Change without Direction: A Guide to Downtown Kansas City

This tour was curated by: Jackson County Historical Society

The Jackson County (Missouri) Historical Society is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to preserving the written, oral, and physical legacy of this county. We do this by maintaining physical collections and promoting the study, appreciation, and interpretation of local and regional history. Learn more at https://jchs.org

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1. 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.

2. Competing Impulses

When it’s safe, we’ll take a right to cross 10th street. We’ll follow the sidewalk north along Baltimore. Remember to watch for cars before crossing.These competing impulses are rarely reconciled as elegantly as they are in this building before you. There are many places in Kansas City that are like this building, and throughout the country as a whole. America never had a pastoral period, or a dark age, or even a renaissance. It was always a project, from the moment the first colonists set foot on the shores of New England, right up until today. By the time Kansas City had settled upon a legacy, a style, or an aesthetic, things had gone and changed again. And so it was on to the next thing. The block ahead is a perfect encapsulation of that, though the results paint a picture that’s very different from the elegant synthesis of the downtown branch of the library. Take a hard look down at the red stone building across the street. Those bricks look a bit larger than usual, no? Now look up and take in the full stature of the structure. Something that ancient isn’t supposed to look that imposing.

3. 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.

4. Intersections & Juxtapositions

Before we keep moving west, turn back and face the intersection.Note the melancholy juxtaposition from this corner, looking North and looking South. The grandeur of these gilded age buildings before you, and the empty desolation of the parking lots behind. Beautiful buildings stood there at one time. But they’re gone now.So turn back around and we’ll keep going west up 9th street.At the time destruction like this was taking place, some called it redevelopment. That’s just a euphemism. More often than not, it was a cash grab by greedy property owners, who may or may not have even lived here in town. They proved more than willing to destroy local history & architecture in exchange for rental income on parked cars. How well they made out doesn’t much matter anymore. The buildings that once stood here are long gone. The damage is done. Tearing down these old buildings didn’t really develop anything, and Kansas City, still right where it always was, is all the lesser for it. Holes punched in our collective history. This is hardly a story that is unique to this town. Head to any mid-sized city in America, take a stroll around the historic downtown, and you’re sure to find plenty of parking lots where historic buildings used to be. Up ahead you can see the sign for the Savoy Grill, one of the lucky downtown businesses that managed to survive the lot purges of the sixties, seventies and eighties.

5. The Savoy

Here it is. The Savoy. It still stands, and remains in operation, but the architecture and history that once surrounded it is only now accessible in a library or an archive. Once you’re under the Savoy sign, take a left. We’ll follow the sidewalk up the hill along Central Street.That the Savoy stood the test of time while so many other buildings around it succumbed to the whims of the market can probably be chocked up to plain old luck. Which isn’t to say there weren’t interested parties, some in favor of demolition and others in favor of preservation. We can’t ignore the struggle. But if there’s anything to be learned from the endless constructions and destruction of American cities, it’s that the whole thing is arbitrary, done without much thought for the future or the costs. It’s a peculiar impulse, this erasure of our own heritage and aesthetic legacy. Peculiarly American. It’s almost as if, as soon as we’ve built something and deemed it satisfactory, we decide it ought to be torn down again in favor of something potentially even more satisfactory. No assurances or guarantees mind you. Just boundless hope. Curious optimism. Daft and dreamy. Is that the American way?

