Kansas City's Film Row Walking Tour - Clio

Entries on This Tour

1. Vitagraph Film Exchange 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.

2. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Building

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.

3. Commonwealth Theaters Headquarters Building and Kansas City's Film Row

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.

4. Paramount Pictures Building

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.

5. Snower Building

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.

6. Kansas City Film Exchange (Davidson Building)

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.

This Tour is a Walking Tour.

Kansas City's Film Row Walking Tour

Created by Kansas City History (University of Missouri-Kansas City) on December 14th 2024, 4:11:34 am.

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Description

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.

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