Downtown’s Oldest Buildings

Current day photos by Kelsey Winkeljohn. Historical photos courtesy of The State Historical Society of Missouri.

823 E. Broadway 

From Boots and Shoes to Bouquets 

For 15 years, My Secret Garden has called the 1880s Late Victorian building at 823 E. Broadway home, but in the past, it housed the Knight Drug Store for more than 50 years. 

More recent tenants included Tucker Fine Jewelry and the Jean Prange Boutique. The building started as C.B. Miller’s Shoe Store before he moved his business to 800 E. Broadway.  

The building reclaimed its Victorian look at the hands of John Ott and his partners in 1995, making it one of downtown’s earliest and most accurate restorations. The building is on the 2006 Downtown Columbia Historic District National Register of Historic Places and the city’s 1998 Most Notable Properties list. 

It’s also one of Columbia’s five Landmark sites, which are city designations that protect interior or exterior features at the request of property owners. The building’s façade, including its doors and windows on both floors and the embossed ceiling on the ground floor, are protected by its landmark designation. 

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812 E. Broadway 

From Kegs of Nails to Kitchen Wares 

Tallulah’s at 812 E. Broadway offers lively modern kitchenware and décor inside a Late Victorian building from ca. 1870. Above the colorful display windows, the building features something very modern — a way to save electricity. The prismatic tiles were installed around 1910. These glass tiles maximize natural light and reduce lighting costs. According to its listing on the 2006 Downtown Columbia Historic District National Register of Historic Places, the 155-year-old building is among two or three buildings with historic prism glass. 

The building has housed everything from a bookstore to a piano store, but according to a 1978 Historic Survey, it may be best known as Hays Hardware. It operated there from 1921 until well into the 20th century and featured wooden floors, a pot-belly stove, and kegs of nails. 

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820 E. Broadway 

From Dry Goods to Drinks 

You can grab drinks or dinner in Columbia’s oldest downtown commercial building. Tellers Gallery and Bar, at the corner of Ninth and Broadway, is open again in the ca. 1860s Beaux Arts building at 820 E. Broadway. It was closed for more than a year following a fire in September 2023 in the second floor’s True/False Film Fest offices. Tellers has operated at that address since 1998. 

Previous tenants included a grocery/dry goods store in 1883; in 1889, the building housed the U.S. Post Office, according to a Sanborn map. In 1927, it took on its familiar look during a facelift and became Woolf Bros. Clothiers, a role it kept until 1954, according to its listing in the 2006 Downtown Columbia Historic District National Register of Historic Places. Those renovations included a new stone façade that carries around the corner.  

In 1972, Neate’s Dry Goods expanded into the space from its 818 E. Broadway location, where it had been doing business since 1919. 

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906-914 E. Broadway 

From Puckett’s to Prom Dresses 

For about a decade, the Late Victorian building at 906-914-E. Broadway housed Breeze Prom and Pageant. Now awaiting new tenants, the ca. 1886 building has housed everything from a bank to a photographer to a Singer Co. manufacturing plant.  

Its longest tenant was Puckett’s, a downtown clothing store owned by Dale and Vicki Puckett. Opened at 906 E. Broadway in 1946, Puckett’s closed in 2008, two years after the demolition of the downtown concrete canopy.  

The removal of the 1960s awning paved the way for the building’s inclusion in the 2006 Downtown Columbia Historic District National Register of Historic Places district and for John Ott of Alley A Realty’s renovation. The improvements included recreating the skylight at 910 E. Broadway.  

A reminder of the building’s history as the former home of Columbia Savings Bank remains in the form of the vault in the Kampai Sushi Bar & Restaurant in the rear of 907 in Alley A. 

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920 Cherry St 

From an Academy to Apartments 

Columbia’s oldest downtown building, the core of the Niedermeyer Apartments, was built in 1837. That portion of the building, the northeast section on Cherry, faces Harpo’s. In 1851, a second floor was added to that section, and by 1902, this late Victorian building had its current configuration. It’s on the 2006 Downtown Columbia Historic District National Register of Historic Places and Columbia’s 2013 Most Notable Properties list, and it is the only downtown building with a lawn. 

Built to house the Columbia Female Academy, which grew into Stephens College, it later housed MU’s Department of Domestic Sciences (Home Economics) for a decade. After the Academy departed, the building served as a private residence, the Cottage Hotel, and the Gordon Hotel, until 1921, when it became the Niedermeyer Apartments, a role it has continued for over 100 years. 

This early connection to women’s education saved the building from demolition in 2013. Developers were eyeing the lot with a plan for a 15-story building when its current owner, Nakhle Asmar, Ph.D., an MU emeritus professor of mathematics, learned of its history. He bought the building to honor his deceased mother, who was a teacher.  

Along with apartments, the building includes overnight lodging, Rooms on Cherry, managed by longtime tenant Linda Libert, who plans to open a bar and bistro, Magnolia’s Whisky + Wine, in the building.