Old Hyde Park’s “Chinese Puzzle”

In what is today the Old Hyde Park neighborhood, a group of French nuns once cared for Kansas City’s oldest residents, and folks flocked to running tracks, baseball, and athletic fields. It all took place around Locust Street from 31^st to 33^rd, in an area later called the “Chinese puzzle” because its confusing dead-end streets often trapped strangers.

The area began as the site of the Widow and Orphans Home of Missouri, but in 1882, the Little Sisters of the Poor opened the St. Alexis Home for the Aged. The order had started in France with its sisters vowing to care for the aged. Kansas City’s Bishop Hogan urged them to come here, and by the turn of the 20^th century, the sisters were caring for 110 elderly residents in a home on a large tract of land.

The residents were Irish immigrants, war veterans, and others. The only requirement was that they were over 60 years of age, and even that rule was sometimes violated. “To enter there, one must be without funds, without means of support, without friends to support him,” The Kansas City Star reported on Dec. 25, 1910.

“When a man or woman beyond 60 is stricken with poverty and has no kin or worldly friend to turn to, the motto of the Little Sisters of the Poor bids them come and live in comfort and peace until the end,” it went on.

The sisters had no servants and depended entirely on charity. Two sisters went door to door each day, no matter the weather, asking residents for nickels and dimes. Others used a small black wagon to collect donations of food and discarded shoes, clothing, and hats. Most of the sisters spoke only French.

Those who lived in the home for the aged often spent their days on the ten-acre grounds. The women sewed colorful quilts and the men gardened on the site.

In 1907, the Sisters sold four acres to the Kansas City Athletic Club for its new grounds. The club had a two-story clubhouse, tennis courts, running tracks, and fields for baseball and football. A fire in 1923 destroyed the clubhouse.

But the site that had once been a secluded, restful place in the country came up against the movement south after the turn of the century. In 1918, the Kansas City Star referred to the area between 30^th and Armour, Gillham, and Broadway as the “Chinese puzzle, “a system of streets unlike any other section of the city. It has developed through various city administrations, which have given more consideration to the interests of individual property owners than to traffic needs. Streets begin anywhere and run nowhere.”

It said the area had 16 streets that dead-ended. ”There are sixteen chances for a stranger to drive into some resident’s front or back yard, the alternative is to turn into another yard.”

There was also a public outcry to continue developing Linwood Boulevard as a primary east-west connection. Linwood was part of the original Park and Boulevard Plan of 1893. The section from Troost to Gillham was created in 1900, but it was not until the 1920s when the land was cleared for the Linwood connection from  Gillham Road to Main Street, which went right through the grounds of the Little Sisters of the Poor Home for the Aged.

“Kansas City has won another victory for progress. The announcement that the way is now being cleared for the opening of Linwood Boulevard from Robert Gillham Road to Main Street is one of the very best triumphs for the city, as a matter of fact, in recent years,” the Star declared in 1921.

The victory for progress, however, was the end of the Home for the Aged in Midtown. In 1923, the Little Sisters of the Poor moved to 53^rd and Highland, where they operated their second home. They moved again in 1987 to the Jeanne Jugan Center at 8745 James A. Reed Road.

The area in a 1907 Tuttle and Pike Atlas of Kansas City.