JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

A new and hopefully grand chapter is unfolding in the saga of the finest home in Kansas City,

That would be the Louis Curtiss-designed house at the northwest corner of 55th and Ward Parkway.

Curtiss, once called the Frank Lloyd Wright of Kansas City, was Kansas City’s most famous architect. His local work also includes the Boley Building at 12th and Walnut and the Folly Theatre, which he designed along with Frederick Gunn.

The home at 55th and Ward Parkway is considered to be one of the best examples of Prairie Style architecture in the Midwest. It features beautiful and extremely expensive leaded-glass windows, antique exterior light fixtures and an unusual, L-shaped footprint. Other singular features are its reinforced-concrete foundation and gray limestone exterior walls, with a medium-rough, or “shot-sawed” finish.

I’ve written about this house two or three times, once out of absolute horror and rage because one former resident, Keith Tucker, a former Waddell & Reed C.E.O., erected a veritable wall of tall shrubs on the east and south sides of the house, concealing it from passers-by on Ward Parkway and 55th Street.

Tucker, who died last February, had plenty to hide. He was a tax cheat, but in the end he had to pay. My theory was the enshrouding of his house was in keeping with his secretive, slimy ways.

The owner before him was a Jackson County Circuit Court judge named Michael Coburn, who tragically died in December 1994 after falling into an unsecured elevator shaft at an abandoned building that he was inspecting as part of a court case. His widow Linda sold the house to Tucker and his wife in 1998.

At this stage, I should show you a couple of photos. The first one shows what the house looked like in the early years, after it was completed in 1913. The other shows the house walled by shrubs.

To show you the arc of the value of this house, I believe Judge Coburn and his wife bought the house in the 1970s for about $150,000. The Tuckers paid $1.65 million for it in 1998. I believe Ann Dickinson, former chairwoman of a holding company that formerly owned Bank Midwest, bought it for $6 million in 2005…On her watch, unfortunately, the shrubs remained in place.

Now, let’s fast forward to June of 2021, when a daughter of Joe Brandmeyer, one of several people who started with Marion Labs and made fortunes on their own, bought it. According to Zillow, the sale price was $4.77 million in June 2021, which seems low, if indeed Ms. Dickinson paid $6 million in 2005.

At any rate, one of the first things Ms. Brandmeyer did was have the shrubs removed…When I drove by there one day and saw that those hideous shrubs were gone, I gasped with excitement…Ms. Brandmeyer was, at last, pulling back the drapes so people could see that fabulous house!

(I don’t know Ms. Brandmeyer’s first name. If any of you knows, please share that information.)

Removing the shrubs was just a start. Ms. Brandmeyer is renovating the entire house and the grounds. Here’s what it looks like now…

For months, day after day, work trucks have lined 55th Street. When I went by today, the trucks were most of the way down the hill, almost to State Line Road. During the time I was there, traffic was stopped for a few minutes while a large fork-lift vehicle transferred a load of building materials from a truck to the grounds of the house.

I can only imagine how much Ms. Brandmeyer is putting into the house. From looking at those trucks on 55th Street, I would estimate she’s investing at least $10,000 a day.

Undoubtedly, she can afford it. Her father who is in his 80s and living in Florida, I believe, sold a company in 2008 that manufactures skin disinfectants for surgical and vascular procedures. Joe Brandmeyer’s company, Enturia Inc., was bought by a much larger company called Cardinal Health for — gulp — $490 million.

When the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts was under construction, the Joe and Jeanne Brandmeyer Family Foundation contributed $12 million. Today, Brandmeyer Great Hall is the glass-enclosed lobby area between Muriel Kauffman Theatre, home of the Lyric Opera, and Helzberg Hall, home of the Kansas City Symphony.

The Brandmeyers have three sons and two daughters. Perhaps the highest-profile offspring, Mark Brandmeyer, bought the T-Bones in 2019 and renamed them the Kansas City Monarchs.

At least for the present, though, my favorite Brandmeyer is the daughter who bought the Louis Curtiss house with an incredibly rich history.

I fervently hope Ms. Brandmeyer will not erect shrubs around the house as part of her renovation. That would be a crime, and it would mark a return to the years when Keith Tucker — that rat — sealed that spectacular residence from public view.