Newspaper Article; October 20, 1905.

THE COUNCIL TO ACT ON THE BOULEVARD ORDINANCE TOMORROW.

Measure has already passed the upper house—a former park board tried to name the boulevard Swope Parkway.

The ordinance officially named Gillham road and rescinding the action of the former park board designating it as Swope Parkway, will come before the lower house of the council Monday night. Alderman Joseph Weston of the committee on public buildings and grounds signed a favorable report yesterday. Aldermen Joseph Halpin and James Pendergast are expected to join in the recommendation.

The name Gillham road has never been officially adopted, although the road has been so designated informally in the proceedings connected with its improvement. The former park board sent an ordinance to the council naming it Swope parkway, as part of the present Swope parkway connecting with Gillham road at Forty-sixth and Lydia avenue. The upper house refused to pass the ordinance or any measure using the name Swope parkway for the driveway known as Gillham road. The old board then adopted the plan of describing Gillham road by metes and bounds. The ordinance officially adopting the name Gillham road was sent to the council by the present park board and has passed the upper house.

Nov 4, 1913

Miss Harrlett Harbrook, 24 years old, 1908 Maple avenue, was choked and beaten by an unidentified man in Hyde Park yesterday afternoon. She was sitting on a bench in the park when a man came up to her and after saying something in an undertone to her, dragged her from the bench and choked her almost to insensibility. She screamed and struggled to free herself.

Her screams attracted the attention of motorists and an electric car, in which Miss Lillian Russell and her sister, Mrs. Leonora Ross, were riding, was stopped by some women who had heard Miss Harbrook’s story.

Miss Russell’s car was commandeered and a chase after the man started. Several other cars, one carrying police, also joined in , but the man escaped.

Miss Harbrook got in the car with Miss Russell and Mrs. Ross and every street in the neighborhood was searched. He disappeared, however, and no trace of him was found. Reports was made in police headquarters and a police car from Westport station was sent to the scene of the attach. Miss Harbrook was taken into the police machine and the search continued.

Held Up Motor Cars.

It was reported that seam man had held up three different cars on the Hyde park hill before his attack on Miss Harbook. He stopped several electrics, attempting to collect toil from all who went up the hill.

One of those stopped was a Mrs. Davis who told the police the man stopped her electric and said: ”You will have to pay the toil to get up the hill. A new law requires it.” Mrs. Davis slammed the car door in his face and drove on.

Seized girl by Throat.

Two others were stopped and the same demand made, but none paid. Having no success in collecting toil from motorists, the man went into Hyde Park. Miss Harbrook, a collector for a book concern in the Nelson building, was sitting on a bench resting.

The man came upon her unawares and before she knew what was happening he had seized her by the throat. Her screaming brought other women and these went out to the road and stopped the first motor car, which happened to be the one containing Lillian Russell and her sister.

Kansas City Star; December 11, 1927.

Last June the large stone residence, which long had been the John F. Parker home,s still occupied its site at the southwest corner of Armour and Harrison boulevards. Meanwhile, a wrecking crew has ripped that substantial 1-family house from the corner, and various construction crews have erected there an 8-story fireproof edifice, with accommodations for seventy families. The new occupant of the ground is the Wrennmore apartment hotel, named for its builder, William G. Wrenn. Finishing touches now are being applied, and the formal opening probably will be Thursday. the building is an interesting design by P. T. Drotts, architect, the exterior walls being of a dull buff brick, trimmed with terra cotta. The site, rounding at the intersection of the tow boulevards, is 80 x 123 feet.

Note: The building was torn down in the late 20th century because of neglect and structural problems.

Kansas City Star; November 10, 1929.

It was the motor cars that changed Armour Boulevard from a thoroughfare to mansions to a busy traffic artery that looks to the apartment hotel builder to shape its future skyline. The motor car permitted desirable home districts to develop "father out," and the density of traffic took away the one–time attraction of main thoroughfares.

Linwood Boulevard first developed as a street of family hotels and apartments, for private restrictions held the greater part of Armour Boulevard to single residences. The restrictions expired about the time of the war. The Georgian Court apartments was the first tall building, the Bellerive and others following.

The coming of the apartment hotels to the boulevards at first was resented. But the more modern view holds the wide thoroughfares especially adapted to multi–family housing. But Kansas City will never have another Armour Boulevard as it was built in the booming ´80´s and the gay ´90´s.

The Kansas City Star; May 14, 1931.

The old spring, famous on the Santa Fe trail, has become a shrine. It is part of the grotto dedicated yesterday with the statue of Our Lady of Lourdes by the sisters of Notre Dame de Sion, in the corner of their campus near Robert Gillham road and Locust street.

When sisters and pupils of the French Institute de Sion knelt in the cool shelter of the shade, rock-bound retreat to repeat the Litny of Lourdes, the symbols of three historic backgrounds merged into one.

On that spot travelers on horseback and in prairie schooners stopped to water their sweating horses and fill their water vessels in ’49. To Jackson County persons the old spring was famous as a retreat, a cool place to rest and the only good watering place between independence and Westport. Many people of Westport are said to have gone there for the clear water.

About the same time the French tradition was given the old spring, Father Peter J. de Smet, Jesuit priest, is said to have known the spring and to have made camp there in the shade of the elm trees. The sisters have been told he held services for the Indians on the slope of the hill, which is now the campus.

The third tradition comes from several thousand miles away, at the foot of the Pyrenees. The present grotto is a replica of the grotto at Lourdes and the statue of Our Lady is an exact reproduction of the statue at Lourdes. It was made in France and given to the sisters by Mrs. Genevieve Moore, 417 East Thirty-seventh street, after she had visited Lourdes.

The tradition of the miracle at Lourdes starts with the appearance of Our Lady to a little girl. The child, asking proof of the appearance to convince her elders, was told to scratch the ground. She did so and the spring bubbled up beside her. The next morning a rose was blooming beside the spring. At present Lourdes is visited by 600,000 pilgrims and tourists a year. Many of them go to be healed by the waters.

The rock archway over the Kansas City spring and the surrounding rock work was done by the hands of the sisters. Although they had the help of a mason, they personally chose each rock and adjusted it to its place as they wanted it. Our Lady looks down from above.

As the procession of sisters and children moved slowly toward the grotto yesterday, it sang the Ave Maria of Lourdes—“Ave, Ave, Ave Maria—Ave, Ave, Ave Maria!”

Those with good ears could hear other voices taking up the litany, the voices of the thousands at the foot of the Pyrenees to be cured. They could hear the intonations of an old priest alone in an American forest surrounded by expressionless, copper-colored faces. They could hear the tramping of many horses and the shouts of many men as the caravan of pioneer American moved westward. “Priez por mous,” was repeated again and again in the litany.

By M.K.P. The Kansas City Star; August 9, 1931.

Like many another high-stepper, its mettlesome days over, Armour boulevard has been harnessed to the plow of business. Beautiful French chateaus that housed so much gayety in the 90s and the two decades thereafter have been replaced by apartment houses or put to work as office buildings. Life insurance companies hobnob with funeral homes. Persons who never aspired to acquaintance with the exclusive residents of Armour now mount with assurance the steps of mansions, that once were barred against them.

The kitchenette has taken the place of the proud and stately butler and his competent corps of assistants. The parlor, bedroom and bath has succeeded the elegant privacy that reigned for a quarter century in the first few squares east of Main street on the boulevard that took its name from the wealthy Armour family.

Even the cocky little 1931 Ford coupe has invaded a thoroughfare once sacred to the matched team hitched before the graceful landau and the expensive Victoria, Stenographers and salesmen dash up and down East Armour with the same confidence once enjoyed only by scions of the rich and powerful.

Once Called Commonwealth Avenue

It was not until the late 1890s that Armour boulevard was born. When the Hyde Park addition was platted, the street was called Commonwealth avenue. At that time, it was outside the city limits. Then, when the boulevard system was planned by the park board, the name was changed to South boulevard—a tentative name only. Kirkland B. Armour built his home on the new boulevard where it crossed Warwick boulevard in 1893, and soon after the street took his name.

Hyde Park was a rural neighborhood then and Warwick boulevard has the only asphalt pavement in Kansas City, according to Dr. A. Comingo Griffith, who was a youngster when his father, Dr. Jefferson D. Griffith, built the residence diagonally across from the Kirkland Armours, now occupied by the Order of De Molay.

“Warwick boulevard was nice and smooth,” related Dr. Griffith. “We boys used to ride our bicycles on Warwick, then over to Main and down to the old Central high school at Eleventh and Locust, hanging onto the cable car for a lift coming home. It was a grand way to mount the long hill for the cable cars didn’t go very fast. They ran out as far as Thirty-ninth street, where there was a turntable.”

Dr. Griffith says there wasn’t a house between their home and Troost avenue at the time his father built at Warwick and Armour. Armour was a narrow macadamized street with a brick curbing against the gutter. But the lawns that bordered it were wide and the triple row of shade trees that lined the boulevard grew from cuttings planted in the ‘90s. The outer row was removed three years ago to widen the street.

In two of the yards were marvelous play houses, one of them belonging to Mary Augusta Armour and the other to Elizabeth Hull, daughter of Dr. Albert G. Hull, whose architecturally beautiful barn is now a clubhouse for the university Women’s Club. As Laura Nelson had her own theater on an upper floor of her father’s barn, with an underground passage from the house, so did “Mary Gusts” and Elizabeth have their own domains, in which they kept house for their dolls, with midget furniture, miniature divans, mirrors, tiny pianos and bedchambers with real beds.

Elizabeth Hull’s fairy palace was finally acquired by the Haywood Hagermans for their children, and it still stands in their yard.

Produced Their Own Plays

It was an older crowd that helped Laura Nelson produce plays and danced at her parties and the parties of young Dr. Comingo Griffith, Theo Mastin (now Mrs. G. Edgar Lovejoy), young Watson Armour and other young people who were the darlings of Kansas City society in the first years of the century.

“The young people of today don’t love dancing as we used to,” said Mrs. Lovejoy, 5500 Central street, the daughter of Mr. And Mrs. Thomas Mastin, whose home at 3500 Main street, designed by Stanford white, was a masterpiece of the French chateau style of architecture. It had a dancing floor of mosaic and Mrs. Lovejoy wonders now that nobody complained of its lack of resilience.

“I don’t think they love dancing at all,” she continued, “or they wouldn’t be constantly cutting in. Girls aren’t popular unless they are continually changing partners. But it wasn’t so a quarter century ago. If a girl was popular and a good dancer, a boy was not satisfied with one dance or several isolated dances. He would put his name down for two dances in succession, so as to prolong the pleasure.

“Cotillions still were danced occasionally by my set, but I did not care for them. They were entirely too formal. The waltz, with it graceful, gracious rhythm, and the lively tow-step, were the dances we liked. Sometimes I feel sorry for the young people now, for I know they experience little of the pleasure we knew in dancing.

“Why, on the day there was going to be a dance, I would lay my dress out on the bed in the middle of the afternoon, get everything ready, and long for evening to come. It wasn’t long in coming either, for our parties began early. At 7:30 o’clock it was time to start and two boys would come in a carriage to take Anna Keith and me.

“Sometimes the party would be quite a large one at the old Casino at 1023 Broadway, downtown. On summer evenings we would begin dancing in broad daylight. Often, all our dances were taken beforehand—sometimes weeks before. I hardly like to think of what would have happened to a boy in those days who dared to cut in.”

Other ballroom floors, including that of the Griffith residence, were there were innumerable parties, were of hardwood. Dr. Jefferson D. Griffith and his wife, the former Sallie Comingo of Independence, Mo., were very hospitable. They entertained a great deal, particularly for their son, Dr. Comingo Griffith, who was keen about dancing.

When Young Armour “Reversed.”

Young Watson Armour had slight confidence in himself as a dancer. He was calling on Theo Mastin one day and mentioned his difficulty with the waltz. “I cannot reverse,” he told her. “And what girl wants to go around always in one direction?”

“I’d teach you,” she told him, “if only we had someone to play the piano.” There were no phonographs in those days. The piano was the only dependence.

“We have a music box at home,” suggested Watson.

“But what good will that do? I can’t go over.”

Mrs. Lovejoy explained that in those days girls never went to the homes of boys—never. While today it would be quire simple and natural for a girl to go to a boy’s home and teach him anything she knew about dancing, it was out of the question in the closing years of the nineteenth century.

“I’ll bring it over,” said the boy and with the help of the coachmen he did bring it over. A waltz was put on and the boy, who was two years younger than his instructor, mastered the trick of reversing.

“We used to stream out of Oak Hall on moonlight nights into grounds that seemed to be enchanted,” relates Mrs. Lovejoy. “Of all the good times we had when Armour boulevard was young and gay, the best were at Laura Nelson’s parties. She didn’t live on Armour, of course, but the Armour crowd went to her parties, which were the gayest of all.

“I recall a very cold night in winter when we were all dancing at our house. The musicians had been engaged to play until midnight, but bather asked me if I would like to have them remain another hours. I joyously assented and we danced on. At 1 o’clock father again extended the house for ‘Home, Sweet Home.’ But before 2 o’clock mutterings of discontent were audible from the coachmen waiting on the side porch and I told father I didn’t think we had better dance any longer.”

The good angle of the Mastin home was Harriet, who had been a slave in the Harris family. Mrs. Mastin had been one of the Harris girls and her wedding was one of those celebrated in the famous home, at Main and Westport. Harriet was black, but she was a lady if ever there was one, and when she died a few years ago all her pallbearers were white men, who had loved her from the time they were children. Her mourners were white women whose childish prayers had been said at Harriet’s knee.

When the Tea Set Thrived

Ten inseparable friends of that time and place were members of an organization known as the Tea Set, but in their sub-deb days they had a still more exciting band known only as the Q.O.C.’s. No boy ever knew that Q.O.C. stood for the Queen of Clubs. The boys resented such secrecy, and one of them, John Townley, who afterward married Prue withers, a loyal Q.O.C., went so far as to address an anonymous rhyme to the secret ten.

The receipt of these lines by each of the ten created intense excitement in sub-debdom:

Ten maids petite of high degree have formed a club called G.O.C.,

Their lips are sealed, they will not tell, so let the meaning go to h—l.

Among the members of the club were Theo Mastin, Anna Keith, Sydney Holmes, Julia Wood, Prue Withers and Florence Lowe, afterward Mrs. Hughes Bryant.

Before her own marriage, Theo Mastin was twelve times a bridesmaid. She used to say that weddings were easy and she had become so accustomed to them that she did not dread her own. But, when the time came for her to be a bride, her hand trembled so that she would have dropped her bouquet had it not been for the watchfulness of her brother.

