William and Julia LeCluyse House

The bungalow home located here was constructed in 1927, a time when Shawnee was a growing Kansas City suburb. The area was previously the site of an independent town, and prior to that, it was part of the 1.6 million-acre Shawnee Territory. The Shawnee were forced from the area in the mid-1850s, an era when the national debate over the extension of slavery came to the Kansas frontier. Along with the violence and uncertainty for landowners during Bleeding Kansas, the Civil War also slowed the town's development. However, by the late nineteenth century, Shawnee developed into a burgeoning agricultural town, especially once streetcars connected Shawnee to Kansas City thereby leading to suburban growth. By the 1920s, Craftsman-style bungalows like this became popular throughout the nation. It is also important to remember that suburban residential communities were intentionally segregated spaces with a network of laws and lending practices that restricted home sales to white residents. While Kansas high schools were open to all by law (other than Sumner High School in Kansas City Kansas), elementary schools were segregated in Kansas City which further exacerbated patterns of residential segregation that persist to this day in some parts of the metro area. This home is listed on the National Register of Historic Places owing to its preservation, allowing it to serve as a model of the Craftsman-style bungalow that was popular at the time.

The historic Craftsman-style bungalow house, built in 1927, exemplifies the dominant type of architecture found in single-family homes built in the United States during the early twentieth century. The home sits on land once occupied by the Shawnee nation, near the nineteenth-century westward trails, and as part of an evolving mid-twentieth-century suburb that supported segregation. 

The historical bungalow house sits on land once granted to Shawnee Indians via an 1828 treaty. However, the Santa Fe, Oregon, and California Trails (the historic routes lie one quarter of a mile east of the LeCluyse house) emerged shortly thereafter. While some endured the journey, others migrated to Kansas and made it their home. By 1854, the Shawnees lost 1,400,000 of the 1,600,000 acres of their land to white settlers. Three years later, in 1857, land speculators founded Shawnee. Land prices rose quickly because of the quick and abundant purchases of Shawnee lots. Indeed initial lots sold for as little as $15.00, but a second land sale garnered $22,645 per lot for the speculators.

One deterrent to the property boom involved the violent altercations among pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces during the Border War from the 1850s through the Civil War resulting from the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act. Kansas gained the nickname "Bleeding Kansas" due to the violence, which lasted into the Civil War. Indeed, William Clarke Quantrill and his pro-southern friends attacked Shawnee in October 1862, burning most of the downtown area, ransacking homes, and killing two residents. 

Tensions eased dramatically after the Civil War, allowing Shawnee to develop into a thriving town first tied to agriculture before evolving into a streetcar suburb and then an automobile suburb. Twenty-three percent of the town's population between 1880 and 1900 engaged in agricultural-related activities. Between 1908 and 1934, the Hocker Line, an interurban trolley, connected Shawnee with downtown Kansas City and passed within 150 feet of the LeCluyse House (constructed in 1927). Of course, buy the 1920s, the automobile's popularity grew considerably. Thus, the town slowly transitioned from a streetcar suburb into an automobile suburb. 

In 1927, William and Julia LeCluyse bought the first home in the newly created Shawnee Heights subdivision (they purchased the adjacent lot in 1928). Charles E. Rieke and his wife Antonia A. Rieke platted the subdivision on September 1, 1925. Rieke's parents came to the U.S (Baltimore) from Prussia in 1871. Charles's father was a fourth-generation woodworker and homebuilder, and he passed that knowledge down to his sons. Along with two of his brothers, Charles moved to Shawnee and built residential subdivisions, including Shawnee Heights. The historic home enjoys a Craftsman style, part of the Arts & Crafts movement that gained momentum after World War I. The simpler Craftsman-style served as a response to the extravagant, machined, and mass-produced Victorian types popular during the Gilded Age. While "Craftsman" refers to the architectural style, "bungalow" is a specific form of house. Numerous "bungalow books" emerged during the 1910s, which led to an abundance of bungalow construction, usually consisting of one story or enjoying a second story built into a sloping roof with low gabled roofs. 

One year after the LeCluyse family purchased their home, deeds for houses purchased at Shawnee Heights included covenants that forbade the sale of homes in the subdivision to "colored persons," a policy that remained until 1942. Segregation existed elsewhere in the town, too. For instance, Shawnee Mission Rural High School opened in 1922, serving only white teenagers (until 1954, when the Supreme Court ended racial segregation in public schools). Meanwhile, Shawnee Grade School had opened during the 1860s to all students but changed its policy in 1910 to serve only white students. Black students transferred to a poorly-equipped, one-room schoolhouse in nearby Dunbar taught by Corinthian Nutter, whose home stood two blocks from the LeCluyse home.

In 1946, Julia and William LeCluyse sold the historic home to Maurice Florence Soetaert, the niece of Charles Rieke. The house remains a private residence, but it also reminds of early- and mid-twentieth-century bungalow home construction. Charles and Antonia Rieke developed a residential community in Shawnee, with Julia and William LeCluyse buying the first home in 1927. Shawnee, a town name that speaks to its Native American past, transitioned into a Kansas City suburb by the time the community emerged. The homes included provisions that forbade selling them to Black Americans, reflective of the nearby schools that also became white-only from roughly 1910 through the 1940s. 

Clemenson, Gary L. "Registration Form: LeCluyse, William and Julia, House." National Register of Historic Places. kshs.org. 2021. https://www.kshs.org/resource/national_register/nominationsNRDB/JohnsonCo_LeCluyseHouse_LISTED_10042021.pdf.

"Craftsman Bungalow." Architectural Styles of America and Europe. architecturalstyles.org. Accessed March 2, 2022. https://architecturestyles.org/craftsman/.

Kansas Historical Society "Shawnee Indian Mission." kansapedia. kshs.org. September 2013. https://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/shawnee-indian-mission/11913.