Mansions at Armour and Main gradually repurposed, replaced

The Henry Fowler residence once stood at the corner of se corner of Main and Armour, serving as a union hall after 1940 and demolished in 1995. Today’s historical post looks at the block from Armour to 36th Street, from Main to Walnut, a ...

Hyde Park Block Responded to Changing Residential Trends

  The Alexander Hamilton Apartments, seen in this 1949 Kansas City Star drawing,  were built during the post-war housing crisis. The 70 apartments offered much needed homes in an era where Kansas City residents were being urged to share ...

In 1923, Work Began on First Block of Country Club Plaza

The Mill Creek Building, on the first block to be developed by J.C. Nichols for his Country Club Plaza in 1923, was designed to echo features of older California buildings. The block between Mill Creek Parkway and Wyandotte from 47th to W. 46th ...

A block dominated by churches in Old Westport

Two churches, Our Lady of Good Counsel and Westport Methodist, dominate this block of the Valentine neighborhood just north of Westport. Many churches moved to Midtown in the early 1900s as their congregations moved south. This photo is from ...

1932 arson destroyed fine old Broadway residential hotel

This early drawing of the McGee home, later the Rochambeau Hotel, is one of the few publicly-available images of the important mansion that stood at 37th and Broadway, near the site of the current Uptown Theater. Built by Kansas City pioneer ...

Plaza homes replaced by “modern” apartments as Plaza developed

While families came and went and homes were replaced with apartment buildings, the Charles McCallum family lived on this Plaza Westport block from at least the 1920s to the 1940s. McCallum was a Scottish-born carpenter and his widowed son, also ...

Westport’s oldest settlers fiddled and danced at Little’s Hall

If you look closely at the leaded glass on the old Broadway Hardware building on Westport Road, you can make out the name “Little’s Hall.” The location was a popular spot in the early 1900s, hosting political events, dances and club meetings. ...

Valentine Road history: mansions, churches – and a plus-sized dress shop

As Midtown was developing, there was tension along Valentine Road east of Summit between developers and those who wanted the area to remain single-family. Valentine Road between Broadway and Southwest Trafficway has been home to Kansas City ...

Long-forgotten L.A. Allen home stood at Valentine and Broadway

The L.A. Allen home at the southwest corner of Valentine and Broadway as it looked in 1900. The site, now the location of the Uptown Theater, housed the large pioneer Allen family only for a short time. Then, savvy real estate investors foresaw ...

From the archives: Armour Boulevard history

Drugstore at the corner of Armour and Troost The same block today The businesses that once lined the southeast corner of Armour and Troost are mostly gone now, with the remaining ones boarded up. But in earlier days, the block from Armour south ...