Architect Biography - Braecklein

Westheight Manor Historic Survey Appendix Five Architects 

John George Braecklein was born in the city of New York on September 18, 1865, the son of Oscar and Ida (Kirsinger) Braecklein, both German immigrants. The elder Braecklein was a druggist who had settled in St. Louis in 1849 at the age of eighteen. He moved to Leavenworth in Kansas Territory in 1857, and was one of that city's first aldermen. The younger Braecklein's birth in New York was possibly the result of a temporary dislocation during the War Between the States. The family returned to Leavenworth in 1866, and moved to Kansas City, Missouri in 1878 where Oscar Braecklein established a drug store at 5th and Broadway.

J. G. Braecklein was reportedly frail in his early years, which precluded a public school education. Nevertheless, he studied architecture at Harvard and Yale in 1884 and 1885, under professors Jordan and Gould. He was also an omnivorous reader, particularly in the fields of history and folklore. This presaged his later interest in archaeology, and a reputation as a collector and dealer in American Indian and Spanish artifacts.

He began his architectural career as a draftsman in Kansas City, in 1885, working first for Henry Probst and later for James Bannon. In 1887 he set up his own practice in Kansas City, Kansas. His first independent commission was the design for a large, Queen Anne style house of brick for Mrs. John B. Scroggs at 4th and Ann Streets in Kansas City, Kansas. The house may have incorporated an earlier structure built on the same site in about 1873 by Mrs. Scroggs' first husband, James A. Cruise, but if so, nothing visible remained of the first house. A small ink and watercolor rendering of the front elevation, in Braecklein's own hand is now in the archives of the Wyandotte County Museum.

By 1888 Braecklein had moved back to Kansas City, Missouri, and with only one interruption his home and office were to be located there for the next twenty-eight years. One of this first commissions following this move was also one of the most significant in his long career. The seven-story Heist Building at 724 Main Street, Kansas City, Missouri, was the tallest building in the city when completed in 1889, and its height coupled with its composite construction of steel beams and cast iron interior columns made it the city's first skyscraper. While the brick side walls were quite stark, the elaborate brick and stone facade on Main Street, topped with a "beehive" tower, showed a strong resemblance to the highly individual work of Philadelphia architect Frank Furness.

The Heist Building was quickly followed by another major structure, the Cordova Hotel at 12th & Pennsylvania Streets in Kansas City, Missouri. The style of the Cordova was Richardsonian Romanesque, and may have been influenced by the various Kansas City designs of Burnham & Root. For a while in 1889 Braecklein was a partner with Frank Resch in the firm of Resch & Braecklein, but by 1890 he was again working alone. The Cordova Hotel has been credited to Resch, but Braecklein included it in the list of his works published in 1901.

Despite his early success, Braecklein left for Chicago in 1890. While there he was employed by various architectural firms, assisting in the planning for several of the World's Fair buildings, the Chicago Athletic Club, the Newberry Library, and the original quadrangles at the University of Chicago. The Panic of 1893 had a marked effect on the midwestern economy, and by 1895 Braecklein was working as a draftsman in St. Louis, Missouri. He returned home that same year. He was again listed as a draftsman in 1896, working for Van Brunt & Howe, but by 1897 he had re-established an independent practice as an architect.

Braecklein was apparently well-known and well-liked among his colleagues, as the September 1900 issue of Kansas City Architect and Builder noted the celebration of his thirty-fifth birthday. Although major commissions such as the Heist and Cordova seem to have eluded him, he had become an incredibly prolific designer of houses, apartment flats, and small to medium size commercial structures. In promoting his practice, he had an illustrated brochure printed in January 1901. Entitled Portfolio of photographs, elevations and plans of buildings and homes in Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas, the brochure included fifty-five structures done over a period of thirteen years, although that possibly includes only eight years of independent practice.

Architecture and archaeology were not Braecklein's only areas of interest. He was also involved in minstrel shows, already a declining form of entertainment by 1900, and was known as the "world Champion bone-rattler". The bones referred to were worked something like castanets, forming a rhythmic accompaniment to music. In 1899, Braecklein performed as a member of the Epperson Megaphone Mastadon Minstrels in a program at the new Kansas City Convention Hall.

His practice continued unabated through the 1900s. In February 1903 Braecklein formed a partnership with John Martling, but this lasted only until June 1904. From 1905 to 1907 he was joined by a brother, Oscar F. Braecklein, who worked as a draftsman. And throughout this period, the addresses of both his office and his residence changed almost yearly.

In 1910, he formed the Braecklein Architectural Co., with offices in the New England Building at 112 West 90th Street, Kansas City, Missouri. The company listed John G. Braecklein as president, C. C. Sherwood as vice-president and treasurer, and Frank H. Blauw as secretary. On 15 November 1911 the 46 year-old Braecklein wed Clara Louise Merritt of Wamego, Kansas, a woman of Scotch-Irish and American Indian descent. The couple had four children: Oscar Foster, John G. Jr., Ida, and Elsie. This marriage seems to have brought unaccustomed stability to Braecklein's life, as for the next several years his home was at 3725 Wayne Ave., Kansas City, Missouri, while his office was in the Massachusetts Building.

Braecklein had always carried on work in both Kansas Citys, but after about 1910 he began to increasingly concentrate his practice in Kansas City, Kansas. A number of these commissions were in the Parkwood Subdivision at Tenth and Quindaro Boulevard, laid out in 1908 by Sid J. Hare for Henry McGrew's Parkwood Land Company. In 1912, Braecklein designed a speculative house for McGrew at 1020 Quindaro Boulevard. At least five more houses in Parkwood, as well as the Parkwood Park shelter house, are known to have been designed by Braecklein, but design similarities suggest that the actual number may have been twice that or more.

