Leanna Giles House

The Leanna Giles House is only two blocks away from the Missouri River and stood before Kansas became a state in January 1861. A land speculator named John Calhoun bought the lot within the original plat of Leavenworth from Thomas and Mary Doyle in 1858. The lot's value increased to $900 in 1860, indicating a house had been built; a frame building was mentioned in the rolls. While the neighborhood once held many similar frame homes, most survivors were removed during urban renewal projects in the 1980s. An empty, narrow lot sits between the Giles House and 2nd Street.

The Giles House served mainly as rental property for working class tenants in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The home was owned by German immigrants named Henry and Afra Krezdorn from 1879 to 1913. City directories records show that the Krezdorns lived a few blocks south. The tenant in 1880 was Adolf Lange, a Fort Leavenworth clerk, and his family. John Dumont, a prison guard, lived in the house with his family in 1900. The household of a railroad watchman, John P. Leonard, rented the house in 1920. Leonard purchased the house and sold it in 1925 to Richard and Mammie Clark. The Clarks seem to be the first owners to occupy the home. In 1930, Mammie Clark lived in the house with her widowed daughter, Marguerite Mitchell, a charwoman; Marguerite's two children, and a lodger who worked as a seamstress. The Clark family rented the house by 1940 to Edward and Mary Kromholc and their two daughters; Edward worked as a taxi driver.

Leanna Giles purchased the Giles House in 1965 and lived there; she was probably the first African-American person to reside in the house. Mrs. Giles worked for thirty years as a nurse serving military veterans before she retired. She continued to live in the house until her death in 2012. Her grandson, Rickey L. Giles, Jr. owns and is renovating the house.

The Giles House was clad in asbestos shingles over its clapboard siding in the mid-twentieth century. The simple rectangular main block of the house measures 21 by 49 feet and sits on a stone foundation. There is a stone-lined basement with a brick floor under part of the house. The building is covered by an asphalt shingled gable roof pierced by a brick chimney. Herringbone brick sidewalks approach the main entrance on Pattawatomie Street and run along the home's east side. The one-story rear addition was seen on the 1889 Sanborn map. The 1883 Sanborn map mentions that there were 17 frame dwellings on the block but doesn't map them individually.

A fire in 2016 damaged the home's north wall of the two-story block and the north porch to the rear addition. The current owner of the home, Rickey L. Giles, Jr., removed the non-historic front porch walls and entryway in early 2016, exposing the three first floor original bays.

Giles, Jr., Rickey L.. Loughlin, Amanda. Register of Historic Kansas Places nomination of Leanna Giles House. Topeka, KS. Kansas Historical Society, 2016.

Loughlin, Amanda. 103-710 Giles, Leanna, House, 202 Pottawatomie St, Kansas Historic Resources Inventory. Accessed July 30th 2020. https://khri.kansasgis.org/index.cfm?in=103-710.