NEW STAGE OF 1859 JAIL PRESERVATION AND RESTORATION BREAKS GROUND

A new project to address foundation issues began in May. Photo courtesy of Jackson County Historical Society.

BY BRIAN BURNES

The latest phase of the continuing architectural conservation of the 1859 Jail Museum in Independence has begun.

In May, representatives of a local historic preservation firm started their six-month project, working to further restore the pre-Civil War landmark and stabilize its northwest corner.

The building, which opened for its annual visitors season in April, will remain accessible throughout the process.

The project, budgeted at $300,000, is paramount to officers of Jackson County Historical Society, which owns and operates the structure just northeast of Independence Square at 217 N. Main St.

“The society takes seriously its responsibility to provide appropriate stewardship of the 1859 Jail Museum,” said Gloria Smith, JCHS president. 

“It is important to preserve this unique and historic structure not only for today’s visitors but for those in the future.”

The work, arguably, has enhanced the visitor experience. 

While guests will not be able to enter the marshal’s office, located in the northwest corner of the building’s first floor, they will be able to look into the room from two separate doorways and monitor the project’s progress.

“If anyone wants to peek in there, absolutely, please do,” said Corey Thomas, a vice president of Pishny Restoration Services of Lenexa, which is conducting the project.

“We only ask that no one step into that space.”

Visitors are enjoying the rare opportunity to examine the 19th century building from a 21st century perspective, added Kaija Laney, the society’s visitor services coordinator.

“People are loving being able to see all the different aspects of the building.”

Guests, she added, “think it’s really cool that the jail is remaining open while the work is going on. This project has been planned for a long time and it’s exciting for them to actually see it come to fruition.”

There were also a few surprises after initial excavation work began in early June - ones that prompted, out of an abundance of caution - a call to the Independence Police Department.

Spoiler: the officer found nothing that concerned him.

Fixing the foundation

The project long has been anticipated.

In 2019 STRATA Architecture + Preservation of Kansas City completed a historic building assessment and structural study of the jail. 

The report identified several issues within the then-160-year-old building and submitted both near-term and short-term strategies to address them. Pishny representatives then completed several initial repairs.

Now the Pishny specialists have returned.

The concerns are several. 

There has been the continuing settlement of the building’s northwest corner due to water undermining its foundation. The Pishny specialists will address that as well as repairing plaster damaged by the moisture while also improving water drainage along a narrow alleyway on the building’s north side.

Their main focus is addressing these issues in a manner that doesn’t violate the structure’s historical integrity.

“In typical historical restoration, we are not looking to tear down a section of a building and rebuild it like it was new,” Thomas said. “We are stabilizing it in its current condition.”

The first task was to install about 120 stainless steel helical anchors on the west facade of the building, facing North Main Street.

The jail’s builders in 1859, Thomas said, did not lay up the brick on that outer exterior wall - or “wythe,” which is a continuous vertical section of masonry - with any bricks that were “headers,” or bricks that may be turned sideways or perpendicular to the others so to connect an outer wall, or wythe, with a second interior wall.

The first task of workers was to install about 120 stainless steel anchors on the jail’s western wall to connect or “anchor” it to interior brickwork. Photo courtesy of JCHS.

“So that entire outer wythe of brick that you see - the visible portion - is just a freestanding brick wall,” Thomas said. 

“It is only one brick thick and it was not tied to the inner wall.”

To stabilize it, Pishny associates installed the stainless steel anchors, which were inserted through the bricks so they could ”grab” onto the interior brickwork. The holes left by this process then were patched with a red brick-colored material.

“If you look really hard you can see where the holes were,” Thomas said. 

“But most people have not even noticed that it was done.”

To gain access to the jail’s mid-19th century foundation, workers removed floor joists and floorboards near the northwest corner of the marshal’s office. Photo courtesy of JCHS.

The next task was to remove the floorboards in the marshal’s office, located on the first floor of the building’s northwest corner. This allowed workers access to the building’s foundation. That was easier, Thomas said, than trying to reach the foundation from the narrow alley on the building’s north side.

The workers numbered each floorboard they removed and, after also removing some floor joists, began to work on the “underpinning” of the building’s 19th century foundation.

The plan is to excavate portions of the original limestone rock foundation, removing sections of it three or four feet long at a time. The stabilization of the foundation then will begin by pouring concrete into those sections before moving onto the next one, all the while tying the sections together with mechanical connectors, or couplers.

