Strawberry Hill Museum and Cultural Center

The Strawberry Hill Museum and Cultural Center occupies an 1887 Queen Anne mansion at 720 N. 4th Street in the strawberry-hill neighborhood of kansas-city-kansas, on the bluff above the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers. Built as the residence of attorney John Scroggs and his wife, the house served from 1919 to 1988 as St. John’s Orphanage, operated by the Sisters of St. Francis of Christ the King, which cared for more than 3,000 children. Since 1988 it has been owned by the Strawberry Hill Ethnic Cultural Society and operated as a museum of the Croatian, Slovak, Polish, Russian, Slovenian, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, and Dutch immigrant communities that settled the hill. Its Olde World Christmas holiday tours are its best-known annual program.

The Scroggs mansion (1887-1919)

The house was built in 1887 for attorney John B. Scroggs and his wife, who wanted a residence larger than any then standing in the city, on elevated ground overlooking the river confluence.¹ It was the first commission of the young architect John G. Braecklein, who had recently opened his own practice in Kansas City, Kansas.² The mansion is widely described as one of the finest surviving Queen Anne houses in the city: brick with stone and wood trim, a round three-story tower, gables and dormers, and a wraparound front porch, set on six lots behind a stone retaining wall.³ Interior features include a hand-crafted walnut staircase, stained-glass transoms above the windows and doors, original pocket doors, tiled fireplaces with carved hardwood mantels, and ornamental tilework.²¹

The museum’s own family history identifies the original mistress of the house as Margaret E. Kerstetter Cruise Scroggs (born in Ohio in 1843), who came to Kansas in 1863, married James A. Cruise in 1864, and after his death married John B. Scroggs around 1876.¹ Several secondary sources instead name Scroggs’s wife as “Mary.”³² The family occupied the house for 32 years.³

St. John’s Orphanage (1919-1988)

The 1918 influenza pandemic devastated the largely Catholic immigrant parishes of Strawberry Hill, leaving many children without parents. In 1919 the Scroggs family sold the house, and the Sisters of St. Francis of Christ the King purchased it — for $15,400, according to the museum — to open an orphanage.¹ Secondary accounts credit Monsignor Martin D. Krmpotic, associated with the neighborhood’s Croatian parish, with driving the conversion.²

Operating as St. John’s Orphanage in connection with St. John the Baptist Catholic Church, the institution housed 68 children by 1931 and required multiple building expansions.¹² Over 69 years the Sisters cared for more than 3,000 children; the orphanage closed in the summer of 1988 as child-welfare practice shifted away from institutional care.¹³

Conversion to a museum (1988-present)

Monsignor John W. Horvat led the effort to preserve the building, founding the Strawberry Hill Ethnic Cultural Society, which acquired the property in 1988 and opened it to the public as a museum in 1989.¹² The society is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and relies on memberships, donations, and volunteers.⁴

The museum interprets the Eastern and Central European immigrant communities that built the neighborhood — settled in the late 19th century by Slavic immigrants, primarily Croatians, Slovenes, and Serbians, who worked in the nearby meatpacking plants, after earlier waves of Irish and German arrivals.⁵ The museum’s permanent exhibits are organized around nine nationalities: Croatia, Denmark, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Ukraine.⁴ Visitor guides describe more than 30 rooms of displays, a Hall of Immigrants presenting materials from early settler families, and a collection of Pope John Paul II memorabilia including items from his 1979, 1987, and 1995 visits.³

Olde World Christmas and visiting

The museum’s signature annual event is Olde World Christmas, a holiday season in which the mansion is decorated and lit throughout and the ethnic exhibits are re-dressed to show each community’s Christmas traditions.⁶⁴ In addition to daytime tours, the museum sells evening programs during the season — a standard NightTime Tour, an appetizer tour, and a dinner tour serving dishes such as sarma (Croatian cabbage rolls), Polish sausage and sauerkraut, and hot German potato salad.⁶

The museum operates on a guided-tour-only basis, open Saturdays and Sundays with tours at fixed start times, and closes during the summer months of June, July, and August; advance online booking is expected, with walk-ins accepted when space allows.⁴ Published tour times and admission prices differ between the museum’s own site and third-party visitor listings, so current hours and rates should be confirmed with the museum directly at the time of a visit. for a stable, dated statement of current hours and admission.

Sources

Footnotes

1. Strawberry Hill Museum and Cultural Center — “Family History” (owners page) ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

2. Mainly Museums — “Strawberry Hill Museum: A Grand Victorian Dame in Kansas City.” ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

3. Visit KC — “Strawberry Hill Museum and Cultural Center.” ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

4. Strawberry Hill Museum and Cultural Center — official site homepage (tours, closures, nationalities represented) ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

5. Wikipedia — “Strawberry Hill (Kansas City, Kansas).” ↩

6. Strawberry Hill Museum and Cultural Center — “NightTime Tours” (Olde World Christmas) ↩ ↩²