When Armour boulevard became the street of swagger homers and smart entertainments, its houses were built to endure at least a century, for it didn’t seem probable then that Kansas City could spread very much farther south. Mrs. Peter H. Tiernan recalls that a small club of matrons used to go out to the end of the street car line, where they were met by Mrs. Nelson’s wagonette and driven through a rural landscape to Oak Hall.

Among the early memories of Armour boulevard are the spans of handsome matched horses driven by the Burnhams and the Armours before stylish victories. Fancy parasols carried by fashionable women in their carriages went locally by the name of “Mrs. John Rosses” because Mrs. Ross, who wore charming clothes, carried extremely pretty sunshades with an inimitable air.

Tandems and traps, landaus and pony phaetons were the vehicles of transportation, but Armour boulevard was not very old when the pampered carriage and riding horses were shocked by the advent of two motor drawn buggies. They were owned by Watson Armour and Dr. A Comingo Griffith and today they would look decidedly queer, for they were boarded by means of steps leading up from behind. Mrs. Mary Dickerson, widow of Dr. D’Estaing Dickerson, owned one of these contraptions, housing it in her barn at 6 West Armour.

Young Abby Staunton Hagerman (now Mrs. Morrison Shafroth of Denver) divided her youthful affection between a pony and a pair of roller skates, sometimes wearing the skates noisily up and down East Armour with her arm tightly clasping the pony’s neck. She was given to exploring the roofs of all the houses in the neighborhood, none proving too steep for her courageous feet.

Modernism had another pioneer—a young man just home from college, who, at a dinner given by his parents for Bishop and Mrs. Sidney C. Partridge, addressed the reverend visitor all through the meal as “Bish.”

In another Armour boulevard mansion there was a large reception one afternoon, with the drawing rooms, hall and dining room full of elegantly gowned guests, when two workmen suddenly appeared to remove the house telephone. The telephone bill had not been paid for months. Whether the telephone men purposely timed the visit during the party will never be known.

Among the gayest affairs on Armour boulevard were the garden parties given b Capt. And Mrs. Charles Webster Littlefield at the Armour residence (Mrs. Littlefield was “Kirk” Armour’s widow), with every tree bright with electric light. Mrs. Littlefield’s sister, Mrs. Edward W. smith, gave a brilliant ball which she called a “coiffure d’epoques” ball. Fancy headdresses belonging to curious epochs were worn, Mrs. Victor B. Bell winning a prize with a ship on her head. E.M. Clendening was made up to resemble Mark Twain, and he achieved such a close likeness to the popular humorist that he startled the company.

During the years she lived in the Thomas Mastin residence at Armour and Main, Mrs. William B. Thayer had a gifted butler. He had a manner that other butlers tried vainly to imitate. That his distinguished bearing was the result of an inborn desire to give perfect service was apparent when he fell on his knees one day beside Mrs. J. V. C. Karnes’s chair. Mrs. Thayer was giving a luncheon and the mannered butler was serving an entrée. He was tall and for this reason Mrs. Karnes experienced difficulty in wielding the service spoon. So the butler fell on his knees beside her as it she were a queen. When she had been served, he rose, still with the tray intact, and completed his round of the table.

Armour boulevard may be said to have spread eastward and westward from the Kirkland B. Armour residence, socially speaking, and also northward and southward, for the Armour set was naturally not all on the boulevard. Mr. And Mrs. Walton Holmes lived (still live) at 3510 Warwick, the John H. Thachers at 3434 Main, the Harry T. Fowlers built the residence at 3 East Armour. The four corners at Armour and Warwick were occupied by the K. B. Armours, the Phil Tolls, the Griffiths and the George T. Moores. Also nearby were the residences of Jacob L. Loose, Edward W. smith, Theodore Winningham, Luke F. Wilson, Henry B. duke, E. H. Leo Thompson, Andrew Drumm, Donald F. Downing, George M. Myers, Conway F. Holmes, Judge Joseph Lowe, Joseph H. Harris, Bishop S. C. Partridge, Frederick A. Hornbeck, John R. Foran, Edward R. Perry, Rees Turpin, J. G. Peppard, Frank Hagerman, John G. Groves, James K. Christopher, Mrs. Frank J. Hearne, William L. Hearne, O. H. Dean, a. W. Childs, Joseph T. Bird, Henry Van Brunt and Ford Harvey. The old Morse residence is now occupied by the Black Friars theatrical club.

In the gatherings known as “conversation” parties, were many smart bachelors capable of holding their own. Instead of contract bridge, 6-hand euchre was the favorite card game. Every child had a governess. The future looked bright indeed for the wonderful new boulevard, where everybody knew everybody else and life had not quite lost its Victorian romance and simplicity.

The First Boulevards

The entertaining description of life along Armour boulevard at about the turn of the century, which appeared in The Star Sunday, recalls the tentative designation of this street as “South boulevard” in the original park and boulevard program for Kansas City. This program, submitted in 1893, provided for both a South and an East boulevard. This latter eventually became Benton boulevard, as we know it, and the former turned out to be a combination of Armour and Linwood boulevards. It as also proposed at that time to create an Independence boulevard over a route which now includes Gladstone boulevard, a segment of the Paseo and a grand boulevard, now lost in Broadway.

The program was remarkable in several respects. Although it suggested the construction of only about ten miles of boulevard, they were so laid out as to form a connected system, resembling the outer circle of boulevards in Paris. In the second place the first board of park and boulevard commissioners blithely went outside the cit limits and their jurisdiction in locating both South and grand boulevards. And in the third place their program was completely realized and now forms the basis of a system ten times as extensive. The vision and competence of the men involved, in this project, including George E. Kessler, their brilliant engineer, has been of lasting benefit to the city.

Kansas City Times;, June 11, 1932.

Thirty years of tradition and memories of the Hyde Park neighborhood rose last night in protest against the board of education´s proposal to change the name of the Hyde Park school to the George B. Longan school.

"If I were going to change," said John F. Cell, lawyer, speaking for the retention of the old name, "I would´t want a better name than that of George B. Longan, one of the outstanding educators in the history of Kansas City."

"But," the assembled persons asked, "why couldn´t the name of George B. Longan be better preserved on one of the new schools which certainly must be built in the next few years?"

Heard in the auditorium of the old school were many persons who had trudged through those rooms as children twenty or thirty years ago. many of them had sent their own children to the same school and had heard the name of Hyde Park cheered by young voices. The building was alive with the memories of Charles Parker, the principal, whose name became through the years almost synonymous with Hyde Park. The loving cups in the glass case testified to the glory that belonged to Hyde Park.

It was pointed out that the board of education had become opposed to regional names for primary schools. But it was the regional significance that these people wanted. The name of a great educator should, by all means, be given to a school, they said. But Hyde Park was their own and they like it.

"There is something in a name" Mr. Cell said, "that attaches to a school. No one would want to change the name of Harvard, Cornell or even Washburn college, where I went to school. No one would want to change the name of the Westport Presbyterian Church, which still clings to its regional distinction."

A resolution was adopted to circulate a petition for the "return of the old name." A committee will take it before the board meeting next Thursday night. The members of the committee are W.A. Sheely, Mr. Cell, Mrs. J.F. Bozarth and Mrs. P.H. Crane. The suggestion of the change in school name followed the decision to raze the George B. Longan school (located at 39th and Warwick).

The Longan grade school is now located at 3421 Cherry.

Kansas City Journal; March 5, 1937

Holmes street, which runs from 701 East Front street south to the city limits, was named after Nehemiah Holmes, founder of the street railway system in Kansas City.

The system was partly built and put into operation in 1869, following incorporation by William R. Bernard, Louis Vogel, Milton J. Payne, Nehemiah Holmes and Luther H. Wood. Later it was expanded into what Holmes originally intended—a 2-horse line between Kansas City and Westport.

It was a 2-horse line, because often two horses (or mules) were hitched tandem to the 4-wheel car. The fare was 15 cents one way and 25 cents round trip.

Whenever the car jumped the track, which was frequently, the passengers were expected to get off and help put the vehicle back into service. The women passengers were usually asked to take the back seats while the work was going forward, since it was usually the front wheels which were off, and the weight of the women passengers helped raise the front end.

Nehemiah Holmes was born in 1826 in New York City. He left school when 18 years old and went to Aberdeen, Miss., where he engaged in a general mercantile business when he was 20.

He sold his business interests in Mississippi and came to Kansas City in 1856. As a result of his business associations in Mississippi, Holmes brought considerable capital to Kansas City and invested it in real estate, insurance and other business. He died April 26, 1873.

The Kansas City Star; Oct 29, 1946.

One of the City’s “Immediate” Traffic Relief Projects Under Way. A $32,000 improvement on Robert Gillham road at Thirty-ninth street is designed as immediate relief for a bad traffic bottleneck. . . [Gillham] road divides in a “Y” south of the intersection, one road turning west to two 1-way drives, the other east toward a connection with Harrison boulevard. These drives, just to the north and south of Thirty-ninth, and Thirty-ninth itself, are being widened to forty feet, curbed and repaved. The old width without curbs was thirty-five feet, but the effective width was less. The west drive curving toward the 1-way drives is being curbed and widened to Thirty-eighth street to a maximum of sixty feet, but will not be repaved. Originally a viaduct on Thirty-ninth over Gillham was planned. Because of the cost and objections from the neighborhood an underpass under Thirty-ninth was substituted in the plans. However, the improvement now is progress and the traffic lights are expected to take care of the intersection for several years, precluding the more expensive remedies.

Kansas City Star; April 19, 1953.

The Large Stone Dwelling at Twenty-Eighth Street Was Erected in 1890, and Once Sold for $90,000—Once a Top Neighborhood

When a franchise was granted in 1886 to a group of Kansas City men for the construction and operation of the Troost avenue cable line, it started one of the biggest real estate booms ever experienced here on a single street.

One of the property buyers along Troost, and one of the original franchise holders was Shannon C. Douglass, a circuit judge and widely-known as a lawyer here.

On July 10, 1886, Judge Douglass purchased a lot at the southeast corner of Twenty-eighth street and Troost, with a 100-foot frontage on Troost, and later bought an additional 75-foot frontage. About 1890, he erected a handsome, 3-story and basement stone dwelling which has stood until now.

Various uses have been made of the old house in recent years, among the owners being the Kansas City Board of Education and later the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

Last week, the tract and house were acquired by Alfred O. Gilbert, an investor, from E. M. Hipsh. The new owner is razing the old Douglass residence. The lot will be graded to level with the Troost avenue frontage, and Gilbert has plans for improvement of the corner with a commercial building. Plans have not been fully developed as to type and size of the new structure, Gilbert said.

A total of 26,250 square feet is included in the site, with a total Troost avenue frontage of 175 feet and fronting 150 feet on Twenty-eighth street to the alley.

Judge Douglass used Vermont granite for his foundation, and the house is believed to be the first here with an elevator, which was used to carry laundry and trunks to the upper floors.

After two years or so, Judge Douglass sold his residence for $90,000 to H. B. Sanborn, July 5, 1892. At that time, the area was one of distinction. Judge Turner A. Gill of the Kansas City Court of Appeals lived at the northeast corner of the intersection. Henry N. Harper lived at the southwest corner of Twenty-eighth and Forest avenue, and Albert M. sills, then a prominent real estate man here, lived at the southwest corner of Twenty-eighth and Forest.

On the west side of Troost to the south were the J. Lee Porters, Dr. C. Lester Hall and William A. Wilson, whose horses and carriages took many prizes in the annual Flower parade.

The sale of the old Douglass house was negotiated by Albert Schoenberg, who also will manage the property for the new owner.

By Ann White, Kansas City Star, August 18, 1957.

Cave Exploration and Winter Sledding Were Part of the Excitement Half a Century Ago, It is Recalled.

Continuing a series of three articles on the Armour and Warwick boulevards neighborhood is this second story by Mrs. Ann Peppard White. It deals with the Hyde Park district.

The old substantial homes in Hyde Park still stand sturdy and staunch against the tide of business. The area is protected by zoning laws, which do not allow commerce to intrude into the blocks from Thirty-sixth to Thirty-eighth streets, east and west of Warwick boulevard and including Janssen place.

Surrounded by the noise of new commercial construction, this area has an encompassing invisible wall and the homes on the surface (outside) look as they did when they were young more than half a century ago. Duplexes are allowed, but in most cases the façade of homes has not changed. Most homes have a comfortable middle-aged appearance, with casual flower beds, old open front porches screened in for outdoor living. But none have gone in for the new idea of the patio.

Mrs. Harrison Field, the former Madeline Haff, spent her entire life, until her marriage, at the family home at Thirty-sixth and Locust, just around the corner from Hyde Park.

Once the Town’s Edge

“We were living on the edge of town when I was young,” Mrs. Field said recently, “and Hyde Park was the meeting place for all the neighborhood children. Skating and safe sledding in the winter, picnicking and tennis in the summertime and all kinds of games were our past times. Exploring partiers that often started at the park and went ‘off bounds’ several blocks east led tot he discovery of caves that rimmed a rock ledge along Thirty-ninth, east of Locust. We even took candles and followed an underground stream. I can feel the thrill now of the damp, clammy air“ and the slippery footing.

“Then there was the excitement— in the springtime when a band of gypsies camped for several weeks on the wooded land back of our house, which ran through the new Armour boulevard. We were the first house in the block, and on East Gillham road, which then was called Oak street, there was a woodsy place filled with wild blackberries.

“Katherine Harvey and I used to pick berries and gather wild watercress from around a spring at Thirty-ninth and Locust (now the French convent). We’d sell our products to the Guernsey and Murray grocery store at Fortieth and Main. There was always something to do!

The Riding Lesson

“I haven’t forgotten the fun of taking riding lessons from Dr. St. Clair Streett’s groom. He held classes on what is now the parade grounds south of Thirty-ninth, and in crisp German accept instructed us in posting. “One, two, three!” Some of the children in the classes were Fred Harvey, Katherine Harvey, Mary Augusta Armour (now Mrs. James Dunn), Abby Hagerman (now Mrs. Morrison Shafroth) and Dorothy Marsh.

“There was always something thrilling to do—gypsies, caves—and with childish imagination we peopled the place with wagon trains and Indians for the Santa Fe Trail had really passed this way, with a stop at our spring for water.”

Mrs. Sterrett Titus, formerly Polly Root, remembers Hyde park at the beginning of this century when the entire area was surrounded by a high iron fence and belonged exclusively to the neighbors. There was a private playground for the children, the iron gates were locked and one had to have a key to enter.

“We neighbor children had a whole kingdom of our own.” Mrs. Titus recalled recently “and it seemed so big—a great place to play ‘run, sheep, run’ in the springtime. Some of the boys in the neighborhood—Fred Harvey, Carroll Haff, Raymond White, the Gregory brothers and Alfred Benjamin—discovered a dark cave at the south and held secret meetings there, girls were not allowed!

