4511 Holmes - A History by Bill Simmons

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I believe 4511 was constructed in 1911 at the

behest of one O.C. Van Noy. “O.C.” stands for

Orville Clinton. That first tidbit came from a

1911 copy of the Kansas City Contractor’

Almanac. The estimated construction cost for

4511 Holmes was a hefty (for 1911)

$10,000.00.  

Photo 1940

The Van Noy family was one of the wealthiest families in Kansas City in the early 1900's. The Van

Noys founded and operated the once famous,

and very successful Van Noy Railway

News and Hotel Company. Orville’s father

was Charles S. Van Noy who, with his brothers, founded a retail and services empire of newsstands, restaurants and hotels that spanned the entirety of the 7,500-mile Missouri Pacific railway system.  

After Orville's sale of the home, two other

prominent brothers in Kansas City acquired

4511 in the 1950's. Those two brothers were

Drs. Roy and Walter M. Cross, founders of

Kansas City Testing Laboratories.3 One can

only assume changes were made to the

building by these successful and pioneering

engineering types.

Photo 2009

4511 was purchased from Linda T.

Nottberg in 2008. Extensive remodeling was 

carried out under her directionwent, presumably, between 1989 and 2009.

Linda’s kitchen is pictured below.

Sooo . . . out went virtually everything in the

interior, save (most) of the exterior walls and a

bit of the flooring. No more formica, no nanny’s

quarters and no garage too shallow for modern

vehicles. So the house was changed a lot on

the inside, at least to our thinking, to reflect

more of the Midwest colonial style of the

exterior.

What the many owners of 4511, for well over a century, saw and maintained is what also drew Pat and I to it a decade ago.

We added our own backyard water living space!!!