Feature 086: 610 North Delaware Street (in 2011)

Classification: Contributing.
Historic Name: Foster House.
Architectural Style: Colonial Revival.
Construction Date: ca. 1928.
Period 3 of Harry S Truman's Life: Developing Political Skills and Associations, 1920-1933.
Tax Identification: 26-310-20-14.
Legal Description: McCauley Park Addition, block 1, lot 8 and south half of lot 7.
Description: Contributing two-story brick dwelling; rectangular in shape; gambrel roof with composition shingles; brick exterior; multi-paned double-hung sash windows framed by shutters; small porch centered on facade with bowed gable roof that has boxed eaves at gable ends, supported by tapered Doric columns; decorative wood fan over front door; brick foundation with daylight basement. Elevated terraced lot with brick retaining wall along sidewalk; foundation shrubbery and hedges along property lines. In the southeast corner of the front yard is a large historic burr oak under which Bess Wallace Truman, born in 1885, and her younger brothers played as small children when the Wallace family lived at nearby 608 North Delaware Street between roughly 1888 and 1899.
• Property also includes a contributing wood-frame double-car garage with wood double-leaf doors, probably dating from period of house construction [Feature 087].
History/Significance: The family of David W. and Madge Wallace, including Bess Wallace Truman, lived in a Queen Anne style house on this property (then 608 North Delaware) from around 1890 to 1903. Although that house no longer stands, a large burr oak tree, dating from the time of the Wallace occupancy, still stands in the southeast corner of the front yard of the present home at 610 North Delaware Street. Bess Wallace and younger brother Frank played under the tree as small children. Harry Truman lived only two blocks away, and they attended school together as teenagers. Truman may have walked by his future wife's home every day on his way to school, from the fifth grade through high school.
The present Colonial Revival house, dating from around 1928, may have been built for the Charles C. Foster family; they occupied the house in 1930. Charles C. Foster managed a builder's outlet store with his father, George B. Foster, Sr., in Boonville, Missouri, in the 1920s. After the death of Charles C. Foster's mother in 1931, Charles's father remarried and moved to Minnesota. Charles Foster owned the Foster Outlet Store in Independence for several years.