Jewish Community Center (1924-1961)

Between 1924 and 1961, this was the location of the first permanent home of the Kansas City Jewish Community Center, formerly known as the Young Men's/Young Women's Hebrew Association. The local Jewish community formed the YM/YWHA in 1914 as a response to their exclusion from other local clubs, and for the next decade, the center was housed in rented space followed by a house on Troost. Although anyone was welcome at the Community Center, it was created with the needs of Jewish people in mind as a space where Jews could learn, exercise, and celebrate together. The center became an important place where Jews could spend time with one another outside of their synagogues. In the early 1960s, the JCC moved to a new building on 82nd and Holmes Road, and the Linwood building was later demolished. The Linwood JCC was also home to the Resident Theater, a renowned community theater that ran for more than fifty years within this former building and the community center on Holmes Road which was later replaced with the current JCC.

Discrimination against Jews was common practice in the late nineteenth century and into the early twentieth. Jewish people could not join local country clubs or social clubs and were denied membership if they tried. In the period between World War I and II, however, antisemitism and anti-Jewish rhetoric spiked in the United States. At this point, fed up with their situation, the Jewish community of Kansas City founded the first Jewish Community Center, then called the Young Men's/Young Women's Hebrew Association. to have a place to celebrate and connect with each other outside of the synagogue. The first location, a rented space, was in the River Market from 1914. The second operated between 1916 and 1924 out of a house on Troost Avenue. The third one, and the first building to belong solely to the YMHA, opened on Linwood and Wayne, in the Ivanhoe neighborhood, in 1924. They changed their name to the JCC in the 1930s.

The building had amenities typical of a community center, with a pool, gymnasium, ball courts, and theater. A popular sport there was aerial tennis, a badminton-like sport that has since fallen into obscurity. It also housed several Jewish organizations, including women's groups like Hadassah and youth groups like Aleph Zadik Aleph. The Jewish National Workers Alliance had a branch there. This organization was a labor Zionist landmanshaft, or Jewish hometown society. Organizations like these gave Jewish immigrants the chance to connect and campaign with others like them, as often, members of landmanshaftn were from the same region in Europe. The Irari Club, an exclusive fraternity-like organization, also held its meetings at the JCC starting in the 1930s.

Despite opening to serve Jewish needs, the JCC has never excluded non-Jews, with those who run it making a point not to put others through what the community went through in the 1920s and 1930s. When the Greater Kansas City JCC had its hundredth anniversary in 2014, they reflected on how this has benefited the local Jewish community:

The JCC is arguably the single most important institution ever established by the Jews of this area.

Think about it. The various synagogues are centers of religious life, but non-Jews rarely set foot in them. ...The JCC alone welcomes non-Jews to become members, to swim in its pools, to take part in its preschool and camps, to participate in its theater programs. Thousands of non-Jews have joined the JCC over the years to use its sports and fitness facilities, thereby getting to know the Jewish members as they sweated and played alongside them. ...

Not only does the JCC reach out to the general community, but it plays a role within the Jewish community that no other institution does. ... The JCC keeps them connected to their community.

The Jewish Community Center opened its Holmes Road location in 1961. Eventually, the former Linwood JCC was torn down, although this did not happen until at least 1989.

The Resident Theater

The Linwood JCC is also notable for being the home of The Resident Theater, which was one of Kansas City's first community theaters, and eventually one of the oldest. This was a public theater, although the JCC subsidized it. It ran in the Linwood building beginning in 1932. It had a partnership with the then-new University of Kansas City, allowing students there to attend any performances hosted there. The theater was recognized several times for outstanding performances, including being awarded a "Professional" rating by the Society of Author's Representatives and getting recognition on national radio and TV stations. When the JCC moved to its new building on Holmes Road and 82nd in 1961, The Resident moved with it and continued to operate there for more than twenty years. Their final performance was "Inherit the Wind" in 1983.

Membership grows, programs flourish as JCC celebrates milestone, Kansas City Jewish Chronicle. February 6th, 2014. Accessed November 6th, 2022. https://kcjc.com/section-blog/1819-news/archived-news/2361-membership-grows-programs-flourish-as-jcc-celebrates-milestone-.

Hellman, Rick. Jewish Community Center: 100 years and counting, Kansas City Star. August 12th, 2014. Accessed November 12th, 2022. https://web.archive.org/web/20141011222654/https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/community/joco-913/overland-park-leawood/article1204457.html.

JCC’s old Resident Theatre’s history profiled in new book, Kansas City Jewish Chronicle. January 5th, 2012. Accessed November 12th, 2022. https://kcjc.com/section-blog/1819-news/archived-news/882-jccs-old-resident-theatres-history-profiled-in-new-book.