“At the extreme southern end was a natural pool and we were forbidden to go in the water; but, occasionally, we just happened to fall in. There would be a sham rescue with the gang splashing around until the caretaker of the park shooed us away. He was a pleasant, friendly person, but couldn’t speak, so he waved and clapped his hands. We called him ‘Mr. Dummy,’ not only because when he was trimming a tree one day, he sawed a limb off while sitting on the extreme end and had a bad tumble!

Loved the Winters

“I think we enjoyed the winter times in the park most of all—such steep hills to go down ‘belly-buster,’ sliding swift and safe into the hollow.

“Our fathers took over the park sometimes when a Scotchman, Stanly Young, showed them a new game for Kansas City—golf. And in only one year or two, the young men became so enthusiastic they sent back to Scotland for proper clubs and rented Hugh and Seth Ward’s big pasture. Thus was formed the Kansas City Country club on the land which is now Loose park. I have often heard this was the first golf course west of the Mississippi.

“It was a neighboring place to live—lots of home-made family fun and excitement, too.

“The elm trees along Warwick were small, straight saplings, and Colonel William Rockhill Nelson had them planted, we heard, so he could have a shady lane to drive to his country home, Oak Hall, located on the site of the Nelson Gallery.”

Kansas City Star; 1963.

A lawsuit filed by M. J. Burton seeks to have zoning ordinance thrown out.

CITES MULTI-FAMILY USE

Resident Says 27 of the Lots Are in That Category—Unchanged Since 1929

A lawsuit seeking to have the city zoning ordinance relating to dwellings on Janssen place declared invalid and unenforceable was filed yesterday in the Jackson County Circuit court on behalf of M. J. Burton, 6 Janssen place.

The petition filed by J. K. Owens, attorney for Burton, names as defendants the city; Carleton F. Sharpe, city manager; William A. Row, building commissioner, and C. M. Kelley, police chief.

Duplexes on Six Lots

It alleges the ordinance, which limits the one-block, 32-lot street to one-family dwellings, is invalid because since it was passed in 1929 the city for all practical purposes has abandoned the restriction by giving building permits to owners of six lots for building duplexes and permitting them to build duplexes housing more than one family.

It further alleges that when the ordinance was passed Burton’s property was being used as a multiple dwelling, and that now 27 of the 32 lots are occupied by more than one family and only three are not.

The houses on Janssen place are now suited only for rooming houses and apartments, it alleges, and the entire neighborhood adjoining it has been spot zoned for apartment buildings and businesses.

Arrest Is Threatened

It alleges that by reason of the present use and condition of property on Janssen place the ordinance is unreasonable, denying the property owner the right use of his property.

It further alleges that now the city is threatening to enforce the ordinance, even to the point of arrest of offenders.

Owens said last night that enforcement by the city was forced by one of the three property owners whose lot is occupied by only one family. He said the owner has been complaining to the city necessitating the suit.

By Martha Rowe Lawson for the Jackson County Historical Society; 1964.

Just off busy Gillham Road to the west and Holmes street to the east—five minutes from downtown Kansas City—moments away from the lovely Country Club Plaza—a small, almost forgotten property sits behind massive stone entrance gates. The gracious homes and well-kept lawns hold an aura that few Kansas City residential sections can match. The imposing gateway, erected in 1896 proclaims to all that this is JANSSEN PLACE and now, as at the time Arthur Stilwell fathered the idea of setting aside Janssen Place for the elite of Kansas City, those living in the area find not so much that they are property owners but rather that they belong to the land.

The property owners of Janssen Place have an association and meet in self-governing sessions. Each home owner owns the street in front of his property and the plaza in front of his house to the center of the medial strip. A gardener, paid by assessment to the property owners, still cares for the medial strip, the gateway and the property immediately in front of each home.

This select area, once referred to as “Lumberman’s Row,” was the vision of Arthur Stilwell, founder of the Kansas City Southern Railroad.

An early photo of Janssen Place with cow pasture, level land, and only the present stone gateway, gives evidence of Arthur Stilwell’s dream. It was largely due to his enthusiasm and energy that the ground, almost a wilderness, was given every possible improvement. Sewers were built; curbing and sidewalks were put in. The wide street was paved and the plaza landscaped. Trees were planted and the entire tract was shown in bluegrass. From a treeless expanse of hillside and plateau, the ground soon changed to an area that has ever since known the care of a gardener.

Mr. Stilwell had great hopes for Janssen Place; similar additions such as Van deventer and Portland Place in St. Louis, for instance, had found great favor. Exclusive residential districts are found in all cities, but Janssen Place was ahead of the times in cow town Kansas City, and was permitted to remain in obscurity. Only three wealthy Kansas Citians ventured “this far south” to build their mansions . . . J. H. Tschudy, Burton D. Hurd and R. M. Rigby.

Members of these families tell of numbers of servants, the family Jersey tethered in the back lot for rich milk and butter, the long trip to town and the special Sunday trips via horse and carriage to Fred Harvey’s for dinner.

Janssen Place had been named by Arthur Stilwell for his friend, August Janssen, a Dutch capitalist who had large investments in Kansas City. In 1906, control of the twenty-eight unsold lots in Janssen Place passed from the Janssen Place Land Company to W. F. Patton, capitalist and brother-in-law of H. C. Flower, president of the Fidelity Trust Company. At this time, the hither-to-fore private street was opened on the south by an arrangement Mr. Patton made with the park board for a thirty-foot boulevard form the south end of Janssen place over park land to a junction with Harrison parkway. This connecting drive from Janssen Place also crossed part of a three acre tract purchased by H. C. Flower on which he intended building his home. The drive, when completed, was turned over to the park board free of cost to become a part of Kansas City’s boulevard and park system.

E. Stilwell had placed rigid restrictions on Janssen Place and Mr. Patton insisted that they be observed by all immediate and future owners of the land. These restrictions, which became a part of each deed, governed the use of the land (for residential purposes only), and the size, cost and placement of the dwellings. At this time, H. C. Flower built a $25,000 residence and carriage house to the south of Janssen place that today is a part of the Notre Dame De Sion school.

In 1913, A. H. Glasner, A. L. Strauss, George Ultch and A. Rosenburger built fine homes in the area. In 1928, F. A. Boxley and W. C. Bowman built, as late comers to the area.

A close-knit group of the Kansas City elite had by now settled in Janssen Place. Arthur Stilwell never lived in Janssen Place itself, but resided in a fine old home just opposite the north gateway that has since been torn down. He is remembered for his way of getting things done, his sincere desire to contribute to a growing metropolis, his fine manners and “dandy” appearance, and his lovely wife, Jenny. Even among these men of obvious means, he is the only one remembered for having a large pipe organ installed in his home.

Young people of the area tended to plan picnics and parties among themselves, as did the parents. Long trips were scheduled by car to a well-known resort in Arkansas. The Tschudy girls had gone abroad early in the 1900’s, and as others followed their lead, the comparing of photographs and experiences became “the thing.” Neighbors and close friends attended dances in ballrooms in the various homes. Servants were in abundance and no one drove his own carriage or the automobile that soon replaced it.

The servants of early Janssen Place residents remember the entertaining. Naturally, many large parties were given. Sometimes on a Sunday, the families dined at the choice hotels in the area of Oak and Locust streets. But, more often, the children and grandchildren came to Janssen Place for big Sunday dinners and holiday feasting.

As the golden area of growth and prosperity passed, and the shadows of 1929 pressed own on the country, Janssen Place did not escape. Some of the people living near the area and affected by the ordinance limiting the area to single family dwellings, began to vigorously fight to change the ordinance. Times were difficult and some being forced to sell large homes could not find a buyer. It was a bitter battle between those in Janssen Place and the surrounding area pleading to preserve the homes—and a small group out to lift restrictions. Bryce B. smith, who represented the majority and lived in the area, led the fight to hold the restrictions and the suit was won.

Many homes and individuals in residence there over the years have contributed to the history of Janssen Place. One large home came under the tenantship of a widow and her young daughter. Considerable uproar developed because the neighbors objected to fifteen additional young men and women occupying the home. The widow could not understand the neighbor’s attitude because “she merely allowed her guests to contribute to her budget for the privilege of living in her home.” A suit in circuit court held in the Janssen Place owner’s favor. Janssen Place shook the dust form it’s skirts and closed in a changed, but rigidly-cut society. Friends still served luncheons and dinners and accepted the fact that a market crash had served old ties and created new ones. Large weddings and receptions were still held at home—possibly just a little less splendid than those of the previous generation. And one still died at home and many still laid there “in state before the funeral.

And then came 1939, and the beginning of World War II. Young residents left to fight for their country. Living space was at a premium and it was the patriotic thing to do to share one’s home. Those who before the war did not venture out of their social circle, opened homes and hearts to boys like their own who were away from home.

Because of the acute housing shortage, one property owner who had a son in the service moved is family into a small residence and rented his home to a larger family. One day, at a flight base in England, a young officer and an acquaintance were talking about “home” and wondering “when” and “if” they would be getting back to the state. One did not get too friendly with another in these days of sudden death . . . to have a buddy might be to mourn him—yet one had to talk. The boys were talking of their homes and the one finally mentioned that Kansas City was his home. The other officer slapped his leg and laughed—for he remembered Kansas City! “Say, do they have a ‘house’ there,” He went on to describe his misadventures and specifically where they transpired. It was with combined astonishment and chagrin that the young officer suddenly realized his conversant was speaking of the old homestead in Janssen Place! One cannot help but wonder how the neighbors missed the activity and can only assume a disinterest not compatible with the perturbation that would be evidence in present day residents.

The war did finally end and with it, a way of life. Those, whose only ways of gaining a livelihood had been in the service of others, had found new skills in defense plants or had been given new training in the Armed Services. Gasoline rationing was ended and new model cars were available. Building was in full venture and young society was moving south. Plush and exciting new areas opened up wit h homes designed by architects, who recognized the inevitable fact that most young and middle-aged couple would have only part-time help or none at all.

So once again the face of Janssen Place changed. Some for the well-to-do and substantial citizens elected to stay on in their beloved old homes despite the great changes in the area and in their way of life. Young families, delighted at the spacious rooms in Janssen Place houses, the beautiful interiors, and the lavish lawns, moved into this area where it is so nice to “raise a child.” Sometimes the aloof older residents shake their heads and speak of the “newcomers” and remember the days of chauffeurs, many servants, and social prominence in the block. But one wonders if Arthur Stilwell, with all his suave appearance and genteel upbringing, might not now say “BRAVO” to this new breed of land-gentry who do their own gardening and housework, raise their children and entertain—not as a former ear—but with bravado and zest and a desire to maintain a dignity passed down with the years. Lovely green lawns attest this fact. Owners plant new trees they will live to see tower above the street and drive. One family plants a tree each year for a child’s birthday. Two property owners “pointed up” the stone gateway at no charge to the association to keep it in fine repair. A newcomer to the area redid the Christmas scene that members of the association place on the gateway at Christmas time.

And so, Janssen Place continues to provide a stetting for gracious living as it has for nearly three-forth of a century.

K.C. Star; March 15, 1972.

Rallying community forces for a proposed neighborhood housing corporation and worker corps, Roger L. Porter, president of the Hyde Park Neighborhood Association, last night called for a strong turnout from the group to attend the city council’s budget hearing 7:30 p.m. March 23 in the city council chambers.

The association is seeking $31,200 for financing a group of workers and part-time secretary, and $227,500 for funding a nonprofit neighborhood housing corporation.

Porter addressed more than 50 persons at the Trinity United Methodist Church, 620 Armour, and discussed benefits to the community from the project.

By James P. McGilley, ad for McGilley Memorial Chapels, Kansas City Star; March 5, 1973.

My good friend, Mike O’Dowd, brought me this picture of the home at 31st and Troost where his mother lived from the time she was a little girl until she married. Mike is associated with me as a counselor for our McIlley Funeral Trust Plan.

I remember this charming old Victorian mansion so well. There were a number like it in the area of 31st and Troost when I came her in 1904—but this one was probably the largest and most elaborate.

To give you an idea of its size, take a look at those five chimneys—that meant there were five fireplaces!

The house was built back in 1880 by J. F.Richards who was the founder of Richards and Conover Hardware Company. Richards lived in the house until 1906 when he sold it to Joseph Wirthman.

Wirthman and his wife had no children of their own, and they persuaded Mrs. Wirthman’s little sister, Laura, to come and live with them. Laura, of course, is Mike O’Dowd’s mother.

It was commonplace back in those days for large families to loan a “little angel” to aunts and uncles who had no children.

Usually these loans were intended just for the summer, but you know how summer has a way of fading into fall; and thus it was that Laura Miler O’Dowd stayed on with the Wirthmans until she was married.

Some folks wondered why in the world Joe Wirthman bought this old mansion! But Joe knew . . . and, in my next story, I’ll tell you why. That will be March 19, so mark your calendar.

By James P. McGilley, ad for McGilley Memorial Chapels, Kansas City Star; March 19, 1973.

Do you remember a couple of weeks ago I had a picture of the old mansion at 31st and Troost that Joe Wirthman bought form J.F. Richards in 1906? I mentioned that some folks at the time wondered why he wanted such a big house.

Well, this old drawing which Wirthman had made before he bought the house indicated that he knew exactly what he was going to do with it!

He foresaw that, someday, 31st and Troost would be a commercial area and he envisioned moving his drug store form 19th and Troost and locating it in his front yard.

Of course, you know that the commercial value of 31st and Troost developed way beyond Wirthman’s original dream. It became the number one suburban shopping center in Kansas City. Street cars went by 31st and Troost almost as frequently as planes land today at O’Hare.

Wirthman’s proposed Corner Drug Store blossomed into the five-story Wirthman building, with the famous Isis Cafeteria in the basement.

Oh, the memories I have of the Isis!

Michael O’Dowd had a 14-piece band playing dinner music there, and Mike has told me that some folks actually bought flaks with them to the Isis . . . and spiked the near beer. Can you imagine that! !

It’s no wonder they call those days the “Roaring Twenties.“

Oh, 31st and Troost was something in the twenties! It was the center of the world—and Joe Wirthman was in the center of the center.

Planning, ahead was the secret of his success. It’s never too late to start on new plan. There’s still time to become the man you might have been!

K.C. Times; April 30, 1974.

About 40 residents and friends of the Hyde Park Neighborhood Association yesterday attended the association’s first Arbor Day picnic and planted a tree along Harrison Parkway, 39th and Harrison Boulevard.

Bradford K. Van Hecke, 3846 Campbell, association member, said the picnic was the culmination of two days of activities in connection with Arbor Day. About 20 association members and Councilman Joseph Shaughnessy, Jr., participated in a cleanup Saturday of the Hyde Park area. The group collected trash from 31st to 43rd, Troost to Holmes. The city public works department volunteered three trash trucks and two flatbed trucks for the cleanup.

