Introduction: Library District & Quality Hill

Hi there. I’m Nathaniel, and I’m thrilled to get to be your guide through Quality Hill, the oldest residential neighborhood in Kansas City. The journey you’re about to take is not a straight line. It will bounce around, between the 19th century and the 21st, as it attempts to trace a weary line through the city’s past. The winding is intentional. As much as Kansas City is its own unique place, with its own particular history, it also is not. KC is a bellwether, and a rearguard, and a rough reflection, mirroring the twists and turns that America has made over the last 200 odd years of revolution and retreat. 

A quick bit of house-keeping before we begin. First, you’ll be walking for most of this 40 minute tour, and you’ll have about a 20-minute walk back afterwards. So if you don’t have something to drink with you, it may be worth hopping to the coffee shop in the Library to buy something. Okay. Back to the tour.

Let’s open with a question. Why is Kansas City located where it is? Why is it here? The short answer is that you’re standing towards the end of a highway of sorts. This is the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri Rivers, near the end of the line for major westward river traffic this side of the Mississippi. Which meant it was the jumping off point for both the Oregon & Santa Fe trails. When there’s no more water, you gotta hoof it. Later on, the first railroad crossing for the Missouri River was located here, and eventually it became the westernmost industrial outpost ahead of the great grass seas of the high plains. 

In other words, Kansas City saw a lot of through traffic. Its rapid expansion is represented in the way the city looks today. At points beautiful, and in other places barren. The logical and practical set beside the absurd and the bizarre. A lot like America as a whole. 

Let’s set off. 

With 10th street on your right, walk up the sidewalk, away from Main Street. Westward-ho!

As you walk, look across the street to the beautiful building of columns and limestone.

This is the Kansas City Public Library’s Central Branch. Restored and remodeled in 2004 from the old bones of the First National Bank Building. It’s a relic of the gilded age, and the architectural grandeur, some might even say hubris, that marked that period in American history. It’s also an oddity, a hybrid, a 20 year old building stacked on top of a 100 year old building. While the front reflects the grandiose neo classical style of the gilded age, the top two floors are a modern hodgepodge of hard right angles and passive solar design. It’s a fitting monument to the confused American ethic, with one foot in the past and the other always pressing towards the future.