Another grand old house razed this week

by Denise O’Brien Van
Contributing writer

Another grand old Jefferson mansion, now tattered and decrepit at age 125, was recently razed.

Known as “The Haag,” the three-story, Queen Anne-style clapboard house was built in 1897 at 307 N. Wilson Ave. by popular local banker Henry Haag. The property took up the north half of the 300 block, and included a barn.
It was constructed by a Cedar Falls firm headed by a man named Shearer. The first floor had a tiled entry hall and stained glass windows, plus oak woodwork, an open staircase to the upper floors, a parlor and library, a dining room, kitchen and pantry.
The second floor had a large hall, two bedrooms, a master bedroom and a maid’s room. On the third floor was a large playroom.
The home’s long, wide and columned porch faced Wilson Avenue (which was then called Cherry Street). The place was painted canary yelllow.

“It was the prettiest house in town,” Margaret Cudahy told the Herald in 1962.

She was the wife of F. P. “Patsy” Cudahy, a local contractor who bought the house in the late 1930s. The Cudahys lived on the first floor, and turned the upper floors into apartments, two each on the second and third stories.
Haag died at the age of 51 in August of 1910. A newspaper account of the time said that 2,000 people attended his funeral, which was held on the lawn of his home. A hundred automobiles and “double that number of (horse) teams” followed the hearse to the Jefferson Cemetery.
After Haag’s death, the home remained in his family until 1937 when it was sold to a Perry man, who sold it a short time later to the Cudahys.

Patsy Cudahy converted the home’s large barn, which sat southeast of the house, into apartments in 1946. Named “The Shamrock,” the building contains six apartments.
In later years, The Haag’s front porch was enclosed, and the home’s clapboard covered with white siding.

In recent years, the house was allowed to fall into disrepair and its tenants departed. In spring 2022, the Jefferson City Council declared the grand old home a nuisance, bought it from John Copeland for $5,000, and spent $16,300 for asbestos abatement. The city will pay $14,700 to Murphy Construction of Jefferson to tear it down. The location is zoned for multi-unit housing.

Editor’s note: Information for this article came from Bee & Herald files, and from city and county records.