Harris-Kearney House

In 1846 John Harris and his wife Henrietta bought the Catfish House, a small hotel and saloon at what is now Westport Road and Pennsylvania Avenue. It burned in 1848, and with neighbors' help they rebuilt it as the three-story brick Harris House Hotel, where traders, trappers, gold seekers, politicians and emigrants bound for Santa Fe, California and Oregon took their meals and beds. In October 1864, during the Battle of Westport, General Samuel Curtis made it his headquarters.

In 1855 the Harrises built their own house, a Greek Revival brick mansion at Westport Road and Main Street, now the oldest brick residence in Kansas City. Their daughter Josephine and her husband Charles Kearney moved in in 1870 and built on at the back for their five children. In 1898 William Rockhill Nelson of the Kansas City Star bought it as a wedding present for his editor.

When a businessman bought the corner in 1921 to put up a hotel, a group of women, forerunners of the Daughters of Old Westport, bought the house for $1,000, raised $5,000 more, and in 1922 had it moved to 4000 Baltimore Avenue, losing the west side portico on the way. It opened as a museum on the last day of 1922, failed, was auctioned in 1940 and became offices. The Westport Historical Society bought it in 1976 and restored it to its 1855 appearance. The hotel was torn down in 1922.