Speaking Personally: Saving the Smuck Building

The building that houses the news office is better known as the Smuck Building. In 105 years, this building has had three owners. The Smucks built it in 1920 as a live-work space for Wayne’s photography work. His wife, Alma, resided there until her death in 1999. Wendell Bailey bought it then and sold it to Ron and me in 2023.

 

Taking ownership of a historic building was not a daunting task to us. Before we moved to the Ozarks, we operated a historic restoration business in St. Louis and lived in a carriage house built in 1890 in Benton Park. 

 

Crumbly plaster and other eccentricities never bothered us as we spent 70 hours a week in our little slice of Willow Springs history. 

 

In March, however, a straight line windstorm tore the roof from the building and caused significant damage that has continued to snowball as we try to navigate operating a newspaper in an essentially roofless building in a Missouri springtime.

 

On April 4, before we even received news of what insurance would cover, Howell County hunkered down under ten inches of rain. Hundreds of gallons of water poured through our tarped roof like a faucet. Water sluiced down inside an exterior wall and flooded into the basement faster than it could drain, resulting in about 12 inches of standing water that destroyed almost everything we had stored there including the HVAC unit, water heater, and our family’s washer and dryer.  Additional rainstorms have continued to cause damage as we wait for a patch of weather dry enough to replace the roof. 

 

As relative newcomers to Willow Springs, Ron and I sometimes feel that we are merely stewards of the institutions we have undertaken – the Smuck Building and the newspaper ultimately do not belong to us. We are only their caretakers, and so our first job is to make sure they do not fail. Lately, that’s has been more difficult than it ever has been before. 

 

Reader, you are entitled to an explanation of the work that we are doing to preserve and restore this piece of Willow Springs history. You’re entitled to know why I have probably seemed distracted and absent lately. We’ve had a string of very bad luck that has turned owning a historic building into a daunting task. 

 

As a family-owned small business, the buck stops with us.  We’re willing to do the work to keep both the building and the paper going because we owe it to this wonderful community.

 

I would say “pardon our dust,” but with four small kids running underfoot,  pulverized Cheerios are usually making the office plenty dusty on a regular basis. 

 

I say instead – bear with us.