Bonnie & Clyde Garage Apartment
| Bonnie & Clyde Garage Apartment | |||
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| National Register of Historic Places | |||
 Bonnie & Clyde Garage Apartment (2010) |
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| location | Joplin , Newton County , Missouri | ||
| Coordinates | 37 ° 3 '6 " N , 94 ° 31' 0.1" W | ||
| surface | approx. 64 m² | ||
| Built | circa 1927 | ||
| Architectural style | Prairie House | ||
| NRHP number | 09000302 | ||
| The NRHP added | May 15, 2009 | ||
The Bonnie & Clyde Garage Apartment is a historic building in Joplin , Newton County , Missouri . It served the criminals Bonnie and Clyde and other members of their gang as a shelter for a few days in 1933.
Building description
The two-story, south-facing building is at 3374½ Oak Ridge Drive , although its main facade (south side) faces 34th Street. It has an almost square floor plan and was built around 1927 in solid construction with natural stone masonry . The entrance is on the left of the garages (photo: red door), behind it is the staircase with the single, straight staircase with 13 steps to the apartment and on the right another door as a side entrance to the garage. The top of the apartment is not closed with any other door, so the feeling of living is “open at the bottom”. The house has a hipped roof covered with gray shingles and has four rooms plus a bathroom on the first floor, which are located above a double garage. The bungalow-style building has a 8.80 m long front facade and a depth of 7.90 m (29 × 26 feet ). The furnishings feature elements of style from the Prairie Houses and the American Arts and Crafts Movement , as can be seen on the apartment windows and the notched rafter heads . Despite some modernizations, such as the garage doors damaged in the shooting, which were soon replaced and last renewed in 2006, the facade largely resembles its original appearance. The front door was replaced at the same time as the gates. The original door was, in the style of the time, a fully glazed framed door with lattice division ( see photo ). today(Status: 2018) it has three vertical windows in the upper area (~ ¼ of the door height), which sit over a 2-part cassette of the lower ¾ door area. The other three views still contain the original windows. In the 1950s, the gravel driveway was exchanged for the current concrete driveway.
The shooting of April 13, 1933
On their raid through the states of Texas , Oklahoma , New Mexico and Missouri, the Barrow gang, which at that time consisted of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow from Barrow's older brother Buck, his wife Blanche and William Daniel Jones, used the apartment in April 1933 for twelve days as shelter. At that time they were already notorious and known in the press. On April 13, 1933, neighbors notified the police, suspecting that there were black burners in the house. Of the five arriving police officers, Harry McGinnis and John Wesley Harriman were killed in the subsequent shootout, while Tom De Graff and George Kahler survived seriously injured. Clyde Barrow and William Jones sustained minor injuries before the gang escaped in a powerful car, a Ford V8 sedan.
The photographs that the gang members had left behind in the building, which showed them in playful and provocative poses, became known. The short-term reputation as folk heroes that the gang had enjoyed in parts of the population by then was seriously damaged by the brutal shooting of Detective Harry McGinnis, 53, of the local police and Constable John Wesley Harriman of Newton County with shotguns at close range. Law enforcement officers Walter E. Grammar, George B. Kahler - both of the Missouri State Highway Patrol - and Detective Thomas DeGraff of Joplin survived.