Among persons attending the picnic yesterday were Ted Newman and Ronald Spradley, Jackson County legislators, Councilmen Richard Berkley and Shaughnessy.

In July 1976, representatives of Historic Kansas City Foundation and the Landmarks Commission met with the owners of the house at 3605 Gillham to discuss its future. At that meeting, they learned of the owner’s plans to tear down both the house at 3605 and the one immediately north of it, presently the Hyde Park Nursing Home. In their place, a modern 76-bed nursing home facility was to be constructed. This proposal was distressing not only to residents of the Hyde Park neighborhood, where a resurgence of interest in the homes of the area is taking place but also to historic Kansas City Foundation and the City’s Landmarks Commission.

As a result of their concern, discussions began with the owners to encourage them to sell the 3605 property rather than tearing it down. After initial skepticism on their part as to the value of the property, the owners finally put it on the market. Though interest was active, the asking price was too high to allow for the necessary repairs to make the building habitable.

Over the long winter months, the house remained vacant and unsecured. It was sporadically occupied by vagrants who did further damage to it. And the low temperatures and frequent moisture continued the already serious deterioration of the roof.

By spring, the owners decided it was not going to sell and the city listed it as a “dangerous building” which required it to be boarded up or demolished. Not wanting to waste further funds on it, the owners decided not to board it but to allow plans for demolition to proceed. At this point, Historic Kansas City Foundation voted funds to pay for boarding up the house but the owners were reluctant to give permission since they felt the Foundation would be losing its money.

In May, the Foundation decided the only way to rescue the house was to purchase it. Negotiations began in May and a contract was signed June 7th. It is hoped that the sale will have been closed by the time this article is printed.

The Foundation has already boarded up and secured the building. Estimates are being gathered for a new roof and other emergency repairs will be done as needed. The Foundation hopes to have a group of volunteers spend a Saturday in the near future cleaning the interior and the yard of the house.

Historic Kansas City Foundation plans to hold the house until a buyer is found who will restore it. Protective easements or covenants will be placed on the façade and made part of the deed of trust. Such easements protect the original design of the house from modern intrusions. The Foundation is not interested in making a profit on the house and will sell it for its expenses to date. Their interest is in seeing it restored and once more made a viable part of the Hyde Park neighborhood.

Westport Bank deserves tanks and congratulations for its foresight in making a loan to the Foundation for the purchase. Without that support, the purchase would not be possible. Both Westport Bank and Historic Kansas City Foundation have given the Hyde Park neighborhood a vote of confidence by their willingness to invest in this house. They believe Hyde Park is making a come back. Let’s convince them its true.

From the Historic Kansas City Foundation; approximately 1977.

Section 20, Township 49, Range 33, presently comprising Hyde Park, was originally deeded by the United States and accepted by the state of Missouri on June 6, 1828 under an act of United States Congress on July 24, 1827 setting aside this section for seminaries of higher learning. Such seminaries were not religious seminaries but were simply educational facilities.

On December 5, 1833, an original patent was issued by the state of Missouri to Samual Allen granting the northwest quarter of the northeast quarter of section 20, township 49, range 33, containing 40 acres and part of the seminary land. On November 10, 1837, Samual Allen and his wife Sarah, deeded to Jacob Ragan for $1,000 the west half of the southeast quarter of section 17, township 49, range 33 and also the northwest quarter of the northeast quarter of section 20, township 49, range 33. The exact size of that total parcel of land is unknown, but the northwest quarter of the northeast quarter, on which 3605 Gillham is located, is 40 acres.

Jacob Ragan died in 1878. His will granted a life estate in the property to his wife Anna Ragan. Anna Ragan died on March 8, 1887 and the property passed to her children Steven C. Ragan, Greenbury Ragan and Madeline C. Ragan Johnson. The heirs sold the property on December 17, 1887, 9 months after the death of their mother for the sum of $160,000. It should be noted at that time there was no income tax.

The 40 acres were purchased at that time by W. G. Mellier and James C. Darragh. Mellier and Darragh deeded the property to H. P. Stimson on January 17, 1888. A corporation was set up, known as the “Kenwood Land Company” and Mr. Stimson then platted the land, sub-divided it, and names the area “Kenwood.” Stimson sold block 8 to S. M. Jarvis and R. R. Conklin, who did business at that time under the name of the Jarvis-Conklin Mortgage Trust Company. It appears from records that they hired Mr. E. H. Bouton as the builder. 3605 Gillham was one of 7 houses built on the block at the same time. Same builder, same heating and plumbing contractor.

All have interesting architectural details; all are distinctively designed. All have towers. All use wood shingles. Architects as of now—known.

The first owner of 3605 Gillham was Lina Spivey, who purchased the house for $13,500 on April 1, 1890. There are several entries on the abstract that would indicate refinancing or perhaps financial problems in the area. The next purchasers appear to be P. H. Kirshner and Agnes F. Kirshner on April 9, 1901. Mr. Kirshner was a partner in the law firm of Beardsley, Gregory and Kirshner. Mr. Alfred Gregory lived at 3608 Locust and Mr. H. M. Beardsley lived at 3632 Locust. The Kirshners sold the property to a Josephine Phillips on October 1, 1907, who in turn sold the property to the Inland Security Company on November 25, 1911. It should be noted that C. H. Kirshner was a principal shareholder in that company and it would appear that this was simply a refinancing.

There were several owners after Kirshner and the property was deeded to Mary B. Armstrong on January 8, 1923 for 48,800. Then from Mary B. Armstrong to Mary J. Armstrong on April 9, 1925 and by Margaret J. Armstrong to Clarence E. Peterson and Virginia L. Peterson on December 27, 1926. They, in turn, deeded it to Iroquios Realty Company in august of 1927. During this process there had been a default on the note secured by a deed of trust and trustee, Mr. W. Thomas, took possession of the property. Margaret A. Strickler, whose maiden name was Armstrong, took ownership of the property on March 5, 1932. Thomas J. Strickler was president of the Kansas City Gas Company. It appears that the property was converted into apartments in approximately 1931 or 1932 during the ownership of Miss Armstrong-Strickler. The city directory records multiple tenants at 3605 Gillham from 1931 on. The house was purchased by the Kansas City Historic foundation in the spring of 1977 and purchased by the present owners William H. smith and Kathy McCarty in December of 1977.

The house, as it is restored, follows as nearly as discernable, the original floor plan of the hose. The house was not constructed with the front porch nor with the two additions that are presently off the floor rear. It appears form the city records that the porch and additions were added in 1908 at an approximate cost of $1,200. Before the house was converted, the second floor consisted of a balcony, two other bedrooms and a bath. A door in the hall led to the maid’s room and the storage room. The third floor consisted of three bedrooms and a bath.

Mrs. Armstrong-Strickler, who owned the house during the 20’s and 30’s, taught Margaret Truman how to play the piano and her furniture is now in the Truman Library.

The first Hyde Park homes tour/festival was held June 4th and 5th, 1977. The event was coordinated by Westport Tomorrow, Notre Dame de Sion School, and the Hyde Park Neighborhood Association. The homes tour/festival hoped to attract people in the Kansas City area to come and see the special qualities the Hyde Park neighborhood offers and to raise money for the sponsoring organizations.

The theme of the homes tour/festival was "Hyde Park—The Way We Were and The Way We´re Going." Main events included a homes tour of historic homes, neighborhood artisans displaying their crafts, a beer and wine garden and every type of music ensemble from classical to ragtime. The main activities were located at Notre Dame de Sion School, 3823 Locust and Harrison Parkway.

School children planned to "show off" the unique historic heritage of Hyde Park by enacting skits, dressing in period costumes, and interviewing older residents and writing articles. A grand ballroom dance was planned at Notre Dame de Sion to officially open the festival on Friday evening.

The festival planners hoped to not only attract attention to their neighborhood—officially stretching from Gillham to Troost and from Armour to 39th*—but to show others the potential of home ownership in Kansas City´s older, close–in neighborhoods.

Houses on the self–guided, walking tour were built from 1907 to 1913. They include two on Janssen Place, No. 80 and No. 96, and three smaller homes. The oldest home was 3800 Campbell. A house at 3629 Harrison Boulevard was just starting to undergo remodeling, showing what the houses offer before restoration. The other house on the tour was at 3601 Charlotte, owned by a long–time Hyde Park resident. The others are owned by persons who have moved to the neighborhood in the last three years.

Persons shopping in an older neighborhood will find a much wider price range then in an area of newer homes. In Hyde Park, for example, investors and speculators still were picking up houses priced in the teens, while others sell for $50,000 or more. Prices on Janssen place were double that.

The homes tour was scheduled from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. both days, although entertainment may run longer. Harrison Parkway was closed and music, theater and other groups performed on a stage adjacent to the grassy slopes, Chamber music was presented in the Victorian parlor of Notre Dame de Sion.

Also on the grounds of the school, which were open for tours, were booths set up by several restaurants and national groups offering native food. Parents of Notre Dame students were in charge of the food arrangements.

The house at 3501 Charlotte contained an exhibit of art nouveau items, selected because they were in vogue at the time most of the homes on the tour were built. Furniture, paintings, lamps, silver, jewelry, clothing and decorative items such as boxes, vases and paperweights had been donated by collectors, many of whom lived in the area. The house was built in 1911 for Benjamin Berkshire, a lumberman, and the ornate woodwork testifies to the original ownership. Neoclassic in style with Italianate and Jacobethan elements, it was designed by the architectural firm of Shepard, Farrar & Wiser, which designed many house in the Hyde Park area.

Shepard, Farrar & Wiser also designed the two houses on Janssen Place. Specially made gray–brown brick is used in the neoclassic, neocolonial revival–style home with Chicago–influenced amalgam of design elements at 80 Janssen Place. It was built originally for Mrs. A.H. Glasner, window of the president of a distilling and importing firm, and her son–in–law.

The third Shepard, Farrar & Wiser design on the tour is a neocolonial revival home built for another lumberman, William C. Bowman, who headed Bowman–Hicks Lumber company.

Wilder and Wight designed a prairie schoolhouse–style home as the show home for the subdivision in 1907 when the area south of Campbell and Manheim Road was being developed. Ledrum R. Wright, a real estate agent, was the original owner of the house at 3800 Campbell.

Another real estate agent, George W. Goldman, originally owned the house at 3629 Harrison Boulevard.

Tickets for the festival were $3 in advance or $3.50 the day of and were available at the school, Westport Tomorrow or from members of the Hyde Park Neighborhood Association.

Because many streets in the area are narrow, free parking was available at the Trinity Methodist Church, Armour and Kenwood, and the Blue Cross building, 36th and Warwick. A free shuttle bus run continuously from the lots to the school and another shuttle circled the homes tour route to pick up anyone with a ticket who did not care to walk the mile route.

* The Hyde Park Neighborhood Association boundaries at the time of the first homes tour/festival were the current central Hyde Park boundaries. North and south were added to the neighborhood some time after this first homes tour. It appears to be around 1979.

Western Historic Missouri Collection of Kansas City; 1977

Barring any late entries, there are three legitimate contenders for the title, Hyde Park. In 1886, the Hyde Park subdivision was platted roughly from Linwood Blvd. To 39th street, Broadway to Gillham Road. Until J.C. Nichols built his Country Club residential district in the 1920’s, this was the largest planned development of single-family homes in Kansas City. When the Hyde park subdivision was platted, a nine acre grassy gully between McGee & Oak (today, the north & south bound lanes of Gillham Road, 36th to 38th streets) was included but never sold. The land was purchased for use as a private country club and in 1902 was acquired by the Parks Department and named, of course, Hyde Park. The Hyde Park Neighborhood Association is a creature of the modern era. It was formed in 1969 by residents in the area from 31st to 46th streets, Gillham Road to Troost who were concerned with maintaining their old neighborhood as a good place to live.

With due acknowledgement to the historic Hyde Park subdivision west of Gillham Road, this booklet will deal with the contemporary boundaries of the Hyde Park Neighborhood Association and the park that is its namesake. More specifically, attention will be focused on the area from Armour Boulevard to 39th street, known informally as “central Hyde Park.” This portion of the neighborhood contains the most impressive homes and was designated by the City Council of Kansas City to participate in a major neighborhood conservation program.

Many of the features of Hyde Park are as recognizable today as they were 75 years ago while others have vanished as completely as if they never existed. At the turn-of-the-century, the main streets bounding the area were Oak (Gillham Road), Commonwealth (Armour Boulevard), Troost Avenue and Chicago Avenue (39th street). The nearest streetcar line reached only as far east as Main Street. Genteel residents made us e of the tennis, croquet, and archery facilities at the Hyde Park Country Club, predecessor of the Kansas City Country Club. Located until 1896 in the present-day park between the lanes of Gillham road, the Country Club had introduced golf to the area with a nine-hole course just to the east. Because of members’ complaints, the Westport city council was persuaded to pass a herd law to keep cows off the greens.

Several springs flowed from the rock outcroppings on the west and south edges of the neighborhood and joined Harris Creek, that originated at 30th street and flowed southward beside Oak street and then Hyde Park and continued in the valleys now occupied by Harrison Parkway and Gillham Road to Brush Creek. The outlines of Cave Spring can still be seen below Charlotte at Gleed Terrace. The latter street followed the line of the Santa Fe Trail as it approached Westport, and Cave Spring was a favorite watering spot for weary travelers. Walled-up to prevent injury to inquisitive youngsters, the entrance was graded over in 1906 with the completion of Charlotte. Chicago Avenue stopped on either side of present-day Gillham because there was no way to ford Harris Creek in the valley.

Hyde Park was greatly affected by the land boom of the 1880’s and annexation intrigues of the 1890’s. Seven additional subdivisions were platted in frantic succession from 1886-88 with such sterling names as Nicolett Place, Edna Place, Hampden Place and Regents Park. Fantastic speculation drove up land prices until the bottom dropped out in 1888 and development effectively halted for the next ten years. In 1891, the city of Westport annexed land east to Locust in order to create a sewer benefit district, and in 1896 it extended its Eastern limit to Troost for the same purpose. The following year, residents of Westport voted overwhelmingly in favor of annexation by Kansas City, fro history shows that a great number of the affluent owners of businesses in Kansas City lived in Westport.

Those people had been attracted to Hyde Park and southward to 45th street by the comfortable and in summer much cooler “suburban” living it afforded. Thirty years later, the Kansas City Star reported on that era as follows: “The usual diversion following the dining hour in warm months was to sit on the front porch in swings and rocking chairs, and the proximity of neighbors enabled pleasant chats to be carried on with no effort.” Carriage houses kept both buggies and servants, and kitchens were often the plainest rooms of the house because the owners spent so little time there. A list of early residents reads like a “Who’s Who of the period: Arthur Stilwell, Fred Harvey, Arthur Fels, Elmer Powell, Louis Oppenstein, and Jo Zack Miller to name a few.

