An effort to save and restore the “Cracker House” in St Joseph has run into a technical stumbling block, but the group behind that effort will press on.
Mike Grimm of the Cracker House Project says the St Joseph City Council had no choice last week but to rescind a Save Our Heritage Grant from the City of St Joseph, because it had expired. Mr Grimm says they’re in the process of getting estimates this week for the first phase of the restoratio project. Once they know about how much it will cost, Mr Grimm says they will apply for the grant again.
He’s optimistic. “Very much so. Most everyone with the city is on board with this,” he said in an interview.
“There really are very few houses that have not been torn down that have national historic significance. This happens to be one of them.”
The Cracker House is the name given to the home of Frank L. Sommer at 914 Main St. It was built in 1882.
“Not only did Frank Sommer invent the Saltine Cracker, but he also operated the Sommer/Richarson Bakery,” Grimm said.
“He contributed a lot to the city, employing 300 people and producing 4,000 boxes of Saltines each day,” he said, “giving settlers heading west from St Joseph a non-perishable food source that they’d never had before.”
That bakery was located in the building now occupied by the Robidoux Landing Playhouse, at 103 Francis Street in downtown St Joseph. Mr Grimm’s family has lived in St Joseph for several generations. He says his grandfather, a trolley conductor, very likely stopped off at the bakery from time to time to enjoy the offerings there.
The city sets a dealine for the Save Our Heritage grants each year of June 30. The City Landmark Commission will go through them, and divvy up the available funds, before sending the package to the City Council for approval. The grants are expected to be awarded by August 4. The Landmark commission decides who gets the grants and how much money they get, based on the number of grant requests.
“You can apply for any amount you want, but the amount is decided by the landmark commission,” Mr Grimm said.
The building is not in very good shape. Grimm says the first phase of the restoration project would involve removing the roof and the debris from the inside, removing the collapsed parts of the structure and the floor and then bracing the walls. The group expects to get bids from contractors later this week or early next week. That will determine how much money they will request in the grant application. The previous grant, which actuall expired last August, was for $29,000. Grimm says they will likely ask for less that that, because the group has to come up with twice the grant amount in matching funds.
“We don’t want to get more than we need, because then we’d have to raise more,” Grimm says.
The group’s long-term goal is to open a non-profit museum in the space, and then put up exhibits at other museums in the city, to let visitors to St Joe know what’s available here. Grim says they’d love to see street trollies resurrected in St Joseph, and hopes the Cracker House would be the first stop.
You can find out more about the project at their Web site at www.crackerhouseproject.org, or you can visit their Facebook page at facebook.com/CrackerHouseProject. The photographs here are from the groups Web site and are used with permission.