Row House Buildings

Missouri and Kansas added several thousands of miles of railway tracks during the 1880s, which coincided with a population boom for the Kansas City area. Construction of the Row House Buildings occurred in 1888 at the height of the boom (and just before a bust put a damper on the growth during the following decade). The population boom also coincided with a building boom, much of it predicated on out-of-town speculators investing in Kansas City construction. Although a railway laborer technically built The Row House Building, it's likely he served as a representative for one of those out-of-town speculators. The Row House Buildings existed as one of several row house structures to emerge during the 1880s in Kansas City, many of which enjoyed a Queen Anne design; very few have survived into the twenty-first century.

The Row House Buildings comprising 1-3 & 5-7 East 34th street and 3401 Main Street in the Westport district is a rare surviving example of row house architecture in Kansas City. The Row House Buildings (circa 1888) exemplifies the Queen Anne style design and includes Eastlake style elements, represented by the irregularity of its plan, its variety of texture, and its use of many bays and roof shapes. Row house buildings of this design grew popular during Kansas City's 1880s population and building boom. 

People flooded to Kansas City, MO and westward into Kansas during the 1880s (the population of Kansas City doubled between 1880 and 1890). The growth coincided with a tremendous railroad expansion from Missouri into Kansas as many Americans moved westward. Many of course, chose to stay in Kansas City as job opportunities grew. The Row House Buildings emerged in 1888 at the height of the boom. At the time of its construction, the buildings stood in what was then Westport, Missouri. It formed an integral part of a residential area located outside the city limits of Kansas City, similar to present-day suburbs. Kansas City annexed Westport in 1899. 

Although George W. Craig, a laborer for the Metropolitan Streetcar Railway Company, technically built in 1888 the Row House Buildings (located on the southeast corner of East 34th Street and Main Street), it is doubtful that he funded the project. A laborer for a streetcar railway company would probably not have the financial means to build such a sizable structure. Craig likely represented an out-of-state speculator (individual or firm), a common occurrence during Kansa City's building boom of the 1880s. Speculators and investing grew rampant during the 1880s, part of an overall cycle of booms and busts that grew prevalent in the Plains during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Becker, Linda F. "Nomination Form: Row House Building." National Register of Historic Places. mo.gov. 1978. https://dnr.mo.gov/shpo/nps-nr/78001658.pdf. 

De Bres, K. "Kansas City Urban Sites: Historical and Modern." Papers and Proceedings of the Applied Geography Conference 19 (1996): 299–305. 

Miner, Craig. "A Place of Boom and Bust: Hard Times Come to Kansas." Kansas History: A Journal of the Plains States 34 (2011): 70-79. https://www.kshs.org/publicat/history/2011spring_miner.pdf.