Arthur Stilwell, founder of the MK&T Trust Company and the Kansas City southern Railroad, and his vice-president had built two imposing homes on Humboldt (36th street) in 1892, one of which still stands on the northeast corner of 36th & Cherry. Although his trust company was committed to building modest homes, Stilwell envisioned a residential development for the “best families” spreading from his doorstep through the woodlands to the south. With that motivation, he purchased all the lots between Cherry and Kenwood, Humboldt to about the line of the old Santa Fe Trail. In 1897, he platted Janssen Place, named for his Dutch friend and business associate, August Janssen.

Stone columns of white Arkansas limestone surrounded by a flower garden framed the entrance to Janssen Place and the 32 lots measuring 75 by 250 feet faced a double drive with landscaped median on a 100-foot right-of-way. The drive was designed as private street and modeled after Portland Place and Westmoreland Place in St. Louis. Two houses were built n 1900, a third in 1905 and others, thereafter, from 1907 until the last of the 19 original houses was completed in 1917. So many of the initial owners were timber barons that Janssen Place was for a time known as “lumbermen’s row.”

In the late teens and twenties, fashionable apartment hotels were built along Armour Boulevard in one of the highest concentrations outside of the downtown area. The Georgian Court, at Armour & Gillham contained only 24 units in the nine stories, and each 7 to 9 room suite rented for $375 per month in 1920.

In 1927, the Sisters of Notre Dame de Sion opened their school for the daughters of the area’s elite families. From their building on Sion Hill, the sisters pursued their unique mission of fostering understanding among different faiths. By the end of the Second World War, a profound change had occurred in the area. Many of the original owners had died or moved to newer “quality” addresses, and the large homes began to be converted into apartments and sleeping rooms. The neighborhood began a long, slow decline that continued unchecked until the 1970’s.

Over the past three years, dramatic changes have taken place. Through a city-sponsored, neighborhood conservation program, over 1/2 million dollars in public improvements have been made such as tree planting and pruning, park landscaping, a brown brick-pattern sidewalk along Harrison Parkway, entry markers currently being designed, and replacement of all substandard curbs and sidewalks with property owners sharing the costs. A city housing inspection program was requested by the residents and a great deal of home repair is underway. The result of this public and private investment and attendant publicity has been a rediscovery of the neighborhood. Many homes have been sold to young families, property values are increasing, but most importantly, new and old residents alike feel a new sense of hope for the future. As in the days of buggies and bustles, Hyde Park and indeed most of the Westport area is once-again becoming a special place to live.

By Jo Musgrave; March, 1977

I had never heard of Gleed Terrace until I moved into the Hyde Park neighborhood. For those of you who don't live in the midtown area, Gleed runs east and west at approximately 37th street between Holmes and Campbell. Unless you're looking for it, you may not notice it; it's only two blocks long. But there's a wealth of history behind this obscure little street.

Gleed is on a slight hill and parallels busier Harrison Parkway. In the eighteen forties, Gleed was a part of the Santa Fe Trail. It still follows the curve the old Westport Road portion of the trail took through Kansas City. Springs once flowed freely in this area. One of the most popular watering holes and campsites for travelers along the Santa Fe Trail was Cave Spring, at the intersection of Campbell and Gleed. In 1831 Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon faith, established a religious boys school at the corner of what is now Charlotte and Gleed. Schoolboys cooled bottles of milk in the fresh spring water until the school was abandoned during the persecution of the Mormon in 1833. For sanitary and safety reasons, Cave Spring was bricked up around 1900.

The street was named after Charles Sumner Gleed, one of the owners of early local newspaper, the Kansas City Journal. Gleed was also the director of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroad, and one of the first presidents of the local Bell Telephone system.

Today, imposing turn of the century houses overlook the same path that westward bound pioneers traveled. Cars have long since replaced covered wagons, but Gleed Terrace will always own its unique piece of local history.

By Lyle Kennedy for the Hyde Parker; April 15, 1977.

Early in this century when the original houses were constructed on Janssen Place the Kansas City Journal received a manuscript with a short note attached. In this note the writer explained that he was probably the only one alive who knew the actual circumstances which lead to a mystery that has kept tongues in the area wagging. The following is a condensed account of the story which the Journal printed without further comment.

In the spring of 1849, a young Ohio farmer, John Morgan, learned of the gold strike in California. Although he was engaged to marry his childhood sweetheart, he resolved to go to California with his small savings and bring back enough gold to buy a large farm and build a fine house. He left his tearful betrothed, promising to return within a year with a fortune. he took a boat to St. Louis and another up the Missouri to Independence. On arrival he purchased a horse, saddlebags and bedroll; he joined a wagon train for the long overland journey.

It was many weeks before Morgan´s sweetheart received his first letter mailed from West Port, Missouri. He told her that the wagonmaster said they were about a mile east of West Port, and that he was writing by firelight where they were camped. He described the banks of a small stream, a valley a short distance away. He told her the wagon train was circled just below the trail where good water emerged from a cave and that the surrounding hills were heavily wooded and of indescribable beauty. He sent his love and reminded her that he would be unable to write again until they reached California. He would have been there several months before she would receive his next letter. He added a P.S. before mailing saying, "West Port is a very busy place."

It was indeed many months before she received his next letter although it was a joyous one! He had been lucky in finding a ´strike´ and predicted that in another month would have enough gold at last them a lifetime. A wagon had been purchased and he was looking for a good team of mules. They would be so much faster than oxen. With good luck, she could expect him about a month or six weeks after receiving his next letter.

Morgan also purchased four iron pots in which he placed all the gold he could lift. Covering them with staples, groceries, and clothing, he hung three of them on a strong pole beneath the wagon and the fourth behind the seat of the wagon. He then headed east for home.

Caravans were still in a steady stream west for the gold fields so that he was rarely out of sight of one of them and always camped with them at night. He was amazed to find the people taciturn—many of the women weeping—before he learned that the dread Cholera was again rampant. Almost every family had buried at least one member on the prairie.

When he reached West Port, he learned that many had died there. Since the mail was just leaving, he hastily wrote to his beloved telling her that he would arrive home in Ohio in about two weeks after she received the letter.

Later that afternoon, he came into the valley below the cave and the spring. It was the same location he remembered from the trip west. He unhitched his team of mules to graze and sat down to admire the beautiful view & it seemed even more beautiful than the outward journey.

Soon wagons bound for California began to arrive. He started to prepare a meal but felt very feverish and began to chill. He was unable to eat and it occurred to him that he had contracted the dread Cholera. As he sat pondering what to do he noticed that on the high ground to the northwest was an enormous tree that towered above the others. Taking his rifle, he took a bearing from the top of the cave and paced off the distance to the great tree. Remembering that there was another spring about a half mile west, he located it and again took a bearing an paced the distance. Then he returned to camp.

Again, he tried to eat and could not. He was exhausted and felt desperately ill. His condition was worsening, and he knew that he would never reach Ohio...

Other trains had arrived. By the light of the fire he wrote his sweetheart, advising her of his condition, proclaiming his devotion and love, and describing in detail the precise spot where he intended to bury the gold. Then he lay down to rest until the rest of the camp was sleeping.

When all the camp was quiet he dragged a pot from the wagon, slung it between the two mules, and with shovel and rifle made his way to the spot selected. There he dug a trench for the four pots, and by almost superhuman effort made the three more trips. He then backfilled the hole and covered it with leaves and branches, returned to the wagon to rest.

He was unable to sleep from the illness and exhaustion, so at the first light of day headed for Independence and the Post Office. The letter mailed he drove to the edge of town, unhitched and staked the mules, climbed into the wagon and collapsed. The next morning the restlessness of the mules and the howling of some dogs attracted attention to the wagon where he was found dead. He was hastily buried, the wagon burned, and the team appropriated.

When his West Port letter was received in Ohio the two families made preparation for the wedding and a celebration. After more than a month had passe and he had not arrived, a brother went to St. Louis to request some of the wagonmasters to investigate. Only one bothered to write that no trace could be found of a John Morgan. Several years passe until his last letter was received with no explanation for the cause of the delay.

About two months later a boy from a farm south and east of 39th Street was squirrel hunting in the woods where Janssen Place is now developed found an open trench. Thinking that it had been dug as a grave, hurried home to tell his father. The next morning the boy, his father and a neighbor went to the site and pondered why a grave would be dug and then not used; one of the men noticed the four strange circular depressions in the clay bottom. At the edges of each was a depression about two inches deep and the size of a man´s thumb, forming a perfect triangle. For several weeks the site was visited by all the settlers in he vicinity, but no one could guess the reason for the mysterious "grave."

The Journal printed the entire manuscript which carried the signature. "Uncle Hal."

Note to Janssen Place residents: Don't rush out to buy a metal detector for if the tale is true the family recovered the gold.

By Greg Patterson; May 1978.

Mrs. Robert Menees

There’s something new about old Hyde Park. To long-time, loyal residents like Mrs. Robert Menees, the changes of the mid-seventies are welcome and mark the first time, perhaps since the Depression and certainly since World War II, that the75-year-old neighborhood has been on the upswing.

The Hyde Park neighborhood, as established by the Hyde Park Neighborhood Association in 1969, includes the area from 31st to 46th Streets, Gillham Road to Troost. The original Hyde Park subdivision was platted roughly from Linwood Boulevard to 39th Street, Broadway to Gillham Road.

Some of Hyde Park is nearly as it was 75 years ago. Much of it, however, has disappeared. Genteel residents once made use of tennis, croquet and archery facilities at Hyde Park Country Club, predecessor of the Kansas City County Club. Located in the present day park between the lanes of Gillham Road, the Country Club introduced golf to the area with a nine-hole golf course just to the east. The Westport City Council even passed a herd law to keep cows off the greens!

The Menees home [55 Janssen Placer] was one of the 19 original homes of Janssen Place. Mrs. Menees’ father, Guy M. Cowgill moved his family to Janssen Place in 1930. Mr. and Mrs. Cowgill were the second owners of a house built to order for Dr. W. H. Schutz in 1911.

When the Cowgills moved to Hyde Park, Mrs. Menees was a school girl and Westport High School was the best of Kansas City’s schools. She grew up with the sons and daughters of Kansas City’s influential families. It as a time when entertainment in the home was the fashion and activities ranged from casual conversation with neighbors to elaborate balls and weddings. Mrs. Menees, like the two daughters of the Schutz’s before her, was married in her magnificent home. On her wedding day, the groom probably first glimpsed the bride when she appeared on the imposing staircase.

Following her marriage to Dr. Robert E. Menees, Vivian Menees was to leave Janssen Place for only a short time. Her husband was a young dentist and worked downtown. Dr. Menees later moved his practice to the Plaza and the Meneeses moved back to Janssen place.

Gradually, despite its single family zoning, the control of the lot owner’s association, and its “world unto itself” relationship to the rest of the city, Janssen Place began to experience unwanted changes. Most of the original homes builders and owners had died or moved to other prestige addresses. As these people left, Mrs. Menees recalls they were sometimes replaced by people interested primarily in income property.

This trend persisted following World War II until recently. Happily, the tide has been stemmed and new people with different attitudes about Hyde Park and in-town living have moved in.

The new residents and old loyalists, like Vivian Menees, see the value in homes with materials that are irreplaceable and design and construction on a scale virtually beyond reach today. And the assets of Hyde Park go beyond the homes and the restoration possibilities in them. The area’s location in the city’s cultural heart near the Nelson Gallery, the Art Institute and the conservator of Music, puts a musician and art-lover like Mrs. Menees within a long walk of her greatest interests. Moreover, for years she has delighted in shopping on the Plaza and now increasingly enjoys the offerings of Crown Center.

As new neighbors settle around Mrs. Menees in Hyde Park and Janssen Place, the values of different generations form an interesting mix with surprising commonalities. Much of the action today belongs to the visionary new residents with their determination to preserve and to construct positive aesthetic and social additions to a place they, too, are coming to know and love.

By Jim Levitt; 1979.

Part of the following article appeared in the September 1979 Hyde Parker and is from a longer article published by Broadway–Westport Community Development Corporation. The complete text is from the Lyle Kennedy papers that are part of the Western Historical Manuscript Collection. The text has been revised slightly.

Today South Hyde Park is the area from 39th to 47th Street, Gillham Road to Troost Avenue.

The earliest occupants of the area were the Shawnee or Osage Indians. White homesteaders came next. The price of land for these pioneers was only the price of staking out the land and filing a claim with the government office in Franklin, Missouri. The land from 39th to 43rd, Holmes to Troost was first owned by Robert Johnson; that from 43rd to 45th, Holmes to Troost, by Michael Farmer; and land from Holmes to Troost, 45th to 47th, was first patented by John C. McCoy, the founder of Westport, on November 11, 1828. Other early land owners in the area were William Kavanaugh and Charles Ruis.

The land was still farmed and undeveloped as late as 1887, when the 80 acres later to be known as Troost Highlands were owned by Henry Sage, who had a farmhouse and orchards near what would later be the corner of 39th & Troost Avenue. To the south of Sage's property were 40 acres owned by T.H. West (later the site of Sunny Slope). West had a farmhouse near the future corner of 43rd and Holmes. To the west of Sage's property were 78 acres owned by Nancy Davis (later the site of Vanderbilt Place #1).

All of these lands lay to the east of Westport, which was chronicled by the Jackson County Historical Atlas of 1877 as having had "the wealth of the Sonora, Chihuahua, Mexico, and Santa Fe poured into her lap. Three or four extensive wagon manufacturers were kept constantly employed making and repairing prairie schooners, and six or seven saddlery establishments, employing a host of workmen, equipping vast herds of Mexican mules for the voyage across the prairie." So they were all in pretty good company being near a bustling young town.

The south Hyde Park area was first platted for residences on June 24, 1885, when Charles F. Emery, Fletcher Cowherd, Henry Garland, William Perkins, and Edward Garnett created Troost Highlands. At that time 39th, 40th, 41st, 42nd and 43rd were know, respectively as Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland and Connecticut Avenue. Next, Vanderbilt Place (#1) was platted on November 8, 1886, by G.H. Davis and eleven associates. The 25 foot lots in this subdivision were offered by Whiteside and Jarvis Agents for $13.50 and $11.00 per lot in 1887! Both Troost Highlands and Vanderbilt Place had southern boundaries on what is now 43rd Street.

The 40 acres south of Troost Highlands were owned by James J. Squier. He moved to Kansas City area from Chicago in 1872. By 1884, Squier was president of the newly organized Citizens National Bank, and had grown to be a powerful politician. He lived in Squier Manor, which was situated at "the terminus of the cable line", at 38th and Manheim Rd. Squier's property was not subdivided into residential plots.

