Walker-Woodward-Schaffer House - Palmyra, MO
Posted by: YoSam.
N 39° 47.240 W 091° 31.388
15S E 626457 N 4405196
Also the childhood home of Jane Darwell...actress...
Waymark Code: WM11VAF
Location: Missouri, United States
Date Posted: 12/22/2019
Views: 1
County of Marker: Marion County
Location of Marker: 1425 S. Main St., Palmyra
Built: 1869
Architectural Style: Italianate
Builder: William H. Walker
The Walker-Woodward-Schaffer House is an Italianate style two-story brick house which
faces west from the rear of a deep yard planted with maple trees. Situated on the
southern outskirts of Palmyra, Missouri, the house has a two-room deep two story rear
wing with a double gallery porch on its south side which has been partially enclosed
on the ground level. The three bay primary facade features a shallow projecting central
pavilion terminated by a pediment of constricted proportions. A course of brackets
lines the eaves of cornice of the-main block and continue around the cornice of the
ell as well. The Brackets of the ell are smaller in size. The main block and ell have
hipped roofs and the House rests- on a cutstone foundation and has a basement under the
rear ell. In addition to the rear gallery, a veranda spans the front of the house.
This porch is executed in a simple carpenters rendition of the Italianate style with
sets of attenuated paired posts above which are paired incised brackets. First floor
windows of the primary facade are floor length; remaining windows are 2/2 double hung
and all windows and doors have stone lintels.
"The Walker-Woodward
Schaffer Rouse is one of a number of surviving Italianate houses in the Hannibal-Palmyra
area which constitute one of the richest concentrations of this style to be found in
Missouri. The particular house in question is a good example of a modest middle
class house combining conservatism in form with a traditional Greek Revival interior
and an Italianate exterior. ... But the exterior clearly reveals the
transitional quality of this house as it takes a cautious Step into the Victorian
era. As is typical of provincial vernacular architecture, this transformation legged
decades behind.the cosmopolitan prototypes of the east coast source areas. ... The two most telling departures
from past practice were the simple carpenter's Italianate vernada and the slender first
story front windows reaching all the way to the floor. The veranda in particular plays
the key role in weaning this house away from earlier classcism. The significance of
the appearance of t&ts porch on an otherwise traditional house should not be underestimated
in Missouri where t&e picturesque styles gained little foothold in out-state Missouri
until precisely this period—the Civil War and post-Civil War years.
" ... It was
during his Palmyra stay that the town's most famous citizen was born in the house
under consideration. As Patti Woodward, this child was evidently raised in small
town southern luxury with a negro nurse and clothing that was "the last minute in
laces, buttons, muslins and velvets." It was after she left Palmyra that she forged
a career as the actress Jane Darwell, a career that included roles in several movies
including "Gone With The Wind" and culminated in 1940 in an Academy Award performance
as Ma Joad in "Grapes: of Wrath"'. While her small town Missouri origins may be
incidental from a National Register point of view, such is hardly the case in Palmyra
where her birthplace has over the years been the subject of numerous newspaper
articles, Chamber of Commerce brochures, markers and the like." ~ NRHP Nomination Form