George and Flora Mackie House

Successful entrepreneur George K. Mackie House constructed the historic Neoclassical Revival home in 1917 and lived there until 1928; his family sold the home in 1937. From 1937 to 1975, the Lawrence Women's Club owned the home, temporarily sharing the space with the University of Kansas, which used the space as women's student housing during the late 1940s. The house survives as a reminder of the immense wealth accumulated by George Mackie and his father, who worked in the coal mining industry and banking during the Second Industrial Revolution of the late 1800s and early 1900s. 

A party of emigrants from Massachusetts first settled Lawrence in 1854 during a turbulent time in Kansas' history. The 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act established the territorial boundaries of Kansas and Nebraska, stipulating that its territorial residents would decide by popular vote whether their state would be free or slave. Like many in eastern Kansas, the early Lawrence settlers came from the north, and their free-state ideology differed from that of neighboring Missouri. The resulting "Bleeding Kansas" period from the mid-1850s to the start of the Civil War was marked by bloody conflicts between pro- and anti-slavery groups and politicians, and that struggle continued into the Civil War. A defining point in Lawrence's history involved Confederate General William Quantrill's raid in 1863 when he and his guerilla-style troops killed nearly one-half of the residences and burnt more than seventy-five commercial buildings in the business district. 

Still, despite the political and cultural battles transpiring during the 1850s, the original Lawrence settlers developed an urban plan for Lawrence, starting with a grid-pattern street design in 1855. Believing that the Kansas ("Kaw") River would act as a navigatable highway for steamboats, the planners created a road layout centered on a linear "Main Street" (Massachusetts Street) perpendicular to the Kansas River. Although the steamboat traffic never materialized, Massachusetts Street grew exceptionally popular for businesses with commercial properties lining the street. 

Roughly seventy-five businesses burned during Quantrill's Raid in 1863, but reconstruction began soon after the Civil War, with the town seeing robust growth throughout the 1860s and into the early 1870s. Another setback occurred during The Panic of 1873 and the ensuing economic recession of the mid-1870s. The economic decline resulted in bank and business closures and a declining population. But, just as the town had survived Quantrill's Raid, the economy (and the city, overall) stabilized by the turn of the twentieth century. Indeed, by 1900, the city had invested in its infrastructure, putting curbs on streets, gutters on buildings, and improving its waterworks. 

The Mackie House (circa 1917) arose in the South Lawrence addition, which materialized in 1866 as a part of the aforementioned post-Civil War expansion that included the development of southern Lawrence. However, the economic decline of the 1870s and other factors delayed the formation of residential districts in the additional southern plats until the early twentieth century. The residential development ostensibly coincided with the 1909 establishment of a trolley system that ran from the Santa Fe depot near the Kansas River to the southern end of Massachusetts Street. 

Fuel industry tycoon George K. Mackie arrived in the United States as an infant in 1869 from Ayrshire, Scotland, with his parents David and Elizabeth. The family initially settled in Wisconsin and Illinois before moving to Kansas in 1883. In addition to founding a bank, David worked for the Keith & Perry Coal Company, eventually becoming superintendent. George followed in his father's footsteps when he founded the family-owned George K. Mackie Fuel Company (eventually known as Mackie-Clemens Fuel Company) on October 6, 1906; it developed a reputation for operating as one of the region's most technologically advanced coal companies. 

Mackie's strip mining operations proved highly profitable by the 1940s, with 180 miners generating nearly 4,500 tons of coal daily, enough to stock coal reserves for at least fifteen years. George also took over for his father as president of the Scammon State Bank, and he later invested and managed lumber companies and a separate fuel company; Mackie amassed substantial wealth through inheritance and his business ventures. 

Although Mackie made his home in Lawrence, all his business ventures took place outside the town; his reasons for living in Lawrence are unknown. He lived in Lawrence with his wife, Flora E. Bush, and their five children. In 1917, he commissioned architect H. Alexander Drake to build a grand, extravagant Neoclassical Revival mansion for the Mackie family. The lavish home with its giant pillars speaks to the wealth the coal magnate (and his father) accumulated during the Second Industrial Revolution (late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries). 

George Mackie died at his mansion in the summer of 1928, but his wife remained in the house until she sold it to the Lawrence Women's Club in 1937. Coincidentally, the Lawrence Women's Club formally organized in 1883, the same year George Mackie's family arrived in Kansas. Before moving into the mansion, the women's organization had met in the basement of the historic Eldridge Hotel. In 1945, at the end of World War II, club members agreed to rent most of the house to the University of Kansas for women's housing, leaving one or two rooms for the Women's Club to use for meetings and events. However, tensions arose between the university and the group, so the university ceased utilizing the home for housing after 1949; The Lawrence Women's Club dissolved and consequently sold the historic house in 1975.

Earle, Jonathan, and Diane Mutti Burke, eds. Bleeding Kansas, Bleeding Missouri: The Long Civil War on the Border. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2013. 

Epps, Kristen. "Quantrill's Raid on Lawrence" Civil War on the Western Border: The Missouri-Kansas Conflict, 1854-1865. The Kansas City Public Library. Accessed Tuesday, January 30, 2024. https://civilwaronthewesternborder.org/encyclopedia/quantrills-raid-lawrence.

Heam, Serina. "Registration Form: George K. Mackie House." National Register of Historic Places. kshs.org. https://www.kshs.org/resource/national_register/nominationsNRDB/Douglas_MackieGeorgeKHouseNR.pdf. 

Stanley, Matthew E. "Quantrill, William Clarke." Civil War on the Western Border: The Missouri-Kansas Conflict, 1854-1865. The Kansas City Public Library. Accessed January 30, 2024. https://civilwaronthewesternborder.org/encyclopedia/quantrill-william-clarke.