6. The Mark Twain Scupture

That’s certainly how it often seemed to the figure seated before you; Missouri’s own native son, and as fine a writer as this nation has ever produced. Mr. Samuel Langhorn Clemens, better known as Mark Twain. Let’s pause next to him for a moment. While Twain is best known for his books about children, Tom Sawyer, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in particular, the breadth of his opinion of America was decidedly un-childlike. A tireless critic of our national hubris and its consequent folly, he spent his later years increasingly befuddled, ultimately settling in on a point of view that has never gained much traction in the American personality. Pessimism. Twain, for all his travels and experiences and successes, found himself ultimately confounded by America and Americans. All while being one of its most celebrated sons. His scorn didn’t stop at the water’s edge however; he was always careful to extend his ominous view of human nature to the whole of the species. But he couldn’t help but be hardest on his fellow countrymen, likely out of a familial sense of comradely love. “Why,” he seemed to ask over and over again, “do American’s always learn things the hard way, but then forget the lesson? Why, after all our history has taught us about ourselves, are we so quick to forget? And forget again. And again. And again. And again.” Optimism. It’s that damned American optimism. Just as likely to tell you a bad thing is good as a good thing is bad. Let’s keep heading west. Up ahead on the corner is the Coates Hotel, and the story it tells is one that encapsulates those bizarre American contradictions so well. Cross Central street, and we’ll walk along 10th for a block.The hotel is across the street at the end of the block. Red bricks with dark green window accents. This is the second iteration of the Coates Hotel, the first lost to progress. Of course. At its heyday it was a prestigious meeting place for the political and business elite in town. Theodore Roosevelt once stayed here. As did Grover Cleveland. The man who built the hotel, Kersey Coates, was a moral savior of sorts in Kansas City’s history, a self appointed praetorian in service of emancipation. Before Kansas City was Kansas City, it was the town of Kansas, and the westernmost reach of what was called “little dixie”. Little Dixie was a slave expansion project, an attempt to extend the South’s hegemony both North and West by settlers into the Missouri Territory. Throughout the early part of the 19th century, Little Dixie spread like a red smear across the center of Missouri, and southern sympathies were strong in the town at the outbreak of the Civil War, due in no small part to the vicious border war waged by Quantrill’s raiders and the righteous abolitionist Jayhawkers of Kansas.

7. The Coates Hotel

Pause here a moment. That’s the hotel across the street.Coates colluded with his friend and newspaperman Robert Van Horn at the outset of hostilities, and Van Horn returned from Union stronghold St. Louis with a remit to garrison Union troops here in town until the end of the war. Their barracks became the unfinished foundation of the Coates house, and they never left. They couldn’t. Plenty of Dixie flags were flying in town the morning Union troops got off the boat at the river landing, and it’s fair to surmise they might have flown again had the Union garrison ever been abandoned. One could say Kansas City did the right thing during the Civil War. But it did so at the point of a gun. Head to the corner, and take a right. We’ll head north along Broadway for about two blocks. When you come to 9th street, cross safely. If you have to wait a while for a light, there will probably be some silence while I wait for you to safely reach the next spot. If that happens, just keep going on the sidewalk. The devastation that followed the Civil War hit Confederate strongholds the hardest, and some historians argue that the worst-hit regions of the country never really recovered, even today. But Kansas City rebounded fast, thanks in no small part to the aforementioned Van Horn, who used his newspaper and victorious Union clout to woo western investors to bring... the railroad here. If you look up the road, you can see where the tall buildings stop and the horizon opens up. Just past there, off to the right, is where the Hannibal Bridge is. You can’t quite see it, and that’s because it bends west, but most Kansas Citians don’t really see it anymore either. It’s not even the original Hannibal Bridge! That’s version 2.0. But the bridge was the spark that made Kansas City Kansas City. The railroad made this town. Waterways, railways, roads and highways. That was always this city’s destiny, a way station in this big American experiment. And just as the river had brought commerce to the region in the days of the French exploration, and the wagon trains had brought business decades later, the rails created a concentration of commerce that drew people inward and kept them here.The industrial revolution in the United States was never evenly distributed, but what it distributed to Kansas City was the industry of cattle, stockyards, slaughterhouses and beef. Look ahead at the brick DST building on the east side of 8th street. It’s a relatively new building, but it hides an old secret: the eighth street tunnel. All of that cow-town industry took place in the West Bottoms, an enormous sea of stockyards and factories and soot and filth and every other byproduct of premodern industry one could imagine. What connected the mercantile downtown to its capital investments in the west bottoms was the 8th street tunnel. At the time, it was quite a fete. Engineers bored a hole through the West Side hill of Kansas City connecting the West Bottoms to the downtown, right under your feet. And for more than 50 years it provided downtown with direct access to the West Bottoms by streetcar. Back then, Kansas City had one of the most extensive light rail networks in the country, extending as far south and west as Olathe. Before it was bought up and destroyed, to make way for car-culture. No longer a cow-town, KC became a modern metropolis.Follow the sidewalk until you reach the first crosswalk near 8th street.

8. DIRECTIONS: Crossing Broadway

Stop here.The 8th street tunnel is a relic now, sealed but accessible by tour, ostensibly. But it’s a reminder of the way this city has evolved through destruction. The economy waits for no one.Go ahead and press the button on the light pole to your left. Use this crosswalk to get over to the west side of Broadway. Then, cross 8th street. We’re headed for the brick-paved plaza between the tall buildings. It’s sort of a small park. Take your time and be safe. I’ll meet you there.