Gillham Road was planned and built by the city between 1902 and 1906 when it was designed as part of the massive parks and boulevard system. The road ran right through the middle of the Vanderbilt Place Subdivision, splitting it in half. The few houses which stood in its way were condemned by the city in 1902. Other property owners south of 39th Street (in the path of Gillham Road) were asked to move all houses within 30 days. The road continued into Squier's property, which had since been acquired by a William H. Gaskin. Gaskin subdivided the land from 43rd to 45th, Holmes to Troost, and named it Sunny Slope. The original plot is dated September 23, 1902.

Tate Park, the triangular block between Gillham and Holmes, was originally the corner of the estate of F.W. Klaber. By 1900 the land belonged to a Mr. John Tate, who subdivided the block for houses on August 23, 1904. The block between 45th Street and Brush Creek Blvd. was originally part of the Lansdowne Subdivision, which was plotted on October 3, 1887.

The oldest houses in the area are probably on the 3900 block of Harrison and the 4200 block of Holmes. It is in these locations that houses appear on the 1891 city map of the area. By 1925, the entire area was filled with houses.

By Jody Ladd Craig for the Gazette, Historic Kansas City Foundation; April/May 1979

A number of things are taking place throughout Hyde Park which inspire hope for a continuing resurgence of that venerable old neighborhood. In November, Homes Savings Association and the Hyde Park Neighborhood Association jointly announced a lending program in Hyde Park (the area between 31st and 46th, Gillham to Troost) which is the first of its kind in the city.

Home Savings Association committed a fund of a minimum $1 million for combined purchase/rehabilitation mortgages and an additional $250,000.00 for home improvement loans to persons already owning and living in homes in the area. Home Savings will continue to make conventional mortgage loans I the area without rehabilitation financing, which will not be considered a part of the $1 million program. Loans of up to 95% of the total purchase/rehabilitation amount will be considered by the savings association, making Hyde Park the only area in the city where such financing is available. Details of the loan program can be obtained form Bob Lehmann at the home office, 1006 Grand Avenue.

Considerable interest in the purchase/rehab loans has been shown and all of that money has already been committed. Since work specified in the loan agreement must be completed within six months, visible results ought to be apparent from this program in the near future.

Charles E. Curry, Chairman of the Board of Home Savings Association, was the recipient of last year’s Possum Trot Award for Excellence, given annually in recognition of outstanding service to historic preservation in Kansas City. He has proven once again that the award was well deserved by his leadership in this program to encourage neighborhood conservation.

In a recent conversation, Mr. Curry spoke about the loan program in Hyde Park with enthusiasm. He explained that all lenders were being encouraged by the federal government to make loans in inner city neighborhoods and that that had been the impetus for the program. He cited the large amount of rehabilitation already going on in the area as one of the positive factors that influenced the decision to select Hyde Park. Despite the already appreciated market values in the central part of Hyde Park (25th-39th Streets, Gillham-Troost), Mr. Curry felt there were still good housing buys in North and South Hyde Park where many solid and comfortable homes still await restoration.

The Hyde Park Neighborhood Association, as a partner in the venture, made several commitments. These include encouraging residents to deposit savings wit HAS, and continuing sponsorship of the annual Hyde Park Homes Tour and Festival. Planning is already underway for that event scheduled this year for the weekend of May 19 and 20.

North Hyde Park is the scene of some truly amazing revival stories. The 3300 block of Harrison has experienced the unflagging energy of Lisa and Jim Merrill who held an open house in January to celebrate the rebirth of their elegant Victorian mansion at 3328. Their neighbors one door south, Chris and Tom Brennan, undertook a bigger task in restoring their lovely Victorian, but they are making admirable progress. In recent years, Tam Denham acquired several of the houses on the block with high hopes of seeing them restored. With little money to undertake the restorations herself, she was able to make interim repairs that kept some of the structures from falling in and to hold them until others came along who shared her vision. Sure signs of hope for an area many though permanently lost.

Neighborhood meetings are the order of the day in south Hyde Park where residents are busily planning in anticipation of their status as a Neighborhood Strategy Area (NSA) where approximately $55 million in federal funds is targeted to be spent for years to come. An NSA is an area where a comprehensive approach to urban problems is applied in order to stabilize and rejuvenate it. A successful program here could mean a dramatic turn-around for this substantial neighborhood.

By Fred Lee; July 1979.

One of Westport’s most imposing monuments is the “Eagle monument” on 39th Street at Gillham Road. It was built as a nation-wide tribute to all men and boys who have achieved the rank of Eagle Scout.

When the idea for the monument was conceived by the Boy Scouts of America, half a dozen or so cities and sites were considered for its placement. Kansas City was chosen above all others because the Kansas City Area Council has consistently awarded more Eagle Scout badges than any area council in the United States.

The tribute had its roots in 1965 with the announcement of the razing of Pennsylvania Railroad station in New York City. The station was built in 1910 with Adolph A. Weinman and Charles Fallen McKim of McKim, Meade and White as its chief architects.

Over each of the stations’ two entrances were two pink Milford granite entablatures which had as their center-piece seven-foot high clocks circled by granite wreaths. On either side of each clock stood a female figure, one presenting Day and the other Night. Beside each figure stood a carved eagle.

In 1967, during the razing of the Pennsylvania station, John E. Starr, a past president of the Kansas City Area Council and Chairman of the Eagle Scout tribute committee, suggesting that these entablatures by saved and some way incorporated into an Eagle Scout memorial.

On July 5, 1966, Stuart T. Saunders, board chairman of the Pennsylvania Railroad, notified the national Boy Scout Council that the railroad was awarding the statuary that graced the East Concourse entrance of the station to the Scouts as a gift from their railroad.

Getting the statuary to Kansas City presented a problem. The railroad offered to ship the 62,000 pound entablature to its western terminus in St. Louis. Arrangements were then made with D. B. Jenks, president of the Missouri-Pacific Railroad, to have a flatcar move the entablature the rest of the way to Kansas City. Belger Cartage handled the difficult job of moving the grouping to the J.C. Nichols Company warehousing area at 95th and Holmes for storage while the 39th and Gillham site was prepared for receiving it.

Maurice McMullen, architect in the firm of Black and Veatch, developed the design for the tribute in conjunction with Frank Voydik, superintendent of Parks and Recreation in Kansas City.

The 22-foot entablature is set in a concrete mounting. An aluminum reproduction of the Eagle Scout badge occupies the center wreath in the design. The badge ribbon is decorated with a brilliant red, white and blue. A silver-colored eagle hangs under it.

Dedication ceremonies for the monument were held Sunday, October 6, 1968. A highlight of the ceremony was the placement of a bound volume in the cornerstone of the monument containing the signatures of men and boys who have attained the Eagle rank over the years. Since its incorporation in 1921, the Kansas City Area Boy Scout Council has awarded more than 14, 000 Eagle badges.

Taking part in the dedication ceremonies that day were national, state and local scouting representatives of the Pennsylvania Railroad.

By Clifton Hall; December 1, 1979

In case you hadn’t thought about it recently, please be reminded that our neighborhood had quite an illustrious past. Hyde Park counts as among its early residents mayors, legislators, industrialists, builders and . . . murderers. After all, what neighborhood of old houses approaching one hundred years of history wouldn’t have some pretty colorful characters to boast. So colorful in fact that some of the past residents, who are no longer counted among the living, still maintain their earthly residence in Hyde Park homes—providing you believe the stories told by their current landlords.

For instance, there’s the house on Charlotte street where the ghostly footsteps of the builder’s family nurse maid can still be heard clomping up and down the back staircase-even though that staircase is no longer in existence, removed years ago when the kitchen was remodeled. This home also features a poltergeist that plays little tricks on overnight guests. It turns electric lights on and off when visitors go into upstairs bedrooms, and it switches hot water for cold in eh guest bathroom.

Then there’s the large home on Janssen Place where loud crashing noises have been heard late at night. Thorough investigations have produced no broken objects and no explanations of the disturbances. And very regularly, on a certain day of each week, the residents would be mysteriously locked out of their house from the inside. No reason has ever been found.

Another Janssen Place home boasts a third floor “presence” that rushes by doorways—just slow enough to be noticed, but not be identified.

Finally, there’s the house on Holmes Street where the rather grisly murder of a young servant girl is purported to have occurred in its third floor ballroom some seventy pears ago. Today, the current owners often hear strange cries in the house at night, and frequently discover pink feathers as mementos left behind by their ghostly visitor.

From this brief collection of tales, it’s evident that Hyde Park has its share of spectral stories to tell.

By Vince Moravek; The Hyde Parker; Jaunary 1980.

Dear Hyde Park,

Dusk approached, seeped through the city and lodged itself amongst the frivolously darting courses of human lives.

Unnoticed, unheeded, and overlooked beneath the skeletal gnarls of he November trees, a dusty swirling spun between two massive homes—a swirling easily mistakable for a stray gust of frigid autumn with its haphazard entourage of oak leaves. Performing to its nonexistent audience, the swirling gusted to a flurry, the flurry to a pint-sized maelstrom, and the whirlwind broke—separating into three distinct divisions, each pirouetting through their airy ballet before metamorphosing into three dim, effervescent figures.

First a tall, stately man; mustachioed with firmly chiseled, angular features framing warm, bright eyes. He stood, bemused and begrinned as another man, somewhat shorter, obviously plumper with a full, scraggily grey beard; and a fluid, delicate woman, skirt billowing in accompaniment with a bright parasol, flowed into form beside him.

“Daniel,” the taller bowed deeply, removing his satin derby, “faring well? I trust our healthy paunch speaks the truth?” Daniel chortled merrily, patting his building sides as the other gently retrieved the woman’s smooth hand; politely kissing it like was due any proper gentleman, “and dear Jessica . . . as magnificent as always. Certainly time has dealt no uncomplimentary marks upon your beloved face.”

“Always the charmer, Raymond,” Jessica acknowledged, dipping into a neat curtsey, “And how might you be this lovely eve?”

“No need for courtesies,” Daniel grinned, intervening between the two. He slipped a puffy arm between both companions, guiding them out towards the street. “One can surely tell by such sugary speech that Raymond remains as smooth as any newborn’s behind. Am I not right, kind sir?

Raymond’s smile easily rivaled the other’s humor, “Aye, Daniel—the shrewdest cattle baron known to the Midwest ought to recognize sugary speech! Many a time I’d be willing to pay good money just to observe our financial dealings. Please to lay credit where it’s due, m’boy.”

Gentlemen!,” Jessica insisted, tugging playfully at both. “Time is much too short to bother with such pettiness. Come—I’m impatient to see time’s change.”

“Quite true, quite true,” Raymond jostled Daniel’s arm in return, and together they wandered out into the street, oblivious to a laden station wagon that drove straight through their paths. But when one’s existence lies primarily in another whole dimension, such trifling concerns as physical contact naturally lead to superficial consideration.

Daniel followed after the car’s path with dispassionate eyes. “Such all—out haste. It’s bewildering to believe that they’ve time enough to stop and get things done.”

“They have the time, Daniel,” Jessica stared outwards, one faint arm raised in direction. “Dear Lord, look at the house . . . “her voice trailed off, choked with an overpowering emotion to fluid for definition, “how could they have known?”

The old house had again changed its face. But this time, the change had been a step back to its origins.

For the past twenty years, at Jessica’s insistence at revisiting her old home—the home she’d been born in almost a century before—had been clad in an ugly metal siding. Dirty white and horribly artificial, the repulsive siding was evidently cheaper, (but just how much real worth could be place on money?), and replaced the original cedar shingles. Now, however, it seemed the house had changed owners.

The siding was gone—and the cedar shingles remained.

Raymond laughed, two arms wrapped happily around Jessica’s flowered bodice, ”They couldn’t know, love—they just followed their own feelings. Must say it’s an improvement, though. Jessica, please—this is joyous, no need for sobs.”

“These aren’t . . . sobs,” Jessica shakily chuckled through red-rimmed eyes and free-flowing tears, “My God, Raymond—my father put those shingles up himself the summer before he died. When I saw that ugly metal up there I thought his work had simply been ripped off . . .” Jessica descended into weak cries. Though tears dropped upon the pavement, no marks remained. She restrained cries mixing with the laughter, “ Don’t you see, Raymond? A part of my father still lives—it’s up there for all the world to see. The house still lives . . . “

Raymond gently turned her back, guiding her off. He smiled at Daniel, “I’m taking her back, Don’l. I don’t think there’s any reason to stay further. When the wish is fulfilled . . .”

Daniel nodded understanding, watching as his two companions quickly drained of substance, fading and merging into a modes twirling. Scant breaths later and Daniel was alone.

Jessica’s finally satisfied, Daniel grinned, knowing such trips as these would now be few. The crisis of he past decades, as the neighborhood—their neighborhood, with roots so deeply entwined within, it became as important as any vital organ—deteriorated after the Depression. The homes hacked at, sectioned into parasitic apartments, defaced with metal siding, and crippled with apathetic owners. “Owners,” ha! that was hardly the word—slumlords was more appropriate; “holder,” mere occupants–whatever the definition, eventual decline was the result.

Until the renovation.

The renovation, small at first, but now firmly established. It survived the downswing, and now had the momentum necessary for a full recovery.

“Ah, yes,” Daniel murmured, quietly watching the deep scarlet sunset give rapidly to the fathom-blue of true evening “Their own feelings.”

May 19, 1980.

The stained glass windows installed in a set of windows in the Bill Smith home at 3605 Gillham picture a landscape based upon an original Tiffany landscape window made around the turn-of-the-century. The size of the window as a whole is approximately 7.5 feet all by 9 feet wide, with an arched top. This is an area of 67.5 square feet and is divided into eight windows making up the whole scene. It is done completely in copper foil, a technique Tiffany used himself in all his windows and lamps. Each of the 637 pieces is individually wrapped with a copper foil tape that is 3/16 or an inch wide. The pieces are soldered together and a small bead of solder is raised along the seam of foil in the process. This makes for a delicate looking but extremely strong window that is comprised of pieces of glass actually welded together as one. There are twenty different types of glass from five glass manufacturers. The glass in the tree leaves and trunks, water, foliage, and earth were in part made by Chicago Art Glass. Kokomo glass is featured in the mountains (red), foliage, and earth. Desag glass from West Germany is used in the mountains with the purple haze on the left side, while Merry-Go-Round is used on the right side. Merry-Go-Round, a relatively new glass manufacturer from Fort Smith, Arkansas, is also used as the orange sky. Spectrum Glass, from Washington, is used in the blue sky and in the red-brown earth tones. the iridescent glass used in the tree in the lower right hand corner is called “Queen’s Fire” and was also made by Merry-Go-Round.

By Fred Lee for Historic Westport, Westport Magazine; August 1980.

1904 pictures of Gillham Road area before Gillham Road was built. Courtesy of the Parks, Recreation and Boulevards Department of Kansas City, Missouri.

