Preserving St. Joseph’s Heritage: Leah Swindler ’13

Leah Swindler ’13 says there are not really any manuals on how to save severely dilapidated properties, but she is learning and learning quickly.
The St. Joseph native said she grew up admiring all of St. Joseph’s beautiful, historic buildings, so it should come as no surprise that she is knee deep in trying to preserve one of the community’s 19^th century gems – the Frank L. Sommer residence, affectionately known as the Cracker House, at 914 Main Street.

After she graduated from Missouri Western with a biology degree and began working for Nestle Purina Pet Care Company, Swindler began attending local Landmark Commission meetings. In January 2015, she was asked to serve as secretary of the Cracker House Project, a nonprofit group formed to save the crumbling house. One-and-a-half years later, she became the group’s president.

Sommer, the house’s original owner, was a St. Joseph baker and owner of the F. L. Sommer Biscuit Company. In 1876, he invented the saltine cracker and began producing it in his bakery at 103 Francis Street (now the Robidoux Landing Playhouse). The house on Main Street, just 0.4 mile from the bakery, was built in 1882.

Sommer later took his family, his cracker recipe and his bakery to New York, and there, his company merged with other companies to form the American Biscuit Company. That company became part of Nabisco in 1898 as a result of more mergers. Nabisco’s popular saltine cracker today owes its beginnings to Sommer.

One hundred years after it had been built, the Cracker House sat vacant and neglected, but the real damage started when a leaky roof was ignored. Later, when ownership fell to the city and talk of demolishing the home surfaced, a local group stepped up, established a nonprofit and began working to save and restore it.

About the time Swindler joined the Cracker House Project, it was determined that the collapsing roof had to be removed because it was putting too much stress on the walls. That was done in 2017. Now the brick walls need some support. Tuckpointing the brick structure has been ongoing, and many of the concrete exterior windowsills have been repaired. Heartland Truss in Plattsburg is willing to donate truss materials for a new roof, so the group is searching for someone to install the trusses, or raise enough money to pay for the work.

“It’s a precarious balancing act and a race against time,” Swindler says.

Last summer, Adventures in Preservation, a nonprofit group from Colorado that arranges “hands-on preservation vacations,” sent a team of eight to St. Joseph to work on and learn about the Cracker House.

“They were flabbergasted at what was in St. Joseph, and they have been all over the United States,” Swindler said. “St. Joe is one of the most architecturally diverse towns in Missouri. We have a gold mine here.”

She said Adventures in Preservation wants to return to St. Joseph in the future to complete more work on the Cracker House.

Swindler, now assistant environmental services supervisor for the City of St. Joseph Water Protection Division, says the group is in need of both funds and volunteers. Last fall, Missouri Western freshmen spent some time working at the house as part of the Griffon Edge orientation program, and she hopes to connect with more volunteers at the University.

For now, they are focused on saving the house, and they are open to ideas for its future use.

“We want to create a place that the community can use and be proud of,” Swindler said.  “Preserving our past is an investment in our future.”

Want to help save the Cracker House or want more information? Check out these sites:

facebook.com/CrackerHouseProject
gofundme.com/CrackerHouse
Email: crackerhouseproject@hotmail.com

Or, join them for an upcoming goat yoga session on the house’s lawn (yes, with goats, real live goats).