Western Union Telegraph Building in Kansas City

This historic Kansas City building was constructed for the Western Union Telegraph Company in 1920. In the early to mid-twentieth century, the company dominated wire communications in the United States and played a significant role in the technological evolution of communications. The company grew from transmitting and delivering telegrams to serving as an integral component of the national and worldwide long-distance communications business. In recent years, the company shifted its focus to facilitating the transfer of funds through wireless technology, reducing the need for regional offices such as this one. In recent years, this building has served as the home to a technology company, architects, and a restaurant.

As early as 1832, Samuel Morse, assisted by Alfred Vail, conducted successful experimental transmissions of messages across an electric wire. By 1837, Morse received a patent for their work, ushering in the era of the telegraph. In 1838, Morse perfected his sending and receiving code and organized Morse's Magnetic Telegraph Company. In 1843, Congress appropriated $30,000 for Morse's operation to to construct an experimental telegraph line along the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad's route from Washington, D.C. to Baltimore on May 24, 1844, Morse transmitted the world's first official telegraph message: "What Hath God Wrought." The Magnetic Telegraph Company completed the first commercial telegraph line in the spring of 1846 with the construction of a line between Washington, D.C. and New York City. Soon after, various companies formed and began constructing lines throughout the East Coast. In 1851, Hiram Sibley and a group of businessmen in New York established the New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company (NYMVPTC), the predecessor of Western Union, joining the more than fifty separate telegraph companies operating throughout the northeastern U.S.

Although the owners of Samuel Morse's patents licensed most of the telegraph lines, newly-formed companies utilized rival technologies. (The early Morse telegraph received recorded messages on paper tapes in dots and dashes. After 1856, operators learned to transcribe messages by sound/ear.) The new NYMVPTC company quickly established new lines, and they acquired and consolidated existing lines.

As a war between the states increasingly seemed likey after the election of President Lincoln, a need to extend telegraph service from coast to coast grew abundantly apparent. Before 1860, the only reliable communication service lay with the Pony Express and some independent wire services operating in California. But, a trip from Missouri to California took about ten days by horseback. So, the U.S. Congress passed the Pacific Telegraph Act to fund a transcontinental telegraph system, and NYMVPTC Western Union won the bid to develop it, renaming itself Western Union.

The company first consolidated the many small telegraph enterprises in California (and they absorbed them into the Western Union company), and then they had to formulate a plan to lay wires across the Plains and Mountains, a daunting task for sure. Supplies and materials came either by sea through San Francisco or by horse over the mountains. The company had to supply thousands of telegraph poles to workers in the almost treeless Great Plains, which usually meant transporting wood from the Pacific Northwest through the Rocky Mountains and to the Plains. Workers also had to handle encounters with sometimes hostile Sioux Warriors. 

Despite the challenges, Western Union linked the coasts via telegraph eight years before the Trans-Continental Railroad traversed the nation. On October 24, 1861, workers installed the final link in Salt Lake City, allowing instantaneous communication between Washington, D.C., and San Francisco for the first time. Stephen J. Field, California Chief Justice, sent the first transcontinental telegram to President Lincoln, predicting that the new telegraph network would help secure the loyalty of the western states to the Union during the Civil War. Indeed, the first telegraph messages came from the governors of Utah and California, who pledged their allegiance to the Union.

Over time, a symbiotic collaboration between the telegraph and railroad companies changed the culture of the United States, notably regarding standardized time. Before the late nineteenth century, trains dealt with scheduling confusion as no standardized means of measuring time existed. But, United States railroads began synchronizing their times with the Western Union time, as did cities with clock towers and the U.S Government, to name a few; the modern telling of time had been born. As the decades progressed, Western Union developed technologies to improve its performance and expand its use. For instance, ships at sea, the military, journalists, professional sporting organizations, and the stock exchanges in New York and Chicago found uses for telegraph communications. The telegraph evolved into one of the most significant aspects of social and commercial life in the U.S. 

The Western Union's history in Kansas City dates back to 1865, when the company established an office near the heart of Kansas City's commercial district. As Kansas City grew into a railroad hub, concurrent with the city's commercial and residential growth, telegraph communication needs exploded. Also, Kansas City's geographic location in the nation's center made it ideal for establishing a hub; hence, Western Union invested in Kansas City. By 1915, Western Union began planning a new facility in Kansas City and constructing infrastructure projects. In 1920, the company moved into the now-historic Western Union Telegraph Building. 

The design specifically catered to the needs of telegraph operations, with particular floors dedicated to detailed communication functions. The several hundred workers at the building enjoyed amenities like a kitchen and cafeteria, reading rooms, and a hospital. The design also allowed for newer technologies such as the teletype writing machine, which helped transmit messages from one hub to another much faster, as did the women on roller skates who carted messages among operators. 

By the mid-1940s, Western Union again chose Kansas City as one of its major regional centers for its new "push button" message relaying technology. The company invested $2 million in 1947 to retrofit the building as one of its largest switching centers in the country. In effect, the company brought an early computer to Kansas City, which occupied two Western Union building floors. The electronic switching system required approximately two hundred technicians and engineers working for nearly a year to install the new mass of electronic equipment that included three thousand miles of wire conductors.By the 1960s, the Western Union ended its national system of telegraph lines. The company replaced the lines with a wireless microwave telecommunications network.

Ambler. Cathy and Salix F. Schwenk. "Registration Form: Kansas City. Missouri Western Union Telegraph Building." National Register of Historic Places. mostateparks.com. 2012. https://mostateparks.com/sites/mostateparks/files/KC%2C%20Missouri%20Western%20Union%20Telegraph%20Bldg.pdf.

History.com Editors. "Western Union completes the first transcontinental telegraph line." A&E Television: History Channel. history.com. September 13, 2022. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/western-union-completes-the-first-transcontinental-telegraph-line.

Schwoch, James. Wired into Nature: The Telegraph and the North American Frontier. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2008.