At the time of Westport’s annexation to Kansas City in December 1897, its boundaries were 37th Street on the north, 47th Street on the south, Troost on the east and State Line on the west. Most of its inhabitants either lived in homes near the center of town or on adjoining tracts of land. One of these tracts later became known as the Sunny Slope subdivision of Old Westport.

Sunny Slope as an addition dates back to shortly after the turn of the century. It was bounded on the north by 40th Street, on the south by 45th Street, on the east by Troost and on the west by Holmes in what is now known as the Hyde Park neighborhood.

It consisted of 40 acres of lush, green land, the northern portion of which was on a hill sloping to the south toward Brush Creek. It was acquired from the United States government in March, 1834, by Michael Farnes, an early Jackson County resident. An abstract for the property officially describes it as being in “the N.E. 1/4 of the N.E. 1/4 of Section 29, Township 49, Range 33 in Old Westport.”

On October 20, 1845, Farnes and his wife, Nancy, sold the property to the Mockbee family. The Mockbees—Thomas, his wife, Eliza L., and his brother, Rueben—paid $1,300 for it and another piece of land nearby. The Mockbees owned the Sunny Slope Subdivision until March, 1837 when they sold it to James Stalcup and his wife, Rebecca, in October, 1836.

As a matter of historical note, the Stalcup’s 14-year-old daughter, Katherine, or Catherine, had two years earlier, in 1834, married Alexander Majors, the well known overland freighter and Pony Express founder. Majors was only in his twenty-first year at the time of his marriage and had yet to make his name in history.

The Stalcups sold their land to John Majors in April, 1852. They eventually moved out of the area into a house near State Line in what was known as “Mellier Place” in Westport. Here James Stalcup died in 1855 of hydrophobia or, as it was more commonly called, “the bite of a mad dog.” His wife preceded him to death in either 1852 or 1853.

John Majors sold the Stalcup property to Tilghman West in September, 1870, West lived with his family on the property for several years.

Sarah Davenport, a neighbor of the Wests for many years, picks up the Sunny Slope story at this point: “It was generally understood in the community that Mr. West and his wife placed a mortgage on the ground and that the parties had to foreclose on the mortgage and that because of this, the land fell into the hands and ownership of James J. Squire.” Mrs. Davenport’s thoughts on the matter of ownership of Sunny Slope were voiced in 1902 and were fairly well substantiated by available public records.

That Tilghman West owned the 40 acres in question and mortgaged and lost it is also confirmed by William Bernard, Westport merchant and real estate developer who owned land immediately south of the West property.

Squire purchased the property on May 7, 1883 from Thomas J. Emery, who was handing the sale of the property, he [Squire] was vice president of the Citizens’ National Bank of Kansas City. He later became president and manager of the bank. His [Squire’s] death occurred on August 27, 1900, at which time his widow, Mary, and her daughter, Cora S. Jones, became owners of the property and of other extensive J. J. Squire real estate holdings in Jackson.

For a time the land was fenced. Just when it was first enclosed is open to question. Stephen C. Ragan, who in 1902 had resided in and around Kansas City for nearly 65 years and whose father’s farm lay half a mile north of Sunny Slope recalled that it probably was first fenced when Tilghman West owned the property. When the Wests owned and lived on it, Ragan recalled it had been“ in green grass, pasture and otherwise cultivated.”

When Mary Squire was in the process of selling the property left to her by her husband the land was already “enclosed by fences and (had) been for many years in cultivation . . . and was used as pasture for stock.”

In April, 1870 a “new public road” was proposed that would run through the area. It was to be located a quarter of a mile west of Troost and was to run parallel to Troost for three miles. The road is now Holmes Street. It was to be 60 feet in width.

William H. Glaskin, “a single and unmarried gentleman,” bought the property from the Squire heirs on September 23, 1902 and proceeded with plans to develop it into Sunny Slope. His application for the proposed development was approved by what was then known as the Common Council of Kansas City, Missouri. Sunny Slope was created by Ordinance No. 20934 duly passed and approved by Mayor James Alexander Reed on September 30, 1902.

By Bill Worley for the Hyde Parker; November / December 1980.

One of the most familiar houses in Hyde Park for residents and Festival–goers alike has been 3605 Gillham Road. Twice in three years it has been on the homes tour. In 1977 it was featured in city wide publicity as one of the first structures "saved" by the Historic Kansas City Foundation's efforts to preserve significant sites.

In almost all the publicity the builder of the home was listed as "E.H. Bouton." Occasionally news releases mentioned that Bouton had built 7 houses in 1888-89 in the 3600 block of Gillham and Locust. The further significance of E.H.Bouton then fades into the background as the publicity concentrated on the houses, only three of which still stand, and their owners.

Edward H. Bouton however, was not a phantom home builder who breezed into Kansas City during the real estate boom of the 1880's. His father, H.B. Bouton was an early lawyer in Kansas City, hanging out his shingle in the 1850´s. Bouton, by 1888 was an experienced real estate man and house builder. He was associated with the Jarvis–Conklin Trust Co. which financed the construction of many of the earliest Hyde Park residences.

When the Jarvis-Conklin Trust Co. and some other investors had laid out Hyde Park in 1886-88, they had asked a young landscape architect in Kansas City named George Kessler to design a park in a rough hollow which formed the eastern boundary of their holdings. The result was Hyde Park— the park. Additionally, the company of investors set up a land owner's association to govern use of the park which was fenced in with locked gates. Jarvis-Conklin and the others also determined a set of building restrictions which were to guide the quality of home construction in the area.

Because the real estate boom slacked off in the very year Bouton was building the house at 3605 Gillham, the plan for the residential community was not as immediately successful as they hoped. Jarvis–Conklin began to look around for other cities in which to invest their funds. After settling on a piece of suburban ground outside Baltimore, Maryland, they hired Bouton to be their general manager in the development of what they called Roland Park.

Now a major part of the exclusive north central section of Baltimore, Roland Park had been developed by 1912 into one of the earliest planned residential communities in the United States featuring planned park areas, homeowner's associations, and detailed building restrictions, all of which Bouton had had experience with in his work in Hyde Park here in Kansas City.

1912 was a critical year for another man of Kansas City, J.C. Nichols, who had seven years of residential planning behind him south of Brush Creek in Kansas City, Missouri, and was about to embark on a new development on land he had bought from the Armour Family in 1908 - Mission Hills, in Kansas. Nichols heard of Roland Park. In December, 1913 he spent a few days there looking over the project and comparing notes with Bouton.

He discovered that Bouton had used George Kessler, the designer of the Hyde Park park and, later, of the entire Kansas City Park and Boulevard system, to lay out his first section of Roland Park. Nichols further learned that Bouton had contracted with the Frederick Law Olmstead landscape architectural firm in Brookline,e Mass., to plan the newer sections of the development. Nichols contacted Frederick Law Olmstead, Jr., who recommended he use Sid J. Hare, a Kansas City based landscape architect to lay out his future projects. Nichols had previously used Kessler in this capacity in the planning of the Sunset Hill section, Nichols hired Hare who used ideas gleaned from Roland Park and traceable back to Hyde Park to plan Mission Hills.

Thus the house at 3605 Gillham takes on new significance as the link between a young homebuilder in the Kansas City of 1888 and a young land developer in the Kansas City of 1912 through the circuitous route of Roland Park in Baltimore. The Hyde Park which Edward H. Bouton helped to construct is a direct ancestor of all the planned residential communities developed by J.C. Nichols in Missouri and Kansas after 1912. And to thing most of use just see it as a good place to live and raise our families.

By Bill Worley for the Hyde Parker; August 1981.

"Where is the Hyde Park school?" is a question asked by visitors and new residents of the neighborhood. It's as though there ought to be a building bearing that name. The normal response is that there are two public schools serving Hyde Park—George B. Longan at 34th and Cherry and Bancroft at 43rd and Tracy. Central and north Hyde Parkers attend the former while south Hyde Parkers can walk to the latter.

As a matter of fact, however, there once was a Hyde Park School called by that name from the middle 1890s when it was built by the then-separate Westport School district. The Hyde Park School was located on the site now occupied by Longan—4th and Cherry. Ironically, it was not situated inside the actual subdivision named Hyde Park; rather, it was in the adjacent Kenwood Annex subdivision.

Beginning in 1908, there was also an elementary school at 39th and Warwick Boulevard inside the Hyde Park subdivision limits. Known initially as Westport School, this structure was renamed the George B. Longan School in 1911 by the Kansas City School District to honor an Assistant School Superintendent who had recently died after several decades of service to the district.

As the 1920s came to a close and the Depression deepened, the number of families with children adjacent to the 39th and Warwick Longan School declined. The construction of apartments along Armour, Gillham, and 34th Streets during the 1920s had the opposite effect on the Hyde Park enrollment. In 1932, the School Board decided to combine the two schools at 34th and Cherry. The Longan name was applied to the old Hyde Park building probably to mollify the families left in the original Longan district and to honor George B. Longan, Jr., then an editor of The Kansas City Star.

A new building was constructed in the 1950s with complete facilities including an auditorium, gymnasium, home economics room, and extensive playground area. Because of Hyde Park's fortunate location, Longan remains a neighborhood school with its entire student body within walking distance.

Just remember, George B. Longan School is really the Hyde Park School.

By Bill Worley for the Hyde Parker; November 1981.

In the Hyde Park neighborhood not all the east-west streets measure the distance south from the River at Main Street—Linwood and Armour Boulevards are notable exceptions—and all of the north-south streets except one carries a bit of Kansas City or Hyde Park history in its label.

Linwood Boulevard was named in 1893, when George E. Kessler laid out the parks and boulevard system. He included a portion of what the City of Westport called Linwood Road (though sometimes spelled it "Lynwood") in the boulevard planned to connect North Terrace Park with Penn Valley Park. This first portion of Linwood Boulevard included only the present portion between the Paseo on the west and Benton Boulevard on the east—a distance of less than ten blocks.

Armour Boulevard was originally known as "Commonwealth" in old Westport. Then Kessler included that portion running from the Paseo on the east to Broadway on the west in his proposed system as "South Boulevard." As the street was being widened and surfaced in 1899, one of the first members of the Board of Commissioners of Parks and Boulevards, S.B. Armour of the packing company, died. To commemorate his memory the Board renamed South Boulevard as "Armour Boulevard." While two of his nephews and one niece lived on the roadway at the time, S.B. Armour never lived on the street that would bear his name; he still resided on Quality Hill at his death.

Gillham Road is also part of the parks and boulevard system, though it is a later addition to the plan. By 1900, seven years after Kessler had laid out the initial scheme, Westport was officially a part of Kansas City after its second annexation in 1897. Westport´s most outspoken citizen, William Rockhill Nelson of the Star lobbied strenuously for more boulevards in or near his real estate holdings around where the Nelson Gallery is located today. Whether the extension from Oak at about 21st to 47th Streets was projected by the Park Commissioners simply to keep the editor off their backs or to elaborate on Kessler's rather Spartan initial plan is not clear.

What is plain, however, is that Robert Gillham Road was built so that its right-of-way south of 39th street would include all of an old creek bed and form a substantial barrier to encroaching smaller homes from the east (south Hyde Park). As a result, Nelson went ahead with his development scheme for his Rockhill neighborhood which, in turn, served as a pattern for J.C. Nichols' later development of the Country Club district to the south and west across Brush Creek.

Gillham Road was named for Robert Gillham, another early park commissioner, who, like Armour, died in 1899. Gillham had been the primary engineer who designed the first cable car system for Kansas City in the 1880s. The capstone of this cable road system was a long, sloping inclined plane built of wood scaffolding which ran down 9th street from the bluffs of Quality Hill onto a platform connected to old Union Station, then located a few blocks from the Stockyards in the west bottoms. The naming of the roadway was more to honor his Park Board service than his engineering prowess.

By Bill Worley for the Hyde Parker; August 1981.

The Hyde Park neighborhood contains a wealth of colorful names in the 35 different subdivisions that make up the area. Several bear the names of the people who owned the land when it was subdivided. There is Chellis and Dudley's First Addition in north Hyde Park, for example. Edward Chellis and Edward G. Dudley had high hopes for their first venture into the real estate game in 1885. One searches in vain, however, for their second addition.

Other subdivisions named after the land owners include Chadwick's (subdivision plan filed in 1882), Geirge's Addition (1888), Hingston Grove (1887), Hunter Place (1887), Irwin and Morrill Addition (1886), Laforces' Subdivision (1888), McIntyre Place (1891), and the ever popular Woods, Waller, and Holtz's First Addition (1905) and Tate Park (1904) in south Hyde Park. The above subdivisions planned in the 1880s and 1891 are all in north Hyde Park, the first developed area in the Hyde Park neighborhood.

Often subdividers tried to lend an air of class in their developments through their choice of names. The two best known upper income suburbs of Chicago in the 1880s were Hyde Park and Kenwood. The first name was used in Kansas City by the developers of land west of today's Hyde Park neighborhood. The portion of central Hyde Park straight east of Hyde Park park (pardon the redundancy) was given the second name.

Other subdivisions bearing similar "high falooting" names include: Glenairy Place (1900), Hampden Place (1887), Hampden Parkway (1906), Highgate (1888), Kenwood Annex (1887), Lansdowne (1887), Mt. Pleasant (1887), Regents' Park (1887), Vanderbilt Place (1886), and Worcester Park (1886).

Note the English place names in these attempts at evoking exclusivity. Janssen Place was named for the Dutch financial backer who loaned Arthur Stilwell money to build the K.C. Southern railroad.

Another common pattern was to name the subdivision after a main street which bordered or ran through it. The already mentioned Troost Avenue Heights (1887) is an example. Others of this type include Harrison Boulevard Place (1905), Linwood Avenue Heights (1888), Springfield Place (1885—31st Street was originally Springfield Avenue), Troost Avenue Park (1886), and Troost Highlands (1885).

Finally, there are subdivisions with neat names for which there is no apparent rhyme or reason behind the choice. These include Arcade Place (1887), Edna Place (1887), Logan Place (1887), Nicolett Place (1886), Neisho (1906), Sunny Slope (1902, although it can be argued that this is an early example of the use of geographical terrain to determine the name), and Tullis Park (1887).

By Lisa Merrill; May 1982.

As I approached its stone steps and began to ascend, moans echoed through my ears, pounding at my head. Each step revealed her face, from which the tears of years past had long since dried. Dried, crumbling, and rotting from abuse and from her long lost hope for salvation. Nearing death, only moans could be heard as the beveled glass door opened.

The passage from the tiled foyer into the entry hall was a passage back in time. It was not an ordinary step back in time for it was mirrored, showing two periods of time. The leaded glass, the blackened brass chandeliers, the six fireplaces with magnificent tile and mantels long since bricked up, the massive oak staircase, the music room ceiling still rivaling any who dared to compete, all revealed a period of time when grandeur and elegance ruled the old mansion.

