother had also given their Columbus home to the son when they moved to Omaha.  

To follow through on this hunch, a drive-by of the house in question was arranged.  The house was surprisingly unchanged and there were several unique architectural features, one might associate with a Barber design.  A few digital photographs were taken of the house and sent to the Spokane researcher.  His response was that while the house is not one included in any of Barber’s design books, it’s of the period and it could have been one that had been custom designed.  For the sake of the owner’s privacy, the address of this house is intentionally not listed in this article. 

The Library recently purchased a reproduction of Barber’s, 1891 catalog of house plans.  That book, “Victorian Cottage Architecture, An American Catalog of Designs, 1891”, is available for check out.