Architect Biography - Brostrom

National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Section JE_ Page 14 Apartment Buildings on the North End of The Paseo Boulevard in Kansas City, Missouri,  Jackson County, Missouri business, but specialized in building residences ranging from $5,000-7,000, principally on the east side of the city.

Ernest Olaf Brostrom, born in Sweden in 1888, arrived in KG in 1907 to manage a Kansas City branch office for the Sioux City, Iowa architectural firm of Eisentraut-Colby-Pottenger at the age of 19. In 1911 he was working as an architect for local contractor Harry Bliss, and by 1912 he had opened his own office.

Brostrom's design of apartments at 912-920 East 41st Street in 1912 reflects his ability to work in a very standard Kansas City mode, the colonnaded porch apartment.56 In 1913 Brostrom was hired by W.H. McMahon (owner) to design the McMahon Apartments at 1106 Paseo, his only documented project on The Paseo. C.H. Lewis was the builder. Lewis was listed as the builder of other apartments and flats in Western Contractor during this period, including an apartment building in the 1200 block on the east side of The Paseo.

Brostrom was known for his fondness of Chicago-school architecture, especially the works of Wright and Sullivan. Their influence is clearly seen in three of his works: The Jensen-Salsbery Laboratories at 520 W. 21st (1918), The Rushton Bakery at 814 Southwest Boulevard (1920) and his best known work, the Newbem Apartments at 525 East Armour (1921-25), placed on the Kansas City Register in 1978.

In his early career, he specialized in church design and published a book, Churches, in 1919. Through the Kansas City Chapter of the AIA, Brostrom became involved in the Architect's Small House Service Bureau (started in Minnesota in 1919, later a national bureau with local bureaus) with the purpose to furnish complete and dependable small house plans at a moderate cost. It evolved into what later became known as the Model Plan Service and newspapers began carrying floor plans and elevations of these houses. In a Kansas City Star article in 1930, Brostrom discussed and illustrated one of his plans called the "apartment cottage."

in 1927 Brostrom organized and became president of the Con Tee Company which produced products such as spacer bars and column clamps for use in reinforce concrete construction of light occupancy structures. The company was formed as a result of a new light concrete construction, developed by Brostrom and illustrated in his own residence at 6540 Pennsylvania Ave. (1927).