A recent tour by the Historic Kansas City Foundation highlighted Art Deco architecture in Kansas City. Many of the most important examples of right here in MIdtown. In the United States, the popularity of Art Deco architecture stemmed from the 1925 World’s Fair in Paris and spread through the late 1920s and early 30s in Kansas City.
posted by Joe Lambe
Fans of great architecture don’t need to leave the ‘hood to see some fine Art Deco buildings. In fact, two Art Deco tours hosted by the Historic Kansas City Foundation sold out last month. The tours came on the heels of two popular lectures by Architect Richard Farnan at the Kansas City Public Library. Farnan highlighted Kansas City’s Art Deco heritage in downtown buildings.
In the United States, the popularity of Art Deco architecture stemmed from the 1925 World’s Fair in Paris. Its popularity hit Kansas City in the late 1920s and early 30s.
Experts say the Deco look — which did not get its formal name until the 1960s — featured angular, straight, severe and often geometric lines with ornamentation such as color, glass, ironwork and terra cotta. It took old styles and forms and made them modern in ways that meshed with sleek automobiles and the Jazz Age.
“The Art Deco building often played a sort of game, contrasting the earthbound, even monumental, nature of the structure with the fragility and thinness of its exterior surfaces,” author David Gebbard wrote in The National Trust Guide to Art Deco in America.
A Historic Kansas City Foundation bus tour last month went to sites in Downtown and Midtown. Downtown, massive Deco structures include the Power and Light Building, City Hall, the Jackson County Courthouse and Municipal Auditorium. But many smaller yet equally interesting Deco buildings dot Midtown.
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