After that work is complete - and the floorboards and floor joists reinstalled - workers will move on to restore interior plaster.

After that, the workers hope to do additional work if the budgeted $300,000 allows.

That could include the fabrication and installation of two new mahogany doors at the north and south ends of the jail’s west-facing wall, as well as restoring first-floor windows on the building’s west face.

But that work is contingent on the amount of time and materials needed during the underpinning of the building’s foundation. 

That remained unclear in early June, Thomas said.

“The idea is to try to stretch the money as far as we can,” he added.

The antebellum architect

Among the society’s long inventory of historic holdings, the 1859 Jail is its most meaningful physical asset.

Asa B. Cross, who designed the 1859 Jail, often is considered perhaps to be Kansas City’s first professional architect. Photo courtesy of JCHS.

Asa B. Cross, often considered perhaps Kansas City’s first professional architect, designed the building.

During a 40-year career Cross completed several Kansas City area landmarks, among them Kansas City’s Union Depot, which opened in 1878 in the West Bottoms.

But while Cross is thought to have completed about 1,000 area buildings, only a small number remain today, among them St. Patrick’s Catholic Church at Eighth and Cherry streets in Kansas City, and the Vaile Mansion, standing about 12 blocks north of the jail at 1500 N. Liberty St. in Independence.

As Cross arrived in Kansas City in 1858 from St. Louis, the jail was among his first commissions.

About a century later the jail’s threatened demolition led to the formal founding of the current Jackson County Historical Society.

The society initially had organized in the early 1900s. But it was the threatened demolition of the jail that led the current nonprofit group to formally incorporate. Its members asked former president Harry Truman to lead a fundraising effort to acquire and preserve the jail.

Former president Harry Truman agreed to help raise funds that allowed the Jackson County Historical Society to acquire the building and save it from threatened demolition. Photo courtesy of JCHS.

Mr. Truman made his first call to Joyce Hall, founder of Hallmark Cards, Inc., who responded with a $1,000 pledge.

The restored building welcomed its first visitors in 1959.

In 1970 federal officials listed the building on the National Register of Historic Places.

Today the building holds a unique place in the memories of many former and current Independence School District students, who for years have visited the building as first graders.

After acquiring the building, the historical society restored it before opening it to the public in 1959. Photo courtesy of JCHS.

Further, the building’s first floor gallery, housed in the jail’s 1907 addition, continues to receive visitors from across the Kansas City area and the country to see rotating exhibits of holdings maintained in the society’s archival and artifact collections.

Donors made this possible

The current work has been made possible through generous gifts from several sources.

The society received a $100,000 grant from the Sunderland Foundation in 2021 to restore the jail.

The following year it received a $50,000 facade grant from the City of Independence. 

The society also is devoting $25,000 thus far received from a $50,000 bequest from the Jack F. and Glenna Y. Wylie Charitable Foundation Trust, trustees: Bradley A. Bergman, Thomas A. McDonnell and Midwest Trust Co. 

Also, the society has designated up to $150,000 from funds donated by the late Richard King, a former Independence resident and retired Kansas City business owner.

Those sums are separate from an earlier $75,000 Sunderland Foundation grant, received in 2019, that enabled the society to engage STRATA Architecture + Planning of Kansas City to conduct its initial building assessment of the structure.

This assessment identified several existing challenges with the structure.

That same year, Pishny reps repaired second-floor windows along the building’s western exterior. They also restored masonry and floor joists in the marshal’s office and residence.

In 2021 the Independence Heritage Commission awarded the society its Preserve Independence Award for the restoration work conducted at the 1859 Jail.

For more than 20 years, Pishny representatives have worked with preservation architects, conservators and engineers to help restore historic structures and monuments across the Kansas City area and region. They have been honored, for example, for their work on the Parade Park Maintenance Building in Kansas City, the current home to the Black Archives of Mid-America.

Also, Pishny specialists recently completed a restoration project at the Jesse James Birthplace in Kearney; that work included stabilizing the home’s foundation as well as replacing logs and performing chinking and daubing where needed.

Pishny representatives also are engaged in a multi-year project at the Sauer Castle, an 1870s Italianate mansion - and another Asa B. Cross design - in Kansas City, KS. 

It’s fitting that the 1859 Jail project began in May, which was National Historic Preservation Month, said Erin Gray, the society’s archives and education director.

