Neighborhoods

Midtown has more than two dozen unique neighborhoods and several commercial and cultural districts. No two are alike. They are all interesting.

Middle-class Families Settled in Southmoreland on Hyde Park Avenue (McGee Street)

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Railroad engineers, carpenters, and schoolteachers made up the middle-class neighborhood along the east side of the 4100 block of McGee in the early 1900s. Most of the block’s families had been born in the United States, although a handful had recently come from Ireland, Sweden, or Germany. Children attended the nearby Rollins school. One house […]

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Valentine’s Waverly Way Has Disappeared

1 Comment / Lost and Endangered, Neighborhoods / By

Waverly Way – once a street lined with residences and apartment buildings in a thriving Midtown – has now disappeared. Even its name is gone. The street is now called W. 34th Terrace, sandwiched in between the vacant MGE Building at 34th and Broadway and the Metropolitan Community College Health Sciences Institute just to the south.

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Why Was There a Huge Steel Tank at 33rd and Harrison in the 1920s?

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By Mary Jo Draper I recently stumbled upon a vintage postcard that showed a huge metal structure called “the tank” at 3310 Harrison. A little research turned up a fascinating story about the tank and the reaction of the neighbors in the North Hyde Park neighborhood when it was in place in the 1920s. The

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A Block Dominated by Churches in Old Westport

1 Comment / Gathering Places, Neighborhoods / By

A recent historical survey of Westport suggested that the Our Lady of Good Counsel Church on this block of the Valentine neighborhood might be a candidate for the historic register. The church and the rest of the block help tell the story of how churches followed their congregations as residential development moved from downtown to the

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Do You Know the History of the Center City Neighborhood?

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originally published April 6, 2015 In the early 1900s, developers such as the Cowherd Brothers were building “modern” middle-class homes across what is now Midtown. One area where development was occurring was today’s Center City neighborhood, from 31st to Armour Boulevard and Troost to the Paseo. Center City’s strategic location made it attractive to people looking

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Westwood Park Homes Offered Fireplaces, Garages, and Rec Rooms

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Many of the homes on this Westwood Park block, between Liberty and Terrace from W. 48th to W. 49th, were new in the early 1930s. They offered all the comforts many Midtown families sought, including newspaper ads to rent or sell modest bungalows that boasted fireplaces, garages, and recreation rooms. Today, the block bounded by

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Streetcar Expansion Spurred Development of This Squier Park Block

Leave a Comment / Big Changes, Neighborhoods / By

Many parts of what is now Midtown Kansas City are called “streetcar suburbs,” and this block of the Squier Park neighborhood from Forest to Tracy between 36th and 37th demonstrates the impact the transit system had upon development. In the late 1800s, today’s Midtown was a mixture of family farms and new subdivisions that had

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NE Corner of 39th Street and Summit Once Housed Local Shops, Apartments

1 Comment / Big Changes, Neighborhoods / By

One of the major transformations in Midtown in the mid-1900s was the construction of Southwest Trafficway, a traffic artery meant to carry downtown business people and shoppers to their homes in the suburbs. Although less congested routes were clearly needed at the time, an unintended consequence was the transformation of Summit from a local business

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Roanoke Property Owners Took a Stand Against Apartments in 1920s

1 Comment / Big Changes, Neighborhoods / By

In the 1920s, the owners of single-family homes in the Roanoke neighborhood took a stand against the growing number of apartment buildings being erected across the city. Their concern about the development of multifamily housing has been a constant theme throughout Midtown’s history.  Today, the block bounded by Valentine and W. 37th, Summit (Southwest Trafficway),

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