Sam Stubbs House Then and Now

705 Fifth Avenue

This famous Dodge City home was dismantled before I was born and I never made the connection between photos I had seen of the Sam Stubbs House and the large lot at the northwest corner of Fifth Avenue and Spruce Street. It wasn’t until I found this excerpt while reading up on William W Munsell that I began looking into a supposed arsonist.

Who tried to burn what now? Let’s rewind.

Nicholas B Klaine was a politician, judge, postmaster, and newspaper publisher. My great-grandmother had this photo in her collection. Klaine is the one with the beard.

Anyway, Klaine (not an arsonist) built this home at the corner of Fifth and Spruce in 1885.

Klaine sold the house to D. F. and Ella T Owens in October of 1887. You may recall that Mr. and Mrs. Owens previously traded properties with Chalk and Ida Beeson. D. F. Owens was a pastor at the Methodist Episcopal Church who also replaced Klaine at The Dodge City Times when the latter moved to Cimarron. It was kind of a strange sequence of events. Klaine sold both the house and the newspaper to Owens, who then sold the Times to Frank Akins just a couple weeks later. Akins decided the newspaper business wasn’t for him and sold it back to Owens in November of 1887.

Owens stayed on as Editor until the end of August or beginning of September 1888. He and Ella left for points east on September 7.

While they were away from Dodge, their home was destroyed by fire.

I cannot imagine Owens had anything to do with the fire, considering it was only partially insured.

In addition, Owens immediately began making plans to rebuild. Frank Weston of Weston and Trost designed a fourteen-room home using the original structure’s footprint.

Winter obviously isn’t the best time to build so it was slow going for a while.

A long while!

I really don’t know why they went to the trouble of rebuilding that magnificent house, only to rent it to someone else. Maybe it was the fallout from the colossal failure of South Dodge that I should finish writing about.

Mrs. J. T. Metcalf operated a private boarding house in the giant home which appears to have been damaged by a frozen water pipe in January of 1890.

The Owens family relocated to Arkansas City and Mr. Owens was seriously injured in a hunting accident. His left arm was amputated above the wrist in February of 1890.

Owens went “east” to have surgery on his arm in May of 1890 and the family settled in Kingman that June. The Metcalfs closed the boarding house at the end of August and moved back into their South Dodge home. William Munsell purchased the property in September of 1890 and renovations began immediately.

A large veranda was constructed and ornamental details were added. You’ll notice the second-story porch to the right was originally open.

The house was ready by the first of October.

The Munsell family moved to Evanston, Illinois in April of 1894 and rented the house to Albert and May Reeves in May of 1895.

In January of 1898, the Reeves and Stubbs families traded residences. Sam and Dora Stubbs had been renting the Morris Collar residence, which many of you will remember as the big house behind the Shangri-La Motel. Reeves bought the entire Collar farm so Stubbs rented the Munsell house.

Stubbs purchased the Munsell property in May of 1899.

By 1906, the Stubbs family offered rooms for rent in the large home. In 1916, Sam Sr. built three bungalows on the southwest end of the property. 608 W Spruce Street was occupied by J. W. Gilbert, 610 by son Sam Jr. and his wife, Lucille, and 612 by son Sidney and his wife, Agnes.

In January of 1924, Sam deeded the house at 612 W Spruce over to his son, Sidney. The other bungalows were still part of the larger Stubbs parcel at that time.

The 1926 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map shows a large frame dwelling at what was then 703 Fifth Avenue and the three bungalows on Spruce Street plus a large garage at the north property line.

Stubbs sold the property at Fifth and Spruce to R. B. Fegan of Junction City in January of 1926 and it was again used as a boarding house. The two remaining bungalows were included in the sale, although they were later parceled out and sold individually.

It appears things didn’t go well without a local owner and the house was empty by 1933.

By 1936, the house was owned by the Railroad Building and Loan Association of Newton and leased to Mrs. T. C. Gish, who sublet apartments in the house until approximately 1942.

William C and E May (Egbert) Miller bought the house at a tax sale around 1944. In August of 1945, May received approval to build a new location for her Neighborhood Pantry grocery store on the property but I’m not sure it was ever done.

At some point, May opened a care home in the large house. Her obituary stated that she operated the home for more than 30 years but the first mention I found of this establishment was in 1957.

This photo shows a bit of detail at the entrance and the upstairs porch which had been enclosed on the right. To make up for it, outdoor access was added to the roof of the veranda.

William Miller died in July of 1961, leaving May to care for that enormous house as well as the residents of the nursing home.

Throughout the 1960s, the condition of the home and grounds continued to deteriorate.

May retired and closed the nursing home in the early 1970s.

I’m not sure I would have described the house as “old-fashioned” but that’s just me.

This house was loved by many locals and it was very nearly saved. Unfortunately, there was a lot of termite damage and other issues which sealed its fate. This photo from August of 1974 shows the home being dismantled.

Fortunately, the house was taken down with care and historic fixtures and doors were removed for use elsewhere. The large double entry doors were installed in the old Rock Island depot, which is now a residence on Avenue A.

And here’s the corner of Fifth and Spruce now. Apologies for the lazy Google Street View image. I didn’t feel like braving the tropical humidity to photograph a parking lot. If you go back in time to 2012, though, you’ll be wondering what the heck happened to that nice sidewalk.

As for the 1916 newspaper article which sent me down this rabbit hole? It was written 28 years after the fire, likely influenced by the memories of a woman who heard stories about an incident that occurred when she was four years old. It may have been arson but I have found no hint of D. F. Owens being involved. I’ll get into the Owens backstory a bit more in a future post.

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