Classroom

In November of 1919, The Kansas City Star announced that the Kansas City Garment Company had signed a ten-year lease, renting out the second and third floor of this building which was home to the Snower Manufacturing Company. In the early months of 1921, some of the local film distribution offices in Kansas City moved from the Film Exchange on Main Street into the fourth floor of the Snower Building. Goldwyn Pictures and Robertson-Cole Pictures, a small-scale production and distribution studio, were the first two industry-related tenants. Both branch offices signed ten-year leases for $4,500 to $4,800 a year, respectively.As the 1920s wore on, the demand for more films increased, and the shipment of more reels to local offices led to the development of individual buildings for each local studio representative. Yet, the Snower Building remained a significant figure in the Kansas City film row scene. Beginning in 1920, the Reel Journal, a bi-weekly industry trade magazine, was published out of the third-floor offices and sent to studio branches throughout the United States. Sometime in the mid-1930s, the magazine became known as BoxOffice Weekly, with its print edition still coming out of Kansas City until the early 1970s.This building was also home to the National Screen Service, which began in the early 1920s and oversaw the cutting together of previews for upcoming films to show before feature presentations or in between a double-billing. The company also rented out posters and other movie theater accessories, including the red velvet chairs so commonly associated with theaters of a bygone era, and items to be sold in the concession stand, including popcorn The onset of the twenty-first century saw the upper floors be converted into upscale lofts. The lower level of the building continues to hold businesses.

Constructed in 1921, this historic Kansas City building was named for its first owner, the Snower Manufacturing Company, and was one of several commercial buildings completed that year. From 1921 to the early 1980s, the building included film exchange offices on its fourth floor. This building was part of a larger network known as Film Row, a motion picture distribution district in the Crossroads neighborhood of Kansas City that included offices and buildings occupied by Hollywood's leading companies.

Snower Building

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When you turn to walk down 18th Street from Baltimore Avenue, you could swear you were in a different place. The buildings - many of which were constructed in the early 1920s, maintain their Art-Deco architectural style, and remain alive with unique characteristics that distinguish them from other businesses in the area. But, for a time, this was a highly influential business district in Kansas City. What began as a film center, quickly became lovingly dubbed as Film Row. Between 1920 and 1980, the district was home to many local branch offices for the major Hollywood studios during the "golden era". At this time, studios operated under the strategic vertical integration. They controlled all aspects of the movie-making and movie-going process, from the conception of an idea to the exhibition on the silver screen thousands of miles away. Kansas City's Film Row was the prime centerpiece of the nation for studio bosses such as Adolf Zukor of Paramount Pictures. Many stopped in Kansas City along their travel to the east or west coast by mail. For this, and many other reasons that I hope you learn about in this tour, Kansas City's Film Row was merely one of thirty-two similar districts across the nation. Still, its influences loomed large, particularly among midwest offices. But more than anything, I hope you come away learning about the tiny slice of Hollywood that once lined our streets.

