Midtown has more than two dozen unique neighborhoods and several commercial and cultural districts. No two are alike. They are all interesting.
Modern offices and commercial buildings today dominate the streetscape just east of the Country Club Plaza, where small homes and apartment buildings stood 75 years ago. The block of the Country Club Plaza (from Emanuel Cleaver Boulevard to Brush Creek, from Grand to McGee) just east of Winstead’s is the subject of today’s look back […]
Houses Once Filled in Winstead’s Block Read More »
(The latest Rockhill Neighborhood Association newsletter contained two articles with some interesting neighborhood history; they’ve given us permission to reprint them. Yesterday, Rockhill resident Todi Hughes profiled Laura Nelson Kirkwood. Today, UMKC Professor Emeritus Robert M. Farnsworth shares a story at the home of I.H. Kirkwood, later the Rockhill Tennis Club, which came to his
President Theodore Roosevelt, Race Relations and the Kirkwood Home Read More »
(The latest Rockhill Neighborhood Association newsletter contained two articles with some interesting neighborhood history, and they’ve given us permission to reprint them. Today, Rockhill resident Todi Hughes profiles Laura Nelson Kirkwood. Tomorrow, the link between President Theodore Roosevelt, race relations and the Kirkwood house in Rockhill.) Reprinted with permission from the Rockhill Neighborhood newsletter by
The Legacy of Laura Nelson Kirkwood Read More »
The Southwell Building, an art deco masterpiece at 3941 Main and home to Harlings, takes its name from a family that made its mark on Midtown – and across the country. Little remembered today, George Southwell was a composer of band music who played in bandstands in small towns across the country. The Kansas City
Remembering George Southwell of Main Street, the King of Band Music Read More »
A reader named James Brumwell recently sent us this photo of his aunt and her husband in front of their Crestwood home in 1922. Valerie and Clare Chapman, seen here in another 1922 photo, lived at 5510 Crestwood Drive when the neighborhood young. Crestwood has a unique history as a Midtown neighborhood; it was intended
Crestwood Has Remained The Same Over the Decades Read More »
In 1910, as the desire for new “modern” homes in Midtown Kansas City continued, an “old fashioned, two-story” frame home at 39th and Gillham was being prepared to be moved. The Kansas City Times published this sketch and told the story on Feb. 4 of that year: An Old House Being Moved: Henry C. Flower
A Dairy Farm Became Notre Dame de Sion Read More »
There was a day in Kansas City when almost every kid could walk to an ice cream parlor like this one at 4338 Troost. That memory is preserved in a series of 1940 photographs showing every home and commercial business on the 4300 blocks of Troost and Harrison that year. This area of South Hyde Park developed in
South Hyde Park Became a “Streetcar Suburb” Read More »
Around 52nd and Brookside, the area was known for its rustic pedestrian bridges that people used to cross a brook to catch the streetcar. It was also the home of Visitation Parish – and the site of the second home that its developer, J.C. Nichols, built for his own family. Visitation Church around 1920. Indeed, the Visitation
Early Days in Brookside Read More »
On the corner of 43rd Street and Tracy, the renovated Bancroft School is bringing new life to the Manheim Park neighborhood. With plans for new infill housing in the area and residents rehabbing older homes, people are rediscovering Manheim, a neighborhood with a lot of history. The Bancroft School has been converted into apartments. It
Bancroft School Area Full of Memories Read More »
The area between 29th and 30th Streets along Gillham Road is popular today, with refurbished apartment buildings, coffee shops, and new construction projects in the works. A resident who lives near the Filling Station – a coffee shop in the triangle between Gillham, 30th, and McGee Street Trafficway – asked what we knew about the area, specifically
Car Dealers Dominated 30th and Gillham Read More »