9. Garment District Plaza

Turn left and we’ll stroll westward through the brick-paved plaza. This is the Historic Garment District.First Kansas City was a trading post and haven for trapper's shipments coming down the Missouri River fur trade. Then it became a frontier town, being close as it was to the Oregon, California and Santa Fe trailheads. The railroad brought the cattle, and then the grain, and still the people headed out West. Sometime after prohibition ended and our Paris of the Plains lost some of its luster, it became a full-blown textile town. Ahead to your left is a sculpture - a giant needle through a red button - honoring this history. Feel free to pause the tour and read the plaque.From here, we’ll keep heading west. When the plaza ends, follow the sidewalk to Washington Street.At its height, the garment district here in Kansas City was once the second largest in the country. The conglomeration of garment factories in this part of the city can seem like a sort of inevitability, the way that all commerce seems to be inevitable once it redefines the landscape. But it was Kansas City’s centrality to the national supply chain, rail-wise, that made it such an enticing manufacturing hub. Concentration comes with a cost, though, in the form of solidarity. More on that in a minute.We’ll keep heading west. Follow the sidewalk to Washington Street.

10. DIRECTIONS: Crossing Washington

Look across the street, and a little to your left. Do you see the set of wide, concrete stairs? That’s where we’re headed.Use either of the brick-paved crosswalks to safely cross Washington Street and head to the base of the stairs.

11. The City (Beautiful) of Fountains

Up we go. Just follow the stairs to the top.And depending on the time of year, we may get to enjoy one of Kansas City’s true and unique delights: the fountain. As you ascend this switchback staircase, please note the calming, soothing ripples of water falling down the wall. The city’s interest in fountains rose out the City Beautiful movement, during the turn of the last century. It was a rare time in which aesthetic interests overtook functional concerns, and beauty became a core tenet of the city fathers and mothers. For whatever reason, this aesthetic stuck. All throughout Kansas City you can find fountains at intersections, within parks, at corners and even adorning centrally planned shopping centers, such as the plaza. It is a point of pride for the city, and one that has endured irrespective of the whims of commerce. Today Kansas City is proudly known as the city of fountains. Yet, while the wealthy pursued movements like the City Beautiful, for the rest of America the period between the rise of the railroad conglomerates and the First World War was one of mass civil unrest. Militant labor unions began forcefully pushing back against the capitalist class in the form of labor strikes. Kansas City saw its fair share of the action, and the garment district was often ground zero for that action. The first major garment worker strike was borne of desperation, at a time when factory working conditions were so bleak that militancy was less a question of dignity and more a question of survival. Follow the stairs to the top.

12. Starving, working hard or idle

Keep following this path. When it reaches the circle-driveway, turn left and follow the sidewalk as it curves along the building until you reach the street.In 1899 the women of the district walked out, demanding better pay, hours, and more humane working conditions. The state of play was so dire that one striker was quoted as saying, “Well, I don’t see as it’s any worse to starve idle than starve working hard all day.”It was the second strike where things really got interesting though. In 1918, the laundry delivery drivers in the city struck when their employers refused to recognize their newly formed union. The women of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, black and white, went on strike in solidarity with the drivers. Soon enough it sent off a shockwave throughout the whole city, as union after union went on strike in solidarity as well. Barbers, brewers, tradesmen, and porters. The strikers stopped the streetcars. A young delivery worker was gunned down by the police.

13. No Resolution

We’ll take a left to go south along Pennsylvania to the corner at 9th street.The calamity lasted seven days and brought most commerce in the city to a stand still. There was no resolution, and no union for the delivery drivers.That is how it went in those days. 50 strikes might lead to one or two major concessions, like humane working hours or a modicum of job safety.

14. Drops in a Bucket

Turn to your right, and cross Pennsylvania when safe. We’ll follow this sidewalk down the hill and across the next street.More often than not strikes ended in defeat, since the bosses knew any concession, once granted, would be hell on earth to undo. And so it went everywhere. Small drops in a bucket, drip drip drip, until it spills over.The garment district remained strong for more than fifty years, but began to decline in the 1950s. Supply chains spread out, headed overseas where labor was much cheaper and where there were no unions to contend with. Factory space gave way to more profitable ventures, like corporate offices, or just as likely became vacant during the great urban hollowing following the Civil Rights Movement and the attendant white flight. Now this area is like every part of downtown, a homogenous hodgepodge of mixed residential and commercial buildings. Lofts up top, businesses below, maybe some retail or dining on the street. Same way it is all across America. (pause)When you reach the end of the block, use the crosswalk to safely cross to the other side of Jefferson Street.

