Neighborhoods - Midtown KC Post

The Legacy of Laura Nelson Kirkwood

3 Comments / Neighborhoods / By midtownkcposter

(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 […]

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Remembering George Southwell of Main Street, the King of Band Music

2 Comments / Neighborhoods, People / By midtownkcposter

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

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Crestwood Has Remained The Same Over the Decades

1 Comment / Neighborhoods / By midtownkcposter

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

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A Dairy Farm Became Notre Dame de Sion

Leave a Comment / Gathering Places, Neighborhoods / By midtownkcposter

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

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South Hyde Park Became a “Streetcar Suburb”

1 Comment / Essential Character, Neighborhoods / By midtownkcposter

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

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Early Days in Brookside

2 Comments / Neighborhoods / By midtownkcposter

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

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Bancroft School Area Full of Memories

29 Comments / Gathering Places, Neighborhoods / By midtownkcposter

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

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Car Dealers Dominated 30th and Gillham

2 Comments / Neighborhoods / By midtownkcposter

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

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Book Details History of Country Club District

Leave a Comment / Neighborhoods, People, Reading List / By midtownkcposter

As time passes, people in Armour Hills and Mission Hills forget what links them to so many other neighborhoods. “After 110 years of existence, the identity of the Country Club District is starting to fade,” said LaDene Morton. She spoke at the Kansas City library at the Plaza last week about her new book, The Country

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Developer Said Don’t Waste Money on Cigars – Buy a Home Instead

Leave a Comment / Good Stories, Neighborhoods / By midtownkcposter

Instead of drinking away their paychecks, developer S.H. Taylor advised working citizens of Kansas City to invest in real estate. In an 1887 advertisement in the Kansas City Star, Taylor listed multiple reasons that buying a home in his Bunker Hill neighborhood was better than frittering money away on cocktails or cigars. According to Taylor,

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