Given Kansas City's growth as a railroad hub in the early 20th century, representatives from Hollywood studios saw potential in creating one of their many film exchange hubs in this midwestern community. Less than a decade before the motion picture with synchronized sound in 1927 (known colloquially as a “talkie” in that era) the construction of this building from 1919 to 1921 was at the start of a period many historians refer to as Hollywood’s "Golden era." Studio heads in California and their financial staff in New York offices saw Kansas City as a prime location to create another film distribution center.The first building dedicated to film distribution was here on Main Street, and construction got underway in June 1919. Local newspapers paid close and constant attention to the building process, regularly providing updates in the daily editions. The construction of the building was estimated at $750,000 and promised to bring regional offices of motion picture companies to Kansas City.Designed by Pratt and Thompson Construction Company, the new film exchange was designed to follow the newest fire codes, which were passed in 1918. This was an essential feature as the film vaults would be home to hundreds or even thousands of reels that were extremely flamable. The Kansas City Film Exchange was the first of its kind. In the autumn of 1919, local studio representatives in Chicago announced that plans were underway to build their new exchange next.By the summer of 1920, the building was nearly complete. Several floors had been finished and studios had begun to operate from the new exchange building. On the morning of July 23, 1920, however, an explosion occurred in one of the Paramount-Players Lasky vaults on the twelfth floor. The fire that resulted spread quickly. Employees evacuated as the flames began to reach out the windows. The fire ravaged through the vaults and film reels that had not yet been processed and properly stored in the vaults. By the time the fire was controlled, roughly $1 million worth of films had been destroyed – an estimated $16 million today. It is believed that of the thousands of reels destroyed, hundreds of them had not yet been released. But the story is not without heroism. After stopping the elevator on every floor checking for anyone who had not made it out of the building, young Fred McPherson took armloads of film reels and was able to flee with them from the burning building. While the construction of the building may not have made it truly fire-proof, the design and layout of the building likely kept it from burning to the ground, and thousands of film reels survived as a result.Workers quickly began repairs, and by December 1920, business in the Film Exchange was underway once again. The first screening in the building’s new theater took place for area theater owners on December 27 of that year. Just months later, word began to spread that the building’s owners were threatening to raise rent on the studio tenants. Studio managers felt the move was unfair, especially given the disruptive fire and construction. When the owner followed through with a rent increase in the spring of 1921, studios began the gradual move out of the building and closer to 18th Street which would become the center of a district known as Film Row.Not long after studio workers left their floors vacant, the building was purchased and renamed the “Davidson” Building. While this building did not become the core of Kansas City’s connection to motion picture companies, its creation was the impetus for the creation of Film Row which was located nearby and centered along 18th Street.

Constructed between 1919 and 1920, this historic Kansas City building was intended to be the center of regional film distribution. Major motion picture companies such as Famous Players-Lasky, the predecessor of Paramount, were early tenants throughout the building. Upper floors were designed for film storage with state-of-the-art vaults designed to mitigate the risk posed by flammable film reels used at that time. Despite this innovation, the building was the site of a destructive fire in 1920. Months after the fire damage was repaired, the owner increased rent, and tenants moved from this structure to smaller buildings along Seventeenth and Eighteenth Street. This structure later became known as the Davidson Building. Although not part of Kansas City’s Film Row, the creation of this building was the impetus for major motion pictures creating regional distribution offices in the Crossroads area.

Kansas City Film Exchange (Davidson Building)

As early as 1920, there were about 800 films made annually in the United States. Movie theaters became so popular, that in 1941, The Daily Year Book stated that there was one theater for every eight thousand people in the United States. The population was 133.5 million at the time, and the demand presented a challenge for distribution and storage. One movie could be from 6 to 10 reels long, and these reels could contain cartoons, news, and media other than the feature film. As a result, Hollywood produced tens of thousands of reels every year that were stored and distributed in buildings like the ones that surround this building that served Paramount Pictures.Kansas City's Paramount Pictures Building was used to store films distributed by Hollywood and New York studios. At the time, it was not uncommon for these studios to make their movies. The term "exchange centers" was used for this location because studios like MGM, Walt Disney, and Warner Brothers stored and distributed their films to the theaters. The buildings on Film Row played a crucial role in ensuring the curtains rose for the masses.The Paramount Pictures Building, erected in the early 1920s and renovated again around 1930, was a unique design for film exchange centers. Offices and screening rooms were located near the front of the building. A firewall separated street-level entrances from the protected and flame-proof film vaults. Later, more film vaults were constructed in the basement. Thus, Kansas City's Paramount Building was one of the most secure facilities for its films.Paramount Studios also provided distribution centers with exciting publicity events for upcoming films, particularly in Kansas City. Studio head Adolph Zukor often passed through Kansas City as he traveled between financial offices in New York and the rest of his studio offices in California. In the summer of 1922, Billy Schaubert, a former local racer driver, parked in front of the building and - surrounded by youthful, enthusiastic eyes - proudly held up a banner that read "Across the Continent." The moment was one in a long line of public engagements that made Paramount thrive in Hollywood's golden age. The man behind the wheel of the car, Billy Schaubert, was later hired as one of Paramount's salesmen in the Kansas City area.The Paramount building was one of the last in the Film Row District to remove the studio's iconic name from the side of the building. The building and district has seen many changes since the end of Film Row's heyday, but the film vaults remain and demonstrate Kansas City's role in the early years of the film industry.

