The block between Main Street and Wyandotte, from 31st Street to 31st Terrace, never contained many homes but had several businesses that served Midtown residents. The block featured auto repair shops, an ice company, and a popular softball park.
As part of our Uncovering History Project, the Midtown KC Post is examining each block in Midtown. A set of 1940 tax assessment photos is available for many blocks.
A recent aerial photo of the block.
Main Street Storerooms, Signs, and Ambulances
From the earliest days, the corner of Main Street and Thirty-first Street was a key Kansas City corner, and even more so after the streetcar system made it an important transfer stop. In 1913, The Kansas City Star reported that 3102 Main Street “had been coveted for a long time by breweries and liquor dealers.” But parents of students attending Westport High School were concerned about the request for a liquor license there because students often transferred from one car line to another at this corner.
The Southside Improvement District in 1914 located an outdoor municipal market on the corner. The idea, a Jan. 27 Kansas City Star article said, was to create “a meeting place for the consumer and the farmer.”
At the south end of the block, the corner of 31st Terrace and Main Street was home for many years to the Kansas City Ambulance and Funeral Company, which advertised its services in 1914 for “sick and injured white patients”. It provided limousines to take convalescing patients to and from all depots.
From around 1914 through the 1940s, businesses came and went quickly in the shops that fronted Main Street. Storerooms were used for selling radios, tailoring, and an electric company, as well as undertaking rooms, a barber shop, and a wallpaper shop. From 1925 to the 1930s, a Piggly-Wiggly store there served the neighborhood.
From 1907 to the 1940s, the storerooms from 3110 to 3114 Main were home to a sanitary milk company, an apron shop, an auto livery, and a rubber manufacturing establishment. The garage at 3116-18 burned completely in 1920, leaving a vacant lot.
Other shops along Main Street in 1940 include the Electrical Advertising Company, which made neon signs.
Pla-Mor Skating and Ice Company
Continuing around the block on 31st Street (or Spring Street, as it was called earlier), the large Pla-Mor amusement center spilled over from the south side of 31st. It was described as an amusement center to cater “to those Kansas Citians who want clean, wholesome recreations.” The Pla-Mor complex included bowling alleys, a ballroom, a swimming pool, and a motion picture theater. In the late 1930s, this block drew crowds to the Pla-Mor softball park, where local leagues battled it out.
The Western Ice Service Company made ice available to Midtown homes.
The rest of the buildings on the block included the small house where rabbits were sold, the Regan Cleaning Supply Company, and several auto repair garages. In 1922, a six-plex at 15 W. 31st served as the Veil Maternity Hospital, offering “private, ethical, modern, homelike” aid to “unfortunate young women” who could have their babies there and get help with adoptions if they liked. By 1927, the building had been converted to furnished apartments with kitchenettes.
Historic photos courtesy Kansas City Public Library/Missouri Valley Special Collections.
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