Conley Property | COMO Magazine

Surveys and interviews delve into many years of reminiscences of the Conley family members.

Tucked absent in the middle of MU’s campus, the Sanford Conley Property serves as a reminder of the prosperous history observed in Columbia.

Citing the household as a “rare, local case in point of the Italianate style in Columbia, Missouri,” the software to the Countrywide Register of Historic Spots observed that “most of these examples are concentrated in the metropolitan locations all over St. Louis and Independence, Missouri.” The two-story property created in 1868 by businessman Sanford Francis Conley is characterized by a small-pitched mansard roof, arched doorway, deep bracketed caves and scalloped facings, and rose brickwork. The initially flooring of the house functions 7 rooms, two baths, and a sunporch. Five rooms and two baths make up the second flooring.

The Conley Property as we know it right now is positioned on the southeast corner of the intersection of Conley Avenue and Sanford Position — when a key household location for MU professors. In accordance to the software to the National Sign up of Historic Places, other constructions surrounding the Conley Property in 1969 were “several much more recently-manufactured residences to the west. University parking tons are to the house and across the street to the northwest.” The house is a single of the oldest surviving residences of the period prior to campus enlargement.

The Conley Household Roots

Sanford was born in 1838 on a spouse and children farm six miles north of Columbia. Fascinated in the business planet, Sanford remaining the farm at age 15 to clerk at a dry goods retailer in Columbia. Sanford married Kate Singleton, a Christian Faculty (now Columbia School) graduate, in 1868. The newlyweds lived at the corner of 3rd and Broadway in Columbia right before relocating to the Italianate property we now get in touch with the Conley Home.

All six of Sanford Conley’s youngsters have been born in the residence after sloped to Providence Street and the area bordering it from Conley Avenue to Rollins Street.

As a farmer, service provider, and energetic community member, Sanford aided Columbia prosper. Sanford pursued his curiosity in the dry merchandise enterprise, signing up for with John Samuel as a lover in a mercantile operation all while running a Columbia sawmill. Sanford was also a person of the directors of the Exchange National Lender of Columbia and opened an agriculture gear keep, which he operated right until he died in 1890 at the age of 52.

After Sanford’s death, the strain on family members funds forced Kate to take in boards. The initial 5-acre ton was divided into parcels and bought. The Conley Property was also reworked — kitchens, sunrooms, bogs, and bedrooms ended up added to transform the original solitary-household house into two apartments in the late 1930s.

The Conley household owned the house for another 50 decades soon after the renovations. Frank, the son of Sanford, lived in the downstairs condominium with his wife. Kate remained in the household right until the late 1960s.

A Household of Recollections

The Conley household intrigues these who keep on to analyze the dwelling these days.

In the slide of 1986, 9 MU undergraduate and graduate students carried out an archaeological study at the Conley Dwelling to attain information about the day to day lives of the Conley relatives. Throughout the dig, the pupils identified the home echoed the temper of the Victorian interval when “pattern on sample was launched throughout rooms” — olive green, umber, and ochre were popularly made use of collectively, with accents of cream, metallic gold, and teal.

The students also located an old English tipt teaspoon, several pieces of jewellery, an 1800s fragrance atomizer, and the servants’ quarters basis, which include a sink and commode. Newspaper accounts of the 1903 marriage reception of the Conley’s only daughter, Helen Singleton Conley, explained the wedding ceremony as “one of the social occasions of the yr in Columbia.” Community newspapers reveled the decorations in the home’s parlor — palms graced the scene, crimson roses and ferns embellished the library, and mantels had been banked in inexperienced.

In a 1970 job interview, Helen claimed the parlor was rarely used apart from for funerals and functions. When the family members had business, the double doorways involving the living space and parlor ended up opened to dance the Virginia Reel though Kate played the piano. George Miller, the son of Helen, recalled his “grandmother’s claim to fame on the piano was that she could engage in ‘Dixie’ with one particular hand and ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’ with the other.”

Helen stated the living place with the fire was the place the Conley loved ones made use of the most. She had childhood recollections of acquiring lots of bananas on Christmas day and staying frightened by the shutters that protected the black home windows on the north facet of the household. Helen also recounted Kate’s way of telling her boys they experienced to depart. According to Helen, at 10 p.m., Kate would lean above the upstairs rail and call down, “Oh daughter, would you carry me a consume?”

The Conley Household Today

MU obtained the Conley Property in 1980 to be a “cornerstone in initiatives to beautify the Columbia campus.” The house was offered for $90,000 — a substantially lower quantity than an preliminary $270,000 appraisal — soon after Chancellor Barbara Uehling expressed fascination in renovating and preserving the home.

The Conley House was property to the Missouri Folks Arts Software, founded in 1984 by former MU professor Howard Marshall, for more than a ten years. The Conley Property is today portion of the Museum of Art and Archaeology  and is property to the campus crafting method and MU School Council.