Walker-Woodward-Schaffer House - Palmyra, MO - Wikipedia Entries on Waymarking.com

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