One of these houses was Braecklein's own, built in 1917 at 1000 Quindaro Boulevard. He maintained a studio in his new residence, but continued to have his office in Kansas City, Missouri through 1920. At the same time his designs, always eclectic in nature, became both more adventurous and possibly more polished. The Charles Abraham residence of 1916 in Parkwood was in the Prairie Style, while the house for Dr. David E. Clopper, built in the Argentine area of Kansas City, Kansas in 1918-19, included a green tile roof with oriental-seeming, upward-flaring corners and an interior embellished with a variety of exotic woods. Possibly the finest residence in this period was that for Henry J. Grossman, built in 1920 at 1500 Grandview Boulevard. There the Prairie Style was blended with a Mediterranean influence to produce one of Braecklein's most effective architectural compositions.

Throughout the 1920s Braecklein's office was located in the Kresge Building at the northwest corner of Sixth Street & Minnesota Avenue in Kansas City, Kansas. However, his residence changed once again. In about 1923 the Parkwood house was sold and the Braecklein family moved to a house in Bethel, in rural Wyandotte County. There they remained for the next fifteen years. As his architectural practice continued to be quite active, he presumably commuted to his office each day on the Kansas City, Wyandotte and Northwestern Railway that linked Bethel and other small farming communities to the city. Despite this move outside the city limits, Braecklein was appointed to the first Kansas City, Kansas Board of Zoning Appeals in September 1924.

Working in Kansas City, Kansas in the booming 1920s provided Braecklein with greater scope than at any time since the 1880s, including a number of public commissions. These included the Armourdale Community Building and swimming pool, the shelter house in Parkwood Park, and two fire stations, No. 12 in the Rosedale area and No. 6 in Armourdale. The latter with its long row of steel casements on the second floor was among the most attractive of Braecklein's many designs.

His commercial work also increased in scale, if only for a brief time. In 1922 three major projects in a row along Seventh Street were begun: the Federal Reserve Life Insurance Company Building, the adjacent Getty Building, and the twelve-story Elks Club Building. The latter project was originally listed as Braecklein's but the final design was by W. S. Frank of St. Louis, Missouri, with Braecklein as associate architect. For the most part, however, Braecklein's practice continued as before, a mixture of houses, apartments and small commercial buildings. It should be noted that at the time of the completion of the Federal Reserve Life Insurance Building in February 1923, Braecklein claimed to have designed over 3,000 buildings in Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma.

Braecklein's most notable failures during this period involved Jesse Hoel's Westheight Manor development. A large Italian Renaissance villa, designed for B. B. Nance in 1921, never proceeded past the construction of the garage (now at 1106 Hoel Parkway). In 1925 the Kansas City, Kansas Real Estate Board and the Kansas City Kansan newspaper initiated a project to build "The Ideal Home" in Westheight. A closed competition was held involving Braecklein, Victor J. DeFoe, and Charles E. Keyser. The design chosen was that of the younger Keyser, and in its whole period of development Braecklein designed only five houses for Westheight, two of which were never built.

As the local economy declined in the late 1920s, so did the volume of Braecklein's practice. In 1929 he formed a partnership with his son John Jr., as Braecklein & Braecklein, and the new firm moved from the Kresge Building to the upper floor at 719 Minnesota Avenue, an older building that may have been yet another Braecklein design. The space in the Kresge Building was not relinquished, but was turned into the Wyandotte Antique Shop, capitalizing on another of Braecklein's many interest. The shop was run by Louise Braecklein, and it specialized in American Indian artifacts. Braecklein was well known as a collector and avid amateur archaeologist, and often collaborated with another well-known amateur, his neighbor Harry Trowbridge. He eventually became an honorary member of fifty-six museums in the United States and Canada.

The high point of Braecklein's collaboration with his son came shortly after the new firm was formed, with the design of the Wyandotte County Poor Farm building (now the courthouse annex) at 9400 State Avenue, Kansas City, Kansas. But like Braecklein's earlier partnerships, this one ended after less than two years. In April 1931, the 65-year-old Braecklein formed still another partnership, with Walter A. Besecke and his colleague Hubert Swanson, but again this partnership lasted less than a year.

In 1933 Braecklein moved both his office and the antique shop back to Kansas City, Missouri, at 1900 Main Street. Both continued in this location until 1935, when he went into semi-retirement at his home in Bethel. His last recorded architect commission had come in 1934, with a community building addition to the White Church Community Church near his home. Over the years he contributed parts of his architectural and archaeological libraries and collections to various area libraries and museums. This included a gift of books on architecture to the University of Kansas City in 1936, in which he was joined by William Volker.

By 1939 Braecklein was probably bored with retirement and perhaps feeling a bit isolated in Bethel. He and his wife moved for the last time, to 3850 East 60th Street Terrace in Kansas City, Missouri. He carried on a small architectural practice out of his home, and with Louise opened the Braecklein Indian Store at 4720 Troost, in Kansas City, Missouri. The store closed after two years, but he continued to be called upon by old friends to serve as a consultant. In 1956 he suffered a stroke, but managed to recover. He died in his home on 7 October 1958, at the age of 93, having practiced architecture for nearly seventy years. He was survived by his wife, two daughters, eight grandchildren and ten great-grandchildren.