Oklahoma City house on tour spans generations

Henry and Nell Morse probably had no idea what a shrewd investment they were making when, in 1915, they purchased a spacious Craftsman-style home in Oklahoma City’s exclusive Linwood Place addition.

Realizing what is possibly the maximum return a homeowner can ever hope for, the Morses passed the house down to their children.

Who passed it down to their children.

Who passed it down to their children.

Today Kadie Ramsay — the Morses’ great-granddaughter — lives in the home with her husband, Graham, and their daughters, Presley, 2, and Avery, 5 months.

The Ramsays’ house, at 3145 NW 20, will be among six open to visitors from 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday for the 14th annual Linwood Place Neighborhood Association Historic Home Tour.

Tickets for the tour, which marks the neighborhood’s 100th anniversary, are $8 in advance from 23rd Street Antique Mall, 3023 NW 23, or Prairie Thunder Baking Co., Plaza Court Building at NW 10 and Walker Avenue. Tickets are $10 Sunday at the tour houses.

Becky and Wayne Osmond — Kadie Ramsay’s parents — live back-door adjacent to the Ramsays in the 3100 block of NW 21.

Becky Osmond (nee Cooley), granddaughter of Henry and Nell Morse, grew up in the Linwood Place home, got married in the living room and then moved to NW 21 in 1971 to raise two daughters.

Kadie, their third, came along a few years later.

"I grew up in Linwood,” said Becky Osmond. "I knew how wonderful the neighborhood was, and I wanted the same things for them that we had growing up.”

After Henry Morse’s death, the home became — for a time during the Depression — a boarding house operated by Nell Morse. The upstairs bedrooms were rented out, and a family was quartered in the basement.

When Nell Morse died, 6-year-old Becky Cooley moved into the house with her family. Tenal Cooley, her father, was personnel director for The Oklahoma Publishing Co., which publishes The Oklahoman, from 1946 through the early 1980s.

"When we moved in, I was in first grade at Linwood Elementary,” Osmond recalled. Nancy Cooley, her mother, had attended Linwood, as did Kadie (Cooley) Ramsay.

It was during that change of occupancy, in 1953, that the home received the bulk of its modernization.

The house’s original red brick support piers were crumbling and had to be removed. A section of the wrap-around porch was enclosed, and aging shingles were covered in siding. The original barn and driveway on the property were taken out, and a double garage and driveway were put in.

Nancy Cooley, after living in the house since 1953, moved into assisted living in 2008.

"The house had some very ‘groovy’ touches,” Kadie Ramsay said. "We had to strip a lot of very ’60s wallpaper. She (Ramsay’s grandmother) even had it on the ceilings.”

To bring the home’s aesthetics back in line with its Craftsman heritage, the Ramsays retiled, repainted and textured the walls in many of the rooms.

Entering the house today is almost like stepping through a 100-year time warp. The original leaded-glass oak front door heralds the home’s original oak trim, floors, fixtures and built-ins. Even the dining room table, an oval mission-oak piece with claw feet, is original.

Upstairs are more distinctive yet practical touches: a sleeping porch now used as a playroom; a servant’s buzzer; a laundry chute.

"We used to slide down it all the way to the basement,” Osmond recalled.

Ramsay and her sisters, on visits to her grandmother’s house, did the same.

"But I’m in no hurry for Presley and Avery to find out about it,” she said with a laugh.

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