Kansas City Southern Railway Headquarters (1914 to 2002)

The Kansas City Southern (KCS) Headquarters serves as a reminder of the centrality of the railroad to the growth of Kansas City, as well as a monument to the vision and ambition of Arthur Edward Stilwell who sought to connect Kansas City to the Gulf of Mexico. The line spurred the creation of more than thirty towns in the process, including Port Arthur, Texas, and was essential to the growth of Kansas City. Financial issues forced Stillwell to allow investors to take over the railroad's operation in 1901, but under their direction, the railroad line grew into the success that Stilwell envisioned when he was a young man living in Connecticut. This historic building served as the KCS Headquarters from 1914 to 2002, when the railroad company moved to a new facility located near the original structure.

Stilwell developed an interest in railroads at an early age through the influence of his grandfather, Hamblin, a builder of the Erie Canal and one of the founders of the New York Railroad. While a young man working in an insurance office in Hartford, Connecticut, Arthur researched the shipping of produce and grain from Kansas City to the Atlantic coast. Stillwell discovered that the journey required 1,400 miles of rail line, while it would only take 800 miles to travel from Kansas City to the Gulf of Mexico where the vast amounts of farm products produced in the center of the country could be shipped to port cities. Stillwell dreamed of constructing a railway that connected Kansas City to the Gulf Coast, which he believed would be highly profitable. 

In 1879, Stilwell, who was only 20 years old, moved to Kansas City with the dream of building vast a railroad and shipping network that could connect the center of the nation with eastern markets. He had no money, so he found a job working in a print shop that specialized in railroad timetables as a way of learning more about the industry and building connections. By the mid-1880s, Stilwell used his knowledge of insurance and business to establish a company that appeared so promising that the first person to buy stock in Stilwell's company was former Kansas City mayor E. L. Martin. The connections Stillwell developed while in his 20s helped him build a network and partnership that led to the creation of the Kansas City Suburban Beltline Railroad. 

In 1886, Martin informed Stilwell that he held an option on the construction rights for a belt line railroad through Kansas City. However, Martin only had two days remaining to raise money or forfeit the rights. Stilwell convinced a contractor to stand by and prepare to grade track at a moment's notice. Next, Stilwell traveled to Philadelphia and met with one of the leading bankers, A. J. Drexel. Stilwell's pitch to Drexel worked like a charm because Drexel bought shares and provided enough financial backing for Stilwell and Martin to begin construction of the Kansas City Suburban Beltline Railroad in 1887. 

By 1890, with Martin as company president and Stilwell as vice president, the Kansas City Suburban Beltline Railroad consisted of forty miles of track. The railway's success boosted the Jackson County economy by connecting all the city's principal railroads and providing the city with its first passenger terminal, Grand Central Station. The nascent railway supplied valuable switching services to packing houses, grain elevators, mills, and stockyards. Lastly, the Suburban Beltline led to the construction of Fairmount Amusement Park, a popular destination for families that helped to spur passenger travel.

The immediate success realized by Martin and Stilwell inspired the duo to extend the railways. The duo's first plan involved expanding regions rich in resources such as lead, zinc, and coal. Stilwell and Martin devised a plan to extend tracks to Pittsburg, Kansas, and Joplin, Missouri. Stilwell raised $2.5 million in six months to finance the project. In 1891, their idea came to fruition as Stilwell and Martin organized the Kansas City, Nevada, and Fort Smith Railroad with a track that reached Hume, Missouri, and then Joplin, Missouri, by 1893. 

despite this early success, Stillwell remained focused on his goal of connecting Kansas City with the Gulf of Mexico. A critical turning point came when Stilwell acquired the Texarkana and Fort Smith Railroad and subsequently reorganized it as the Kansas City, Pittsburgh, and Gulf Railroad. Stilwell, Martin, and their growing number of supporters did not stop there, obtaining other small lines as the preferred method of growth: The Kansas City, Fort Smith, and Southern reached Sulphur Springs, Arkansas, by the time Stilwell purchased it. Stilwell's dream of a Kansas City to Gulf of Mexico railway neared completion, but two gaps in the route remained, and there was no track to purchase when the financial crisis known today as the Panic of 1893 occurred. Facing economic uncertainty and watching numerous American railroads go into receivership, Stilwell convinced a foreign investor from Holland to buy $3 million of stock in the Kansas City, Pittsburg, and Gulf Railroad; the railway resumed its expansion plans as a result.

As the railroad construction extended further into Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas, town creation followed. As a sign of appreciation, Stilwell named towns after the Dutch investors who saved the company. Town names include DeQueen, Mena, and Vandervoort in Arkansas, along with Bloomberg, Texas; Hornbeck and DeRidder, Louisiana; and Amsterdam, Missouri. When financial difficulties arose again in 1896, Stilwell obtained a new investment from famed railroad entrepreneur George M. Pullman, one of the most influential entrepreneurs in the railroad industry who had once worked as a mule driver for Stilwell's grandfather on the Erie Canal. 

