Ask artist Maddie Yosch what Clinton landmark is her favorite, and she’ll tell you the Delozier Building. The former Henry County Bank, at 201 W. Franklin, was built in 1887 and also served as the post office. In 1994, it was donated by the Delozier family to become part of the Henry County Museum and Performing Arts Complex.
The Delozier Building is one of the local landmarks featured in the second set of the greeting cards Maddie has created as a fundraiser for the Henry County Museum.
“I did the first set two years ago,” she said. “This year’s set has different buildings, except for the Dorman House, which is a different perspective.”
Also a favorite of Maddie’s is the ante-bellum Dorman House, the oldest two-story brick residence in Clinton. The other buildings illustrated on this year’s cards are the former bank building at Main and Franklin, now the home of Glasscock Jewelry Corner, and the Henry County Courthouse, depicted with its original third-floor tower.
“The courthouse was the most challenging for me,” Maddie said, “because I had never seen it with the tower, and I was working from black and white photographs.”
The courthouse, completed in 1893, originally had a third floor, which consisted of one room topped with a 40-foot tower. Built of stucco and copper, the tower began leaking only a few months after it was completed, and in 1969, the whole third floor of the courthouse had to be removed.
The daughter of Debbie and Nathan Bettencourt, Maddie moved to Clinton when she started first grade, about 25 years after the third floor of the courthouse was removed. She graduated from Clinton High School in 2007 and attended Central Missouri University, where she earned a degree in interior design.
She lived for a short time in St. Louis after college, she said, then moved to Osage Beach, where she used her interior design skills to sell flooring at Menard’s. That’s where she met Jim Yosch, who was the cabinets and appliances department manager. They married eight years ago and moved to Omaha, Neb., when Jim was promoted to a general manager.
In Omaha, Maddie works at Nebraska Furniture Mart, where she started in visual merchandising. She is now an event planner, making arrangements for corporate and off-site events. The couple’s son, Seeley, turned 6 in September. Maddie’s mother, Debbie, is from Omaha, Maddie said, so she has family there as well as in Clinton, whom she was visiting last weekend for Thanksgiving.
Maddie also does furniture refinishing and upholstery, and DIYs projects at home. Her taste leans towards Arts and Crafts in residential architecture, she said, and Art Deco and Art Nouveau in commercial buildings.
To recreate the classic Clinton landmarks for the cards, Maddie used rendering markers on tracing paper, which gives the effect of water-color. Then she goes over the markers with a black ink pen, adding outlines and shadowing, and paints in the snow, giving the cards a holiday look. The cards have no message inside, so can be used for holidays or for other occasions, and especially fitting for sending well-wishes to former Clinton residents or classmates. Each card has information about the building’s history on the back.
The original depictions of the buildings are 8” by 10.” Maddie photographs the artwork, crops the pictures, and emails them to Suzanne Bush, the Henry County Museum director, who sends them to Adkins Printing, where the cards are produced.
“I enjoy doing them,” Maddie said. “I hope I can keep doing this as long as it’s needed. It’s for a great cause.”
In addition to donating her talents to create art for the cards, Maddie is donating the originals to the museum, which will be sold at a silent auction next summer.
Last September, Maddie got a tour of the Dorman House, which is undergoing a three-stage renovation, plus a private tour of the museum. The exterior of the Delozier Building has also had a facelift by a stone mason.
Saving the Dorman House, which had serious structural issues, has put a major dent in the HC Historical Society’s reserves in the past year. The HCHS also owns and maintains the 1887 Anheuser-Busch Building next to the Delozier Building, the adjacent Adair Annex, with its art exhibits and 1900-era walk-through village, the Exchange Building, and across the street, a dog-trot log cabin, a one-room schoolhouse and other buildings on the Homestead, which replicates a mid-1800s Missouri farmstead and is used for children’s programs, hosts school groups studying Missouri History, and for Old Settlers Day.
The museum is not underwritten by the county, but is funded by membership fees in the Henry County Historical Society, which operates the museum, and by museum entrance fees, donations, corporate sponsorships, building rentals and fundraisers. The next fundraising event for the Dorman House is a three-course Valentine’s Day Dinner on Feb. 14 in the Delozier Building. Tickets are $25 a person, $45 a couple, with a cash bar.
To see a photograph of the Henry County Courthouse, surrounded by horse and buggies, with its third story intact, go to the Henry County Museum’s website, hcmomuseum.org website. A set of 12 cards, three of each historic building plus envelopes, is $20, is available in the Henry County Museum gift shop, in the Annex at 203 W. Franklin. The museum is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