“I know that if there were not companies like Pishny we, as a community, would lose a whole lot more than we would ever be able to save,” Gray said.

A surprise discovery

Through late October the building will be open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. The jail’s popular annual October weekend ghost tours will not be affected by the work schedule. 

While excavating the area near the jail’s northwest corner foundation, workers discovered broken glass, fragments of dishes and animal bones, some of which are thought to have been remnants from a trash-pit that likely pre-dated the jail’s construction. Photo courtesy of JCHS.

Visitors also will be able to review exhibits in the jail’s adjoining museum space, or gallery. Those include a boy’s blue suit, newly restored, that dates from the 1880s.

Also exhibited will be various artifacts, such as broken pieces of crockery and glass bottles - that have been recovered during the jail restoration project.

In early June Pishny specialists, while beginning their foundation work and excavating near the northwest corner of marshal’s office, came across fragments of dishes, glass bottles and tools buried several feet down.

The workers believe these items likely had been dumped in a trash pit that pre-dated the jail’s 1859 construction. Trash pits sometimes were used by 19th century families to dispose of household waste.

The workers also found small bones.

An Independence police officer, responding to a historical society request, inspecting the recovered bones and believed them to be of animal origin. Photo courtesy of JCHS.

This prompted JCHS staff members to contact the Independence Police Department. The officer who responded to examine the bones declared them likely to be of animal origin, and probably were from a pig.

Said another way: at some point before the Civil War, a barbecue-loving Independence family may have sat down around a plate of short ribs.

A few days later Pishny workers, deciding to gain more working room inside the marshal’s office interior, removed dirt to outside the building in five-gallon buckets. Volunteers sifting through the dirt recovered still more animal bones and dish fragments.

The materials recovered by the Pishny representatives “provide a beautiful window into daily life around the time of the building’s construction and possibly during the early occupation of the building,” said Melissa Eaton, president of the Kansas City Archaeological Society who volunteered to help with the review, examination and cataloging of the artifacts.

Eaton believes that most of the items recovered were deposited around the inside of the building’s foundation in several separate time frames.

The earliest deposits probably date from a wooden structure that pre-dated the jail, she said. Meanwhile, as the new building’s brick footings were being constructed, many of the artifacts in the soil were used to fill up the construction trench.

“This also included construction debris and probably food waste from the workers all thrown in at the same time,” Eaton said.

Further, when the building was being occupied, loose artifacts may have slipped below the floorboards, while more modern construction activity and renovations introduced still more.

“One iron artifact is part of a drawn knife used for woodworking,” she said.

Still other items, Eaton added, are related to dining. There is one large beef bone that appears to have been sawn by a professional butcher and then roasted. There also are pork bones, some with professional sawn butcher marks and others with knife cut marks likely left from a distant day when “a hungry person tried to remove all the meat from the bones.”

Finally, other artifacts evoke the tables at which 19th century diners may have sat.

“There are a variety of dinner plates as well, showing the typical fashions of the mid-1800s,” Eaton said. That included, she added, “pearlware serving platters, shell-edged plates and transfer-printed whitewares in blue, brown, mulberry and purple.” 

Eaton, chair of the Social Science, Business and Applied Technology Division at Metropolitan Community College, will be helping the historical society catalog the artifacts before they are placed on display.

While scholars of Missouri history often focus on the turbulence that accompanied the Civil War, sometimes such attention comes at the expense of examining everyday 19th century life, said Jason Wade, society board member and long-time jail volunteer.

The relics recovered this month represent an opportunity to do that, Wade said.

“People just lived their lives, and this is evidence of that,” he added.

The 1859 Jail Museum will remain open to visitors throughout the restoration project. Photo courtesy of JCHS.

In late October the jail will shut down briefly before opening again for the holiday season.

While the jail project is scheduled to be completed by November, additional issues will still need to be addressed at the historic structure, Thomas said.

“There are windows around the rest of the building that need attention, as well as sealants around the windows,” said Thomas.

To donate to the Jackson County Historical Society’s “Save the Jail,” fund, go to jchs.org, select “Donate” from the drop-down window, and then click on “1859 Jail Museum” from the “campaigns” list.

Those preferring to use physical mail can forward checks to the society at P.O. Box 4241 with “1859 Jail” in the memo line.

Brian Burnes is the former president of the Jackson County Historical Society.