The house at 121 West Blvd., North, often called the Fairy Tale house or the Gingerbread house, is once again for sale.
This recent article, “Famed Columbia gingerbread house on the market again,” gives a brief outline of the house and its recent history. Best of all, it does not repeat some of the urban myths about the house that had grown up around it. For years, people said Arch McHard or Arch McCard had felled the trees on the land to build the log cabin inside the treat of a home — but my research showed that to be unlikely.
An interview with Mills Coleman, who once lived there, told me that the string on the door that could be pulled in at night to keep out visitors was not a reminder of pioneer days but a joking creation of his mother, Nadine Coleman, who lived their prior to the well-known owners Betty and Herb Brown.
Now Sean and Leigh Spence are selling the home and that means homebuyers have another chance to buy or even live in history.
Read my work on the house, published in the state magazine, Missouri Life in 2013, by clicking on the pdf below.