6 reasons to love the Clement House on the historic Midtown tour

The annual historic walking tour in Midtown will be next weekend, allowing the public to step into three historic houses on the corner of 14th Street and North Fairview Avenue and into North High School a couple of blocks away.

The houses are two Queen Annes – the Aley House at 1505 and the Clement House at 1454 – and a foursquare at 1504 Fairview. Tickets can be purchased at North – $13, free for ages 12 and younger – where people can take one of two tours: “the short tour that will take them to the high points, and the longer tour that will go into more of the history and up to the third floor and the tower,” says Rachel Schober of the Historic Midtown Neighborhood Association, which sponsors the tour.

The tour includes costumed docents, live music, vintage cars and bicycles, and refreshments. Proceeds will go to North High and the neighborhood association.

Jamie Brown, a Wichita native who was away living in Dallas and New Orleans for 27 years, moved back to town to be with family last year, and is opening her new old house for the tour.

Brown tried three times to buy the Queen Anne at 1454 N. Fairview (which had become a retreat for scrapbookers and other crafters) before she was finally successful – only the fourth owner in the history of the house built in 1890.

Brown loves her new old house and here are six reasons you might too:

1. It doesn’t smell stuffy

“I don’t like antiques. I like modern stuff,” Brown says. But she also likes the charm and character of the structure of old houses. In New Orleans, she lived in a 100-year-old Victorian that she not only fixed up but then had to repair after Hurricane Katrina.

“I kind of taught myself how to paint when I got the house because the prices in New Orleans were so high,” Brown says.

When she bought the Clement House in Wichita – named for the 10th mayor of Wichita, George Clement, and his wife, Julia – the kitchen and bathrooms had been remodeled and updated with ceramic tile floors, stainless-steel appliances and Italian porcelain tile in the bathroom.

While Brown has only begun to add her own touches to the house, one thing she did immediately was to have a door between the master bedroom and an adjoining bedroom removed to create a solid wall against which she placed her bed.

“I like to decorate. That’s my thing,” Brown says, though she has become quite the do-it-yourselfer. One room – a pretty little office on the second floor – is all Asian decor.

Brown says some of the antique furniture that used to be in the Clement House was purchased by Gerry Crawford, the owner of the Aley House catty-corner from hers. “On the tour I’m going to tour his house and see the furniture that came from my house,” she says.

2. Two words: closet room

One of the downsides of old houses is a lack of closet space. One of the reasons Brown bought the Clement House was that it had a small bedroom under the eaves that she envisioned turning into a closet.

“I bought wood closet kits at Lowe’s and laid it out and assembled it and installed it,” Brown says. She bought a chandelier for the closet room at Architectural Salvage to dress it up even more.

A back staircase outside the closet room is partially closed off by a half door of wood.

3. Fresh fall porches

The front porch of the house and a small side porch have been updated, with repointed bricks and repaired cream-painted wood. Brown has decorated them for fall with autumnal botanicals and perfect artificial pumpkins. Burnt-orange daisy-like helenium is planted in the front border along with barberry.

The yard also has mature trees, a gazebo and a large concrete birdbath crowned with a pineapple.

4. New Orleanian touches

In New Orleans, Brown lived uptown along the parade route, in the thick of Mardi Gras.

“I’m a Katrina survivor,” Brown says. “I lived at the top of the bowl and got wind but not water damage.” She fired two carpenters during the repair work and bought a chop saw and learned how to trim out the bathroom herself, among other things.

Brown has included touches of New Orleans in her Wichita home, with fleur-de-lis in the decor and a few pieces of artwork of the Big Easy by James Michalopoulos on the walls.

5. It’s haunted?

Maybe we’re adding this because October just started. But Brown says that Julia Clement died in the house, and …

“I was sitting in the breakfast room one morning, and it was dead quiet,” Brown says. “All of a sudden I heard the floor upstairs creaking like someone was walking. I think she just might still be here.”

6. For Mama’s sake

Brown hasn’t been in the house long enough to do everything she’s wanting to get done, so her own preference would have been to wait a while to be on a Midtown tour. But “my mom wanted me to do it, and she’s 80 years old,” she said.

“She has been helping me clean house, and we’ve cleaned all the woodwork in the house. I want to make it the best I can in the stage that it’s in.”

Brown has 13 nieces and nephews who love to play in the house, and one of them even helped her lay a new brick walk. She’s handing down the love and care of old houses the old-fashioned way.

This story was originally published October 2, 2015 at 2:12 PM.