Do you recognize this Midtown street before 1920?

Photo Courtesy Kansas City Public Library, Missouri Valley Special Collections.

Like other commercial corridors in Midtown today, this street started its life as a residential area. But in the 1920s, it evolved into the commercial corridor it is today, with businesses and apartments taking the place of stately homes that had once stood along it.

If you guess it was Broadway Boulevard, you’d be correct. The photo above shows Broadway in 1917, right where the Kansas City Life Insurance Company’s large headquarters today dominates the west side of Broadway at Armour Boulevard.

Its site was once the location of the large home owned by George W. Jones (photo above). In 1920, the Kansas City Star reported the big stone house had more than 20 rooms and was one of the largest residential properties in Kansas City.

But Broadway was changing. In 1921, Dr. J.J. Deaner saw potential in the old Jones home and bought it for $80,000. He then spent an additional $30,000 altering it to create the Deaner Dental Institute in the old house.

Kansas City Life Insurance headquarters in the 1920s. Courtesy Kansas City Public Library – Missouri Valley Special Collections.

Then, the Star reported, Kansas City Life Insurance, founded in 1895, began looking around for a site with “sunshine and open air” to replace its downtown headquarters. It saw the Jones estate in a new light.

“There is a new appreciation of Broadway values over a year ago,’ a realtor commented yesterday (as quoted in the Star article). “The fact remains, however, that Dr. Deaner got a bargain a year ago, a bargain overlooked by local investors because they saw the Jones tract only as an antiquated old residence. It is a hard fact that a stranger sees a city with clearer eyes than a local man whose eyes are blurred by the past.”

Kansas City Life bought the five acre property, razed the old home and built a new headquarters which opened in 1924.