Do you ever get that deja vu feeling while traveling around Kansas City? Even as constituent neighborhoods of the urban core are defined by their diversity, similarities abound among much of the city’s residential architecture. Without discounting the variation in building styles and patterns over a century of development, an informed observer knows that familiar […]
Repeated Building Designs: Colonnaded Apartments Read More »
Anyone who has combed through reams of Jackson County property records knows that many of Kansas City’s early subdivisions bear the family name of prior owners–often those who, before the advent of development pressures from an expanding city center, had occupied the land themselves. One can all too easily assume, looking in the rearview from
Mary Whiteside, Citizen Entrepeneur Read More »
A new placard has been installed on a 48th St. building located just west of the Country Club Plaza. How might a new sign, simply denoting “708 W 48th St / COTTESBROOK APARTMENTS,” amount to a newsworthy story? The sign, situated on a (comparatively) sleepy cut-through between the commercial district and Roanoke Parkway, is significant
Name Restored to West Plaza, Nelle Peters-Designed Building Read More »
4425 Terrace today, viewed from the west. Captured March 2025. Like most American cities, Kansas City suffered a lull of private home-building throughout the decade of the 1930s. Outside of the impressive public construction projects associated with the Ten-Year Plan, a scant few neighborhoods saw extensive development during this period, and many commercial and industrial
The Emil Rohrer Home: A Landmark of Concrete Construction Read More »