Feature 060: 403 North Delaware Street (in 2011)

Classification: Contributing.
Historic Name: Buckner House.
Architectural Style: Mixed (Italianate and Queen Anne).
Construction Date: 1850s/1880s.
Period 1 of Harry S Truman’s Life: The Period of Pre-Significance, before 1890.
Tax Identification: 26-310-22-17.
Legal Description: McCauley Addition, part of lot 4 and N 1/2 of vacated alley.
Description: Contributing two-story wood-frame dwelling; irregular in shape; complex gable roof with boxed cornice at gable ends, clad with composition shingles; synthetic siding; one-over-one double-hung sash windows; low-pitched gable roof porch with square posts across entire facade; brick and concrete foundation. Level lot with lawn and some shrubbery along foundation; trees in side yard; parking lot in adjoining rear lot.
• Alterations: Probably major rear addition in 1880s; house completely rehabilitated and utilities modernized in late 1970s.
• Noncontributing open-sided wood-frame carport and storage building in rear [Feature 061].
History/Significance: A portion of this house may have been built in the 1850s. An early owner of this house may have been Samuel Buckner, who arrived in Independence from Kentucky in the 1840s and, with his wife, raised Aylette and Walker Buckner. Walker Buckner founded Woodland College in Independence (no longer in existence). Around the turn of the twentieth century, R.G. Smith, a music teacher, lived in this house. By 1911, Ira A. Nash, an engineer, resided at 403 North Delaware. This was also the home of George B. and Estelle Charlton from the mid-1910s into at least the 1930s. George Charlton worked in real estate for many years. In the mid-1970s, the Willard Agees rehabilitated the house.