Frank M. Sharp, a building contractor from Kansas City, moved to Joplin in 1890 to invest in zinc mining. He also worked as the manager for McNeal Machinery and president of Stewart Lumber. In 1909 Frank and his wife Nettie (daughter of Patrick Murphy) purchased the lot just north of 220 S Moffet, the new home of his business partner, Frank McNeal. The Sharps built a brick American Foursquare house similar to the McNeals’. Nettie reportedly fell in love with the Spanish Mission-Revival houses that were all the rage from 1915 through 1920s. The Sharps remodeled their house in the popular style, adding a pair of 3-story square towers separated by a shaped parapet and covering the walls with gray stucco.
In the late 1960s, the exterior stucco was covered with a ground-up pink marble mixture and drawn off to mimic brickwork—thus becoming known as “The Pink House.”
The John Wise House
