Ancient & Imposing

Let’s stop here for a minute.

Here before you is the New York Life building, generally credited as the first skyscraper in the city. It was completed in 1890, a western outpost of the insurance giant’s growing inland empire. It carried with it the style of its place of origin; brownstone, crenelated, ornate and imposing. But it is hardly modernist, being an early skyscraper after all. No, its style is renaissance revival, towering over the old world but still built in its image. 

The building represents a vote of confidence in Kansas City. It was commissioned less than 20 years after the Hannibal Bridge had been completed, which cemented Kansas City as the center of economic activity within the larger region. Many of the early businesses that constituted the city’s rapid rise were only here because this is where the road led. If you build it, they will come. 

Turn left to cross Baltimore when safe. We’ll keep trekking westward along 9th street.

This is one of downtown Kansas City’s more beautiful blocks. To the north - or, right - at least. Look right at the building on the corner and you’ll see the bunker building, which originally housed the Western Newspaper Union, a supply company for print publications all throughout the midwest. It was finished in 1881, at a time when newspapers were the pre imminent form of information, and supply lines needed centralized distribution and coordination centers. 

Across the street, at the end of the block you’ll see the Old New England Building, another faithful investment by coastal interests in the promise of Kansas City. This was the headquarters of the New England Safe Deposit and Trust Company. They marked their property well. The corner window that protrudes midway up from the second story is engraved with the seals of all five New England States. 

Keep going straight, and cross Wyandotte when it’s safe.