In early June, on my way home from the Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival, I visited the Joplin House State Historic Site.
I had been to the house once before, in 2007, but knowing now much more about Joplin and ragtime in general, I felt it was time for a return visit. And my 2007 visit was on Memorial Day, so the site might have been closed. I did not recall anything about the interior, but I did have a recollection of what it looked like from the outside.
The house is at 2658 Delmar Boulevard, but the street was named Morgan in Joplin’s day. It’s in what was then a racially mixed neighborhood, much more densely populated than now. But it was not a slum; rents were generally in the middle range. Joplin at that time was making enough money to afford to live there. St. Louis in the 1900 census had a population of 575,000, making it the fourth largest city in the country.
As time went by and the area, as well as a significant part of St. Louis, changed for the worse, the house fell into disrepair. In the 1970s a non-profit local group, knowing its historical importance, made an attempt to restore it. They bought the property from the city for the price of the delinquent taxes. They eventually obtained enough grants to go to work, but because of