During the 1920s and 1970s, this building and many others served the film industry by offering storage, distribution, and other services that connected tens of thousands of movie theaters to studios from Hollywood to New York. From the 1920s to the 1970s, Hollywood and the Crossroads Art District in Kansas City were connected through a series of buildings known as Film Row. Kansas City was an essential part of the vast entertainment distribution industry given its geography and position as a railroad hub.

Paramount Pictures Building

Commonwealth Theaters, Inc. was a movie theater chain based in Kansas City. Its headquarters were purchased in 1936 as part of Film Row. Over the course of five decades, the company was bought and sold several times. In 1983, the company went private after a merger with CMN Capital Corp. The following year, it was reportedly one of the largest movie theater chains in the United States. By 1986, a film production company called Cannon Group Inc. purchased the company. The chief operating officer rationalized the purchase by saying: “If you make films, it is rather smart to have a place to show them.”Two years later in 1988, Cannon sold Commonwealth to the Denver-based company United Artists Communications for $72.5 million. At this point, Colorado had 169 Commonwealth theaters and United Artists was the largest movie theater operator in the United States as well as one of the largest cable television companies. The building closed and the company went defunct by 1991.This was only one building to occupy Kansas City’s Film Row. Taking up four square blocks between 17th and 19th streets from the 1920’s to the 1960’s, Film Row (now known as the Crossroads Arts District) served as a distribution point for the film industry. In these buildings, film canisters were stored before being distributed to New York and Hollywood. They stored and distributed films from Paramount, MGM, Warner Bros., Disney, Universal, and more. These buildings even housed the Manley Popcorn Company.The need for a distribution point arose during the 1940’s and before television due to the vast amount of films being made at the time. There were more films being made every year between the 1920’s and 1960’s than is typically made in a year today. Kansas City was chosen as a distribution point in part because of its location at the center of the country. It also had strong railroad connections which was useful because the film canisters were transported by train. This specific block in Kansas City was chosen because municipal laws had been enacted in that area which determined how the buildings were built and fireproofed, which protected the buildings from damage should any of the highly flammable film rolls catch fire. The location was convenient as well - if film was damaged, it was easy to send them off to Ottawa, Kansas for repairs.Film Row began losing its purpose as technological improvements were being made. The most influential factor in the downfall of Film Row was the digitization of film - there is no need to store film when movies are now being transported on hard drives through the mail.

Kansas City's Film Row spanned four city blocks which included nearly twenty buildings that supported the production and distribution of films from Paramount, MGM, Warner Brothers, Paramount, and many others. Today, Kansas City’s Film Row is known as the one of the “most intact Film Row districts” in the United States.