15. The Paris of the Plains

Great. Now turn right and follow the sidewalk north. There’ll be stairs on your left. Take them and head to the small statue you’ll see among the trees.The “City of Fountains” moniker has persisted, but “cow town,” “little Dixie,” and “river town” lie buried. And so does another: The Paris of the Plains. You don’t hear that around much anymore, unless it’s a branding thing. Once upon a time though, it was the siren call of Kansas City, the thing that made it what it was. For a while, just for a while. There’s an old joke that among the major cities in the United States, Kansas City is the only one that didn’t “do” prohibition. But the reputation that Kansas City built during the roaring 20’s is preceded by a much more humble and populist politics that built it. It could only roar because its hind legs were dead set already. Up to the top of the hill. Before we arrive at the great reveal, let’s take a look at one last curiosity, a literal monument to the idea of change without direction, this time brother to brother. Walk so you see the front of the statue.

16. The Jim Pendergast Statue

Here sits Jim Pendergast, onetime ward boss of the West Bottoms and an early cog in what would later become the Kansas City Machine. Older brother of the infamous Tom Pendergast, our own mafioso kingpin. That booze runner. That speakeasy king. The construction magnate and political boss. Jim is often overshadowed by his ambitious younger brother, but Jim’s the one with the statue. And you’re looking at it. He was a personable fellow, by all accounts amiable and well liked. He built power the old fashioned way: through the working class. Among immigrants in particular, who flocked to his saloon not just for the comfort of spirits but also for financial assistance and political patronage. Let’s head back along the sidewalk. When it splits, turn left to walk north, towards the much larger statue you can see through the trees.What’s curious about this, and quintessentially American, is that Jim and Tom were brothers at odds. The older rose up through the ranks by working for his constituents, while the younger plagiarized all the populist cues and settled himself down in a mansion on Ward Parkway Boulevard, financed by blood money and crimes. All of the style, and none of the substance. As soon as young Tom Pendergast learned his older brother’s lesson, he forgot it again. Or maybe he never learned it at all. Mark Twain would have only sighed and shrugged. Keep going until you reach the large statue.

17. Conclusion: Just Passing Through

And now we have arrived at the end of our journey, the end of the tour. The statue in front of you is of Merriwether Lewis and William Clark, along with Sacagawea, and an African American slave named York. They stood here, what is widely regarded as the second best view in the city, on their return from the Pacific Coast. As is noted on the plaque, Lewis thought it would make an excellent location for a fort, given how clearly one could sight the approaches and defend from its heights. And there you have it. Two men widely regarded as explorers, pioneers and American heroes, noting the importance of strategic military placements during their otherwise relatively peaceful journey of discovery. With a Native American and a slave at their side, no less. In fairness, they were both military men. Maybe they couldn’t help themselves.Okay, one more spot to see. Head to greenspace just east of the statue - that’s the opposite direction that Lewis & Clarke are facing - toward the the big building that says “State Street.” and head to the low stone wall. Go right up to it. Walk along it. It’s worth the view.Like most people in the 19th century, Lewis and Clark were just passing through what would become Kansas City. Coming from somewhere else and on their way to somewhere else. But they changed the place, for those who would pass through themselves and for those who would ultimately stay. They didn’t know that at the time though. How could they? At every stage of its history, it’s hard not to feel like Kansas City was just reacting, just changing, never really sure where it was going but determined to get there. Always moving forward, to wherever that was. And the consequences be damned. Much like the country as a whole. Again, Mr. Twain would have only sighed and shrugged. Go West Young Man. Change this great continent. Take it in whatever direction you please. So many of them did. And so many of them, on their journey’s, passed through here.

This Tour is a Walking Tour.

Change without Direction: A Guide to Downtown Kansas City

Created by JCHS on August 9th 2024, 10:02:43 pm.

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Description

Starting in front of the downtown branch of the Kansas City Public Library, this walking tour takes you through three historic city districts: the Library District, the Garment District, and Quality Hill. Along the way, you’ll learn about Kansas City’s gradual growth from a river outpost into the regional hub it is today, and how its various stops and starts, its conflicts and resolutions, shaped its character and charted its history. INSTRUCTIONS: When using Clio's Geofencing, this tour works best when you set your Notification Distance to 10 meters.

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Change without Direction: A Guide to Downtown Kansas City

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