Bonnie, Clyde apartment appears headed to national historic listing

By Wally Kennedy

wkennedy@joplinglobe.com

It happened in a matter of seconds at approximately 4 p.m. on April 13, 1933.

Clyde Chestnut Barrow and friend W.D. “Deacon’’ Jones had just returned to the garage apartment at 34th Street and Oak Ridge Drive after test driving a Ford roadster stolen the day before at Miami, Okla.

Bonnie Elizabeth Parker was upstairs cooking the evening meal of red beans, cabbage and cornbread. Blanche Caldwell Barrow, with her little white dog, Snowball, was passing the time playing solitaire. Buck, her husband, who was fresh from prison, was taking a nap.

As Barrow and Jones were closing the garage door on the roadster, two police cars with five lawmen inside arrived in front of the apartment. They were there after neighbors tipped them to the possibility that bootleggers had moved into the apartment 12 days before.

One of the police cars turned diagonally into the middle of the double driveway to block it. With his revolver in hand, one of the lawmen dashed from the car toward the open garage door. He fired one shot before he was struck with a blast from a sawed-off shotgun. He died almost instantly.

Another lawman jumped from the vehicle firing three shots from his revolver before he, too, was felled by a shotgun blast that virtually severed his right arm at the elbow. He died later at St. John’s Hospital.

As the shooting started, those upstairs made a mad scramble down a narrow flight of stairs with 13 steps. Buck grabbed another shotgun. As Clyde exchanged gunfire with the lawmen, they headed for a 1932 Ford sedan that also was parked in the garage.

But Clyde couldn’t speed away from the garage, his exit was blocked by the police car and the body of a lawman. After trying unsuccessfully to release the parking brake on the police car, Clyde decided to push the vehicle aside with his car. At the same time, Snowball was scampering down the street with Blanche in pursuit.

Buck pulled the body of the lawman to the side. Clyde rammed the police car. It rolled down 34th Street and struck a tree. They wheeled out of the driveway and roared east to Main Street, snatching up Blanche along the way before heading south on Main Street. Snowball, along with everything else, was left behind.

The encounter with the “Barrow gang’’ at the garage apartment represents “a defining moment in the saga of Bonnie and Clyde, and it is Missouri’s most intact and best preserved structure with a strong and clear association with the notorious outlaw lovers,’’ according to the document nominating the structure for the National Register of Historic Places.

The Missouri Advisory Council on Historic Preservation will consider the nomination during its quarterly meeting on Feb. 13 in Jefferson City. It is among 15 nominations scheduled for consideration.

Allen Shirley, a Joplin resident who serves as vice chairman of the council, said, “This should be a slam-dunk as far as getting it approved. This will culminate a two-year effort to get it listed.’’

The structure, he said, is the only free-standing location associated with the outlaws’ reign of terror in 1933 that exists in the country today. The Bank of Oronogo, which the gang robbed, has been altered to such an extent that it no longer can qualify for nomination to the list.

“This is not about glorifying crime or acts of violence,” he said. “This is important to our history in the context of the Great Depression and folklore — the little guy against the establishment.’’

The structure also will serve as a permanent memorial for the fallen lawmen — Newton County Constable John Wesley Harryman and Joplin police Detective Harry McGinnis. A plaque bearing their names is to be placed on the exterior of the apartment.

The nomination, crafted in stark detail by Roger Maserang of the historic preservation office, said what happened in Joplin was significant for several reasons. It was the gang’s first double killing. The vicious use of shotguns at close range galvanized law enforcement to pursue them and tarnished earlier images of them as folk heroes.

But it was what they left behind that would bring their eventual demise.

Maserang, in the nomination, writes: “Playful, provocative snapshots the gangsters had taken of one another, printed from undeveloped film they left behind when they fled, proved invaluable to authorities.’’

Photographs from the film, which was processed by The Joplin Globe, were widely published. A Joplin Police Department poster containing two of the images noted that the photos were “better for identification than regular police photos.’’

Also recovered was the draft of a long poem written by Bonnie. “Suicide Sal’’ was a ballad about a gun moll who takes the rap for the man she loves. Necklaces recovered from the apartment are on display at the Joplin Museum Complex.

Tiffany Patterson, with the historic preservation office, said Missouri’s list of historic places includes sites “that reflect the dark parts of Missouri’s past. They do not show us in the best light, but they show who we are — the good, the bad and the ugly, if you will.’’

Examples are the Dred Scott case, a Jesse James robbery, a Civil War atrocity.

“The Bonnie and Clyde mystique has come about since the movie,” she said. “We have been re-examining them since the 1970s. There’s a folklore sense about them more now than in the ’30s and ’40s.’’

“Bonnie and Clyde,’’ the romanticized 1967 movie starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, was nominated for 10 Academy Awards. It won two. A new movie version of the story is in the works and will feature Hilary Duff in the role of Bonnie.

A new Bonnie and Clyde documentary by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and the National Geographic Society is set to air this spring. Part of the documentary was filmed at the apartment late last year.

The apartment is owned by Phillip and Jackie McClendon, of Joplin, who acquired the property in 2005. They have painstakingly recreated the look of an apartment in the 1930s.

Brad Belk, director of the Joplin Museum Complex, said, “The McClendons have done a fantastic job of putting the apartment back, as much as it can be, to its original state. Today, it has that flavor, for all practical purposes, of a 1930s apartment. They should clearly be commended for their efforts.

“With a new movie in the works and documentary coming out this spring, the volume about Bonnie and Clyde is not being turned down.’’



State council

The Missouri Advisory Council on Historic Preservation is a 12-member group of historians, architects, archaeologists and residents with an interest in historic preservation. The council is appointed by the governor and works with the Department of Natural Resources’ State Historic Preservation Office, which administers the National Register program for Missouri. Advanced nominations are forwarded to the Keeper of the National Register in Washington, D.C., for final approval.

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