Nevins House Then and Now

700 Fifth Avenue

This house gives me so much anxiety, I just can’t even tell you. Driving past it has made me unhappy for as long as I can remember. As my therapist would say, let’s explore that.

Burt C Jones worked for the Santa Fe Railroad. He and his wife, Etta, acquired several rental properties as Burt made his way up through the ranks. They lived in a house on the south side of Spruce Street a few lots west of the Third Ward School before acquiring the empty lot at the northeast corner of Fifth and Spruce.

Excavation began in January of 1908 for a nine-room residence on what was called the West Hill. Newspapers reported the home cost $3,500 to build and the Joneses moved in that May.

This photo was taken from the Third Ward School in 1909 looking northwest. It’s about half the size of the house we’re accustomed to seeing and there was originally a garage at the back of the lot.

In May of 1911, the Joneses sold the house to J. E. and Mary Wood for $5,000 but they only owned it for a short time. That August, Ozro N and Martha Nevins of Ford bought the property for $4,500. Wood bought the D. W. Sturgeon livery stable around that time so that could explain why they sold the house so quickly and for a loss.

Because the West Hill neighborhood was in the suburbs, the 1926 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map was the first to include this property. It shows the home configured as seen in the 1909 photo.

Mrs. Nevins died in 1923 and Mr. Nevins followed in 1930. Sometime between 1926 and 1932, the house was converted into apartments and a large new addition was added to the east end.

The 1932 Sanborn shows the size of the house had nearly doubled. Eulalia Nevins lived in the new addition at 512 W Spruce Street for many years. A third apartment was later added to the map at 514 W Spruce and its door was at the south end of the front porch.

Eulalia’s nephew, Art Nevins, Jr., took up residence in the apartment at 700 Fifth Avenue in the mid-1950s and later moved into the unit next to hers. Eulalia died in March of 1961 and the house has changed hands many times since.

My grandfather bought the house in the 1980s to use as a pottery studio. By that time, it was in terrible shape. Previous tenants had left all sorts of broken furniture and random junk all over the property. The exterior was bad but the interior was absolute chaos. Just this giant, decaying, ramshackle place. We were all relieved when he sold it a few years later.

This is how the Nevins House looks today.

This house looks so much better than it did when I was a child. It’s kind of nice to see some original details peeking out from under the vinyl siding. This historic beauty still has a chance.

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