On May 15, 2009, the Bonnie & Clyde Garage Apartment was inscribed on the National Register of Historic Places . A plaque in front of the house reminds of the incident. The following text is written on it:
“Bonnie & Clyde Garage Apartment 1933
Clyde Barrow, Bonnie Parker, Buck and Blanche Barrow and W.D. Jones rented this apartment and holed up inside for several months. On April 13, 1933, law officers from the Joplin Police Department and from Newton County, seeking suspected bootleggers, approached the dwelling. The outlaws opened fire on them killing Joplin detective Harry McGinnis and Newton County Constable J. W. Harryman. The Barrow gang escaped leaving behind a roll of Kodak film that yielded the first publicly seen photographs of the infamous gang. ”
“Clyde Barrow, Bonnie Parker, Buck and Blanche Barrow and W.D. Jones rented this apartment and hid in it for several months. On April 13, 1933, police officers from the Joplin and Newton County Police Department approached the alleged bootleggers. The outlaws opened fire on them, killing Joplin's detective Harry McGinnis and Constable J. W. Harryman. The Barrow gang escaped, leaving behind a roll of Kodak film, which featured the first public photos of the infamous gang. ”
Different hiding places
Bonnie and Clyde not only looked at the mentioned object as a hiding place, but had another possible alternative. On March 31 of that year, Bonnie and her sister-in-law, Blanche, paid a down payment of one month's rent on a house at 2314 Virginia Avenue ⊙ . After they had decided the gang for the other house, they got their deposit back from Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the owners. It can be assumed that if they had decided on the property on Virginia Avenue, the shooting would probably not have taken place, since it was dependent on the denunciation of the neighbors. The further consequences would probably have been different, since the police would not have learned the current location of the gang so directly from the shooting and the subsequent escape. All things considered, the rest of the story of the Bonnie & Clyde gang would have been different. The building was completely torn away in the devastating tornado of 2011, only the driveway and the concrete stairs remained.
The rent of the house I rented, located approximately 2 km (1.3 miles) southwest of the first house, was $ 21 per month. However, on the advice of the owner, Clyde Barrow paid $ 1 more, likely for the neighborhood watch. This is then possibly also responsible for the increased attention to what is happening in and around the house, so that the denunciation described above occurred.
Current situation
After a tornado damaged parts of the city in 2011 (including a possible second hiding place for the gang; the house was completely swept away by the tornado), then owner Dewayne Tuttle sold the house, which he had owned since 1968, to Phillip McClendon. He wanted to convert the property into a Bed & Breakfast , but failed twice because of the veto of the city council. Frustrated, he gave up and auctioned it on eBay in 2016 with a minimum bid of $ 139,000.
Web links
- 1933 Barrow Gang shootout took life of favored Alma son Henry D. Humpfrey
- Joplin Hideout web link with photos of the individual rooms and history
- The Joplin Affair
- Rear view photo
- Photo of the original entrance door with bullet holes Dorothea B. Hoover Museum, Joplin
Individual evidence
- ↑ Roger Maserang: Matt's Bonnie & Clyde Garage Apartment: Registration Form. (PDF, p. 5 (7.8 MB)) Database of the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service , December 31, 2008, archived from the original on May 31, 2009 ; accessed on March 1, 2018 (English).
- ↑ Roger Maserang: Matt's Bonnie & Clyde Garage Apartment: Registration Form. (PDF, p. 6 (7.8 MB)) Database of the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service , December 31, 2008, archived from the original on May 31, 2009 ; accessed on March 1, 2018 (English).
- ^ E.R. Milner: The Lives and Times of Bonnie & Clyde . 3. Edition. Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale and Edwardsville 1996, ISBN 0-8093-1977-2 , pp. 65 (English, google.de [accessed on March 1, 2018]).
- ^ A b Wally Kennedy: Apartment, shootout inextricably link Joplin to Bonnie and Clyde. The Joplin Globe (online), April 11, 2008, accessed April 12, 2018 .
- ↑ Roger Maserang: Matt's Bonnie and Clyde Garage Apartment: RegistrationForm. (PDF, p. 10 (7.8 MB)) Database of the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service , December 31, 2008, archived from the original on May 31, 2009 ; accessed on March 1, 2018 (English).
- ^ NN: Bonnie & Clyde Garage Apartment. National Register Information System, National Park Service, accessed March 1, 2018 .
- ↑ Bonnie & Clyde Garage Apartment 1933 - Joplin, MO
- ↑ a b Joplin Hideout's Current Owner. Archived from the original on September 30, 2017 ; accessed on April 12, 2018 (English).
- ↑ Joplin Hideout Apartment. Texas Hideout, archived from the original on October 3, 2017 ; accessed on April 12, 2018 (English).
- ↑ Bonnie and Clyde's Joplin hideout is for sale. KY3, April 25, 2016, archived from the original on September 3, 2016 ; accessed on April 12, 2018 (English).