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209-211 West Lexington Avenue

Image of the Commercial-style Slack Grocery Building.

Resource 187 209-211 West Lexington Avenue (in 2011) Classification: Contributing. Historic Name: Slack Grocery Building. Architectural Style: Commercial. Construction Date: ca. 1885. Period 1 of Harry S Truman's Life: The Period of Pre-Significance, before 1890. Tax Identification: 26-230-17-03 and 26-230-17-04. Legal Description: Old Town, lot 12. Description: Contributing two-story masonry commercial building; rectangular in shape with addition; flat roof sloping gently down to the rear, behind a parapet that has three steps to the rear; several small chimneys pierce the parapet; curved brackets and pressed metal cornice with center gable on façade; brick exterior with lugsills and label lintels and brick segmental arches above; colored glass transom lights above display windows; foundation on west side faced with rusticated cut limestone. • Alterations: The east storefront and entrance to a center stairway have been altered; there is a one-story addition at rear; display windows have been remodeled several times. History/Significance: The Rural Jackson County Democratic Club occasionally met in an upstairs hall here at 211 West Lexington. During an April 1922 meeting of the club, Mike Pendergast, member of the infamous Pendergast family political dynasty of Kansas City, announced Harry Truman's candidacy for eastern Jackson County judge. His victory in the election launched Truman's political career. Anthony T. Slack probably remodeled or constructed this two-story brick commercial building around 1885. Slack, a native of Pennsylvania born in 1833, moved to Independence after the Civil War. Between 1866 and 1885, Anthony Slack, his wife Maria Moore Slack, and their seven children, occupied a house at 216 North Delaware Street [Resource 040] (directly across the street from the Truman House [Resource 042]) that later became the home of the Noland family, Harry S Truman's aunt and his favorite cousins, Ethel and Nellie Noland. In 1885, Anthony and Maria Slack built a palatial ten-room Queen Anne style mansion just to the north of their original family home, suggesting that both Slack and Independence prospered during the early and mid-1880s. From 1866 to 1876, Slack had operated a hardware store; he then turned to the grocery business. In the early 1880s, Slack's grocery business occupied a substantial stone building measuring 23 x 83 feet on the south side of the Courthouse Square (on West Lexington). In 1888, A.T. Slack, located at 12 West Lexington Avenue (the site of 209-211 West Lexington), dealt in "fine groceries, provisions, teas, coffees, pure spices, flour, feed hay, crockery, tin, woodenware, etc.” Slack retired from business in 1893. Charles Gudgell, founder of the influential American Hereford Cattle Breeders Association in 1881, established the association's first office on the second floor of the Slack building in the 1880s. William F. Street, a brick manufacturer and brick contractor who owned several building in Independence, later bought the Slack Building. (Please see 208-212 West Lexington [Resource 186] for information on William Street.) Between 1901 and 1918, Mark White leased space in the building to operate his Independence Wholesale Candy Company. Before Street's death in 1910, he used a room on the west side of the building to show the first picture shows in Independence. Upstairs rooms were used for meetings of the Eagles Club and ABC Boy's Club. Carpenter's Hall, where various organizations held meeting, occupied rooms upstairs for many years.

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Harry S. Truman National Historic Site, Code: HSTR

209-211 West Lexington Avenue, Independence, Harry S. Truman National Historic Site, Jackson County, Missouri
Latitude: 38.9012985229492, Longitude: -94.5307006835938

NPS.gov Collection

05/01/2011 | Date is approximate. All photographs were taken during May 2011.

01/01/0001

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