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Historic home in Clayton set to reopen in May
(by Tim Woodcock - April 21, 2008)
Hanley House, the oldest house in Clayton, will be open to the public May 3 and 4 for the first time in more than two years. The house will continue to open for regular hours from noon until 4 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays for the foreseeable future.
Last year the Lawrence Group carried out a building assessment study to calculate what it would mean to attempt to restore the 1855 Greek revival house, said Judy Goodman, an alderman and chair of the Hanley House Council. “It means a little over a million dollars,” she said.
The aim is for the Hanley House to be “fully restored for the next generation” by 2013, the year that the city will be celebrating the 100th anniversary of its incorporation, she said. But that goal is entirely dependent on the city’s fund-raising abilities. Goodman said the city is looking at numerous ways of raising funds and has set up a new body, the Century Foundation, to collect money for the anniversary celebrations.
Some repairs will take place in the near term, however. The most pressing concerns are protecting the exterior of the house and improving the aging heating and cooling systems.
Over the years the house has only been inhabited by the family of Martin Hanley and their descendants before being purchased by the city of Clayton in 1968. There are no members of the Hanley family living in the immediate area, but the city of Clayton is touch with the family members who live elsewhere in the United States and have taken an interest in the restoration and ongoing research.
As a result of the continuity in ownership, there is an unusually in-tact collection of artifacts, including family letters and recipes, as well as much of the original furniture, and it all helps form a portrait of a hard-working middle-class family in the mid-1800s in rural Missouri. Martin Hanley ran a farm, blacksmith shop and market at the home, while his wife made soaps, jams and work clothes that were sold at the market.
The family was originally from Virginia and were Southern sympathizers during the Civil War.
Sarah Umlauf, who has been researching the Hanleys’ story on behalf of the city of Clayton, said her most exciting recent discovery was a family letter that seems to indicate that Martin Hanley headed out west to take part in the gold rush in California. The story is framed in terms of family lore, and the next step is find secondary evidence that it actually happened, Umlauf said.
Goodman called the house “a critical part of our origins” because Hanley Road, one of the biggest roads in Clayton, is named for the family, and 100 acres of the land adjacent to the house was donated to the city by Martin Hanley’s widow Cyrene in 1877.
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