Commonwealth Theaters Headquarters Building and Kansas City's Film Row

Kansas City and the other exchange centers were essential to the film industry between the 1920s and the 1970s. Kansas City's central location in the country and its status as a major railroad transportation hub made it an ideal place to store and distribute films to Midwestern theaters. These were needed beginning in the 1920s, which is when the film industry took off. During that decade, nearly a thousand films were produced each year, a number that continued to rise in the coming decades. All of this production generated vast amounts of films as the average Hollywood movie needed six to ten reels of film reels, and all of these had to be stored at exchange centers, which were also places where films could be repaired.Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios erected its building on Film Row between 1929 and 1930. Designed in the Art Deco style and built of brick, it had a capacity of 15,000 reels and also had a small theater. The studio owned the building until 1990. In 1992, the building was bought by a vacuum company that used it for storage.While Metro-Goldwyn Mayer Studios experienced some of its greatest success in the late 1940s and 1950s with massive technicolor hits such as "Singin' in the Rain" (1952) or "Ben Her" (1959), so did the Kansas City office. This building was a center of what former Film Row employee Jack Poessiger considered one of the "greatest industry communities" in the city. Articles in The Kansas City Star report MGM's studio as being a local hang-out area for many exhibitors, even those who were not visiting to do business. One of the more intriguing stories to come out of the era was the case of the disappearing film reels. In March of 1947, "The Kansas City Times" reported that roughly 24,000 feet of film was stolen from the sidewalk in front of the branch office. The branch's booking manager, Walter Lambader, warned the perpetrators that their theft endangered public safety. He remarked that the nitrate film that was stolen was highly flammable. He worried that anybody, especially a child, might cause unintentional harm to themselves if the films were not returned. The films were never recovered. The robbery of film reels in Kansas City was a rare occurrence. Lambader's comments support Poissiger's perspective that the employees of Film Row cared deeply about the magic of film and took responsibility for public welfare.

Kansas City's Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Building was constructed between 1929 and 1930 and is one of many buildings that supported major studios in an area of Kansas City once known as "Film Row." From the 1920s through the postwar era, Kansas City's Film row was part of a network of 32 "exchange centers" around the country that stored and distributed films. Other major film companies such as Walt Disney, Warner Brothers, and 20th Century Fox operated from their own buildings in Film Row while smaller companies rented offices in neighboring structures. The Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Building is located on the west side of Film Row, which encompasses the area between Central Street and Baltimore Avenue and between 17th and 20th Streets.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Building 

The Vitagraph building opened in 1930 during a time when the film industry was undergoing significant transitions. Films were shifting from silent movies to those with synchronized sound and dialogue. As a result, the technology used to distribute films to theaters was changing to handle higher quality audio. American Vitagraph Company was able to handle these changes to technology, allowing it to survive as a company past the silent film era. This building was commissioned by Warner Brothers Film Corporation after they purchased Vitagraph Company.The inside originally included sound booths using Vitagraph's new recording technology. Additionally, like other film company buildings at the time, it was full of fire safety measures such as sprinklers, remote-controlled emergency exits, and fireproof steel storage vaults. This was because until the early 1950s, film reels used cellulose nitrate, an extremely flammable and explosive kind of plastic. The consequences of inadequate fireproofing had already been seen in Kansas City when the Famous Players-Lasky building went up in flames in 1920.After a $24 million renovation of the building financed by philanthropist Shirley Helzberg, the Kansas City Symphony moved to this building in 2010. The inside of the building has been heavily modified, including the removal of the steel vaults, in order to convert it into office space, but signs of it having been home to a warehouse and film distribution company can still be seen.Kansas City's Vitagraph building and many of the others on Film Row were built in Art Deco style in an attempt to look more modern as more modern technology became common. Buildings in this style tended to have a simple basic structure, as opposed to more extravagant ones built in classical revival styles earlier in the twentieth century. However, they would still feature detailing in the form of patterned lines, which can still be seen on the outside of Vitagraph, or zigzags, which can be seen between the windows on the front of the building.

This building was completed in 1930 in an area of Kansas City known as Film Row due to the area's association with the movie industry. It is a good example of Art Deco architecture, which was popular in the 1920s and 1930s when Vitagraph was commissioned and built. While the building has been altered on the inside in order to be converted to office space, the outside still looks very similar to how it looked when the building was first built after Vitagraph was purchased by Warner Brothers.

Kansas City's Film Row Walking Tour

Snower Building

Introduction

Images

Backstory and Context

Sources