In 1900, Stilwell avoided financial disaster when, on a hunch, he convinced the board to refuse an offer to purchase the Houston, East, West Texas Line that ran from Shreveport to Houston and Galveston, Texas. The day after they rejected the deal, a hurricane destroyed much of Galveston and killed 5,000 of the town's residents. Stillwell then persuaded the board of directors to build a city on the shore of Lake Sabine, which offered a landlocked harbor safe from Gulf storms with access through a canal deep enough to service ocean-going vessels connected to the Gulf of Mexico; they named the new town, Port Arthur, Texas, after Arthur Stilwell. 

After establishing Port Arthur, the company purchased another 40,000 acres of land that proved suitable for rice farming and named the town Nederland, Texas. The company arranged to have Dutch families migrate from the Netherlands to Nederland Texas to cultivate farmland, thereby creating markets along the new rail line. Meanwhile, the company built grain elevators and installed equipment to transfer coal, coke, and soda ash directly from the railroad cars to the waiting cargo ships at Port Arthur. 

In 1897, builders drove the final railroad stake into the tracks that ultimately connected Kansas City to the Gulf of Mexico through Port Arthur. After eighteen years, Stillwell's dream became a reality. However, the peak of Stilwell's success in achieving his goal proved short-lived. The lack of capital that Stillwell had navigated around created liabilities that limited the railroad's ability to invest in building the capacity to move cargo ad timber. Stilwell again looked to Pullman for help, and the entrepreneur pledged to supply Stiwell with $3 million to purchase new rail cars. Pullman died shortly after the verbal agreement, and the deal never came to completion. By 1900, the Kansas City, Pittsburg, and Gulf went into receivership and without the means to raise capital one last time, the company Stillwell built was reorganized under the leadership of three leading financiers who renamed the railroad enterprise the Kansas City Southern Railway Company (KCS).

Stilwell established the Kansas City, Mexico, and Orient Railroad (KCM&O), which later became part of the Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe System. He spent the next twenty-eight years focused on developing the new railway line until he died in September 1928; his wife chose to take her own life two weeks after Arthur's passing. 

Meanwhile, In 1901 America's first oil gusher took place in Beaumont, Texas, which meant new revenue sources for the KCS. Moreover, along with transporting crops, southern pine, and hardwood timber, the railroad moved petroleum products, which allowed KCS remain profitable despite a financial depression that emerged in 1907. KCS also benefited from the influx of migrants into Oklahoma, which became a state in 1907. By 1913, KCS began constructing the now-historic national headquarters at 114 W. 11th Street. 

While store areas occupied the first floor, the building design catered to the needs of the railroad company, housing its accounting, sales, and land acquisition departments, as well as corporate executives. The company employed nearly four hundred people when the new building opened. In 1924, the company added two of the three possible floors to the existing six completed in 1914. The railroad company continued to exist as an impactful and prosperous operation into the mid-twentieth century. In 1941, William N. Deramus, who began in 1909 as a telegraph operator for the company, was appointed president. (His two sons eventually followed in his footsteps.) Deramus oversaw the transition to diesel power and the development of radiotelephone communications. 

In the end, Stilwell and the development of KCS contributed to the creation of numerous new cities and businesses along its 1,711 miles of track. The city of Port Arthur, Texas, now functions as one of the nation's largest shipping ports, helped in part by the discovery of oil a few years after Stilwell had to move on from the railway he built. The railroad company also benefited from concurrent development of the cities, industries, and railway operations, demonstrated by the Kansas City headquarters that served the company for nearly ninety years.

"Arthur E. Stilwell." Pullman History Site. pullman-museum.org. Accessed September 12, 2022. https://www.pullman-museum.org/theCompany/stillwell.html.

"Arthur Stilwell." Museum of the Gulf Coast. Accessed September 12, 2022. https://www.museumofthegulfcoast.org/arthur-stilwell.

Barnett, William C. "A Tale of Two Texas Cities: Houston, the Industrial Metropolis, and Galveston, the Island Getaway" in Energy Metropolis: An Environmental History of Houston and the Gulf Coast, edited by Martin V Melosi and Joseph A. Pratt, pp 185-204. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007. 

Bryant, Keith L. "Arthur E. Stilwell and the Founding of Port Arthur: A Case of Entrepreneurial Error." The Southwestern Historical Quarterly 75, no. 1 (1971): 19–40. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30236683.

Millstein, Cydney E. and Mary Ann Warfield. "Registration Form: Kansas City Southern Railway Building." National Register of Historic Places. mostateparks.com. 2004. https://mostateparks.com/sites/mostateparks/files/KC%20Southern%20Railway%20Bldg.pdf. 

Rochelle, John R. "The Founding of a Port City: Port Arthur, Texas." East Texas Historical Journal 13, no. 2, Article 6 (1975): 25-35. https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/ethj/vol13/iss2/6.

Rowland, Landon H. "Entrepreneur of the Gilded Age: Arthur Stilwell in Kansas City.". Charles N. Kimball Lecture. Western Historical Manuscript Collection, Kansas City. October 27, 2003. https://shsmo.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/kansas-city/kimball/Rowland-10-27-2003.pdf.