Feature 088: 611 North Delaware Street (in 2011)

Classification: Contributing.
Historic Name: Fonda House.
Architectural Style: Prairie School.
Construction Date: ca. 1920.
Period 3 of Harry S Truman's Life: Developing Political Skills and Associations, 1920-1933.
Tax Identification: 26-310-21-10.
Legal Description: McCauley Park Addition, block 2, lot 12.
Description: Contributing two-story wood-frame dwelling; rectangular in shape; low-pitched hipped roof with broad overhanging eaves; wide weatherboard siding; one-over-one double-hung sash windows; hipped roof porch with wood posts on cut stone piers across facade; stone foundation. Lot with lawn and foundation shrubbery slopes gently to the rear.
• Alterations: The siding is not original; balustrade has been altered.
• Noncontributing wood-frame double-car garage with living quarters above probably built after period of significance [Feature 089]
History/Significance: The original owners/occupants of this house are not known with certainty. In the late 1920s and 1930s, the family of Anthony P. and Cora Fonda owned and occupied this house. Born in 1878 in Kansas City, Anthony Fonda attended Marmaduke Military Academy in Sweet Springs. A resident of Independence his entire life, Anthony P. Fonda was, for twenty-eight years, a justice of the peace at Fairmont, Sugar Creek, and Independence. He married Cora Homan in 1908; they raised two children: Nadine and Paul. Anthony Fonda died in November 1935. In the 1940s, Ed D. White owned this house; in the early 1950s, Floyd C. Carson lived at 611 North Delaware Street.