But the other side of the mirror was a nightmare of oak pocket doors nailed to the floor, falling plaster, numbers on the doors indicating the seventeen apartments, blackened and bubbled varnish hiding the walnut beneath, partitions, kitchens, and scars from landlords chopping at her woodwork to install bolts.

She had lost all hope and was reconciled to a deterioration that was picking up momentum, climbing her oak staircase, I was aware of its soft gentle rise, of its sturdiness, and of the craftsmanship in its baluster and spindles. I stopped to stroke her railing. Finding no splinters, I sat on the step and ran my fingers around the spindles, realizing a series of three, each carved differently. Stroking each one ever so gently, a tiny stretch was felt and an extremely faint sigh could be heard, but only I was aware of it.

However, in time my senses were keenly attuned to all of her sounds and movements. Running my hand up the railing as the ascent to the second landing ends, I beheld massive walnut doors with transoms. My imagination went wild wondering what secrets were held behind these closed, blackened doors. Beyond these doors the mirror continued to reflect two ages. By now the early years were all I saw, but my senses still felt her pain.

While on my knees in the master bedroom, I became convinced that she still had breath and that she was using her last bits of energy to talk to me. I tore at the linoleum nailed to her beautiful fir floor.

The same instant that I tore off a large section she gasped at the fresh air. Her strength and determination to survive penetrated me and as I felt the water damaged wood from another kitchen sink to discover rot had not set in.

Her sighs and moans became so clear to me as I continued to touch her brass, her tile, and her magnificent wood. She sensed my touch, my feel, and my heart for what she once was. And, as if struggling in a last heroic effort, she pleaded with me for her salvation.

For every injustice done her, she made me note something, which survived the torture of more recent years. For every wall with severely damaged plaster, there stood a strong one with minor cracks revealing her struggle to remain strong.

As I felt the holes where the missing spindle in the third floor balustrade belonged, my heart stopped and my eyes dropped toward the first floor below.

But with great strain, she lifted her head every so slightly to show me her pride at having retained all other spindles. The weak smile across my face and my hands now stroking the spindles near the missing one, told her that I understood.

Her sounds and feelings rang louder and stronger inside of me as I began the descent. Touching the family crest in the entry hall fireplace mantel made her muster up one more tear from the dryness with her woods. The tear was shed for her lost love . . . the love of those who gave her birth and gave to her a position of grandeur.

As I exited that afternoon, I knew she had used all remaining strength to show me what was left of her early years. She knew I heard, she knew I saw what she wanted me to see, and she knew that in my brief passage into the mirror of her two lives, I not only saw her glory, but cried for and felt some of her defeats, transgressions and injustices.

I didn’t want to leave her that afternoon, but fear for my own survival at the thought of linking my life with hers began to creep in. Yet as I closed the door and rubbed the brass doorknob, she, with the wisdom of age and suffering, knew what I did not—she knew that I would be back.

Note: Lisa with her husband Jim started the restoration of 3328 Harrison Street in the late 1970s. Their house was on the Hyde Park Historic Homes Tour in 1979.

By Dunstan McNichol; The Kansas City Star; May 6, 1982.

For almost a decade, the landlords and longtime residents of Kansas City’s Hyde Park district have looked on as time and change ushered in a new generation.

It is a generation of youth, fresh, paint and ambition, which has made the neighborhood, located between 31st and 47th streets from Gillham road to Troost Avenue, a model of central city renewal and prosperous urban rehabilitation.

But among the blossoming refurbished homes, some remaining members of the established Hyde Park breed resent the aggressive campaigns of their new neighbors.

In North Hyde Park particularly, located between 31st Street and Armour Boulevard from Gillham Road to Troost Avenue, some longtime Hyde Park dwellers say their new neighbors cast an intolerant glare at apparent zoning code violations, which in past years were dismissed with a wink by city agencies.

“This is a fact: that people move into a neighborhood that has not been well maintained and they spend a lot of money rehabilitating it, which is in itself an admirable thing, and then they ask the city to enforce the codes against their neighbors,” said Barbara Schenkenberg, an assistant city attorney. “Neither side is wrong. Both sides are right.”

Established landlords suddenly are force to defend their right to their apartments before the Board of Zoning Adjustment or in court.

Peeling paint, loose shingles or even significant structural decay that existed for years without controversy suddenly has brought a flurry of city summonses threatening fines or court action.

The vigilance has extended outside the houses, with neighbors, demanding limits on barking dogs and, in at least one-instance, wet laundry hung out to dry.

New residents defend their campaign as necessary to restore the neighborhood’s viability, preserve historic buildings and replenish the city’s tax rolls.

In the years since, the new generation’s arrival, houses that once sold for as little as $7,000 have been refurbished and command prices of $70,000 and more.

“This area is not the “I don’t give a damn’ anymore,” said Howard B. Jackson, 43, a former Kansas City police officer who has lived in North Hyde Park about two years. Mr. Jackson, the community’s designated liaison with city inspectors, is regarded as a property code watch dog. “it makes it bad for these people that aren’t (maintaining their homes), but you still have to have something to preserve your neighborhood.”

“Hyde Park (Neighborhood Association) has done a lot of good,” said Thema Beecham, a 12-year resident of a house at 3419 Campbell St., across the street from Mr. Jackson’s home. “But they sometimes run rough. In the long run they clean up the neighborhood, but what they do to the poor neighbors is sad.”

Officials of the neighborhood association, however, say its campaign is a burden only to those who refuse to upgrade their property. They say programs exist to help residents make and finance improvements.

Marie Frederick, who has lived at 3347 Harrison St. since 1944, claimed the repainting and rebuilding has not improved neighborhood life.

“I don’t know what all the ambition for painting houses was,” said Mrs. Frederick, who was warned by the city last spring that she would be taken to court for failing to clean up a vacant lot the city later discovered did not belong to her. “They were getting along just fine as far as I’m concerned.”

The latest skirmish is to take place Tuesday before the Board of Zoning Adjustment.

Lucille M. Lawson, a Campbell Street landlord 11 years, will attempt to overturn a ruling by city Codes Administrator Jack White that apartments in her property at 3316 Campbell St. violate zoning. The house, one of dozens of three-story Hyde Park homes converted into apartments, is zoned residential and is ineligible for apartments, city officials have ruled.

At the same hearing members of the neighborhood association, led by Campbell Street resident Charles Jasper, will attempt to convince the board that Mr. White was wrong last fall when he ruled Mrs. Lawson’s two other properties, at 3322 and 3324 Campbell St., were operated as apartments before current zoning went into place and therefore should be allowed to remain.

“For the past 15 years I have worked and I have put everything into my property so I could retire comfortably, and now these people come in and say you can’t have them,” said Mrs. Lawson, who owns several other rental properties throughout the city.

To operate her apartments, Mrs. Lawson is seeking an exemption called a certificate of nonconforming use, which remains in effect for the life of the building as long as its use remains unchanged.

“The permanent nature of a CLNU can deter and stagnate the renovation of a neighborhood like Hyde park,” lawyer James Glover III, former neighborhood association president, wrote members of the zoning board last July.

Mrs. Jasper, who has registered four complaints against Mrs. Lawson’s properties in the last two years, declined to discuss the case.

“In some ways, on that issue, I’m just a little bit to the right of Genghis Khan,” Mrs. Jasper said.

“I don’t know how much room there is for a tacky property,” said Joanne Stallone, a real estate agent who lives in Hyde Park and sells property there. “You have a responsibility to a home; you have a responsibility to a neighbor.”

At a community seminar in November 1980, Lisa Merrill, a Board of Zoning Adjustment member and a developer who has refurbished more than 20 houses in Hyde Park, outlined steps that homeowners could take to report suspected zoning code violations.

In addition, in 1980, after approval by members of the neighborhood association, Hyde Park signed up for a systematic housing inspection in return for financial aid in the construction of new curbs and sidewalks.

Inspection revealed that only 24 percent of Hyde Park homes met property code criteria. It results in blizzard of code violation notices against new and established residents alike.

Since the first inspection, vigilance by residents such as Mr. Jasper and Mr. Jackson has resulted in more complaints and notices.

“He came right in here and took over this block,” Mrs. Beecham said of Mr. Jackson. “. . . He’s sort of pest, I think,”

And Pat Dugan, who also lives on Mr. Jackson’s block, said constant city citations have kept homeowners from making necessary repairs.

“They keep you fixing the little things. It’s just hassling things.” Mrs. Dugan said.

In January, because of a neighbor’s complaints, a court ordered Mrs. Dugan to repair a small retaining wall on her property.

Earlier, she said, complaints focused on a garage. First, complaints cited peeling paint. When the garage was painted, notice arrived that is was unsafe and must be demolished.

After demolition, Mrs. Dugan said, the property was cited for debris in the yard.

“I guess the little person will always get hurt,” she said.”

But the president of the Hyde Park Neighborhood Association disagreed.

“These people aren’t what you would call the truly needy,” said Jim Merrill, Lisa Merrill’s husband. “If they want to do it (fix up their houses) they can.”

Mr. Merrill and other association members note the neighborhood organization has offered loans, free paint and assistance to residents attempting home repairs. And resident cited for code violations can appeal to the Property Maintenance Code Appeals Board, which has the power to delay enforcement while repairs are made.

Kansas City Star; September 16, 1982.

By Elaine Johnson

It was 1936, the depth of the Depression, and Lois Brent and her mother had just moved into a big house on Campbell Street in Hyde Park, the reigning queen of Kansas City neighborhoods.

For a down payment they used $1,000 of the insurance money Miss Brent and her mother had received after Mr. Brent died. The monthly payments were $39—“and that was hard to get.” Miss Brent said. “I didn’t make $100 a month, but I made the payments on that house.”

Miss Brent, 71, still lives in Hyde Park, an area bordered by 31st and 47th streets, Gillham Road and Troost Avenue. Throughout the years, she has watched her neighborhood weather changes wreaked by the Depression, the second World War, the baby boom and the housing-industry slump of the 1970s.

The changes were not always welcome. For a while, it seemed as if the queen of neighborhoods was aging badly, its glorious youth fading into dowdy old age. However, like a loyal handmaiden, Miss Brent remained true-blue.

The neighborhood, like Lois Brent, endured. Hyde Park now is peopled by a new breed of entrepreneur, not unlike the lumber barons and capitalists who helped start the neighborhood more than 80 years ago. These new residents speculated in a declining neighborhood and revitalized it. Hyde Park’s tenacity, and the hard work and elbow grease of this new generation of homeowners, will be celebrated Saturday and Sunday in the annual Hyde Park Festival, featuring a street fair and open house at nine restored homes. (for details, see the Tip sheet on Page 1B).

A Hyde Park address was a mark of wealth and prestige in turn-of-the-century Kansas City. Rich lumbermen, businessmen and lawyers flocked to what was then the edge of town to build their sprawling brick and stone mansions.

Delbert J. Haff, a lawyer who is credited with masterminding the city’s parks and boulevards, was one of the first to move is family to Hyde Park. His daughter, Madeline Haff Field, now 88, remembers moving into the stone mansion at 416 E. 36th St. when she was 6. It would be her home for more than 50 years. Her two children were born and reared there.

“I loved that house so much,” she said. “It was the first house in that square from 36th to Armour.”

The neighborhood was hillier before modern engineers built up Gillham Road, she said. A main thoroughfare crossed along 36th Street.

“The wagons would come up that hill with their horses,” she said. “They got so winded they would stop in front of our home. We had a lemonade stand.”

She has many other cherished memories of her Hyde Park childhood. There was the day in 1910 when former President Theodore Roosevelt visited a Hyde Park neighbor, Missouri, Gov. Herbert Hadley. The neighborhood children greeted him at 36th and Locust streets.

“’Hi, 36th and Locust,’ Mr. Roosevelt called out,” Mrs. Field said.

Miss Haff left home to attend Vassar College, and, in 1921, on a snowy Mark day, she married lawyer R. Harrison Field.

The 1920s were the days of large household staffs and beautiful parties. The household employed a cook, a maid, laundresses and—while the children were young—a French governess.

By the time Miss Brent and her mother moved to Hyde Park in the 1930s, the first changes were beginning to ripple through the proud neighborhood. “Some families, in the Depression, had to leave, but it was still real pretty.” Miss Brent said.

Miss Brent and her mother were considered outsiders by original residents. “It was built by wealthy people,” Miss Brent said. “I had the feeling they resented outsiders.”

Neighbors also disapproved of Mrs. Brent taking in boarders to make ends meet—an attitude that has resurfaced among the new generation of homeowners.

However, the boarders were a wave of the future, especially during World War II and the subsequent baby boom, when a housing shortage gripped the city. “People began turning homes into apartments, but there were still several original owners,” Miss Brent said.

In 1952, the Fields joined many of their friends in the exodus south. “It got to the point where we had to move,” Mrs. Field said.

The Hyde Park mansion was inconvenient: “It was a huge house.”

A few years later, Miss Brent and her mother changed addresses, too. They moved around the corner to a 16-room brick mansion on Charlotte Street that Miss Brent had long admired.

By the time her mother died in 1962, the changes were becoming obvious to her.

The grand facades of many neighborhood homes fronted honeycombs of apartments. The Haff mansion at 36th and Locust streets was turned into a nursing home.

However, the spiraling housing prices of the last decade rekindled interest in Hyde Park. An estimated one-third of the houses changed hands between 1975 and 1977. Young professionals, unable or unwilling to afford the cookie-cutter housing of the suburbs, turned their eyes to the solid, massive homes of Hyde Park. They were willing and able to tackle the long-term renovation projects necessary to restore the mansions to their original splendor.

“I was so happy to see the block come back,” Miss Brent said sitting in the high-ceilinged living room of her home.

“I know more of the neighbors since the young people moved in,” she said. “The are more friendly than the old ones . . . I feel more accepted now.”

Mrs. Field, too, welcomes the new Hyde Park residents. Five of them restored the Haff mansion after the last nursing home occupant moved out in 1979.

The neighborhood is alive again, a playground for another generation of children. This fall, the children will stomp through colored leaves falling on Hyde Park, like Madeline Haff did 80 years ago.

“I remember playing and jumping around in the leaves. I took my grandchildren there, so they’d have the experience, too.”

A post card included with the article featured the Hyde Park home of Mr. and Mrs. William Magraw Reid at 300 E. 36th St., at the intersection of Gillham Road, McGee and 36th streets. Mr. Reid was a realtor and a director of the First National Bank. The property now is occupied by the chancery offices of the Kansas City-St. Joseph Catholic Diocese. A three-story addition has been built on the west side of the residence.

By Lyle Kennedy, undated.

The one block of Gleed Terrace from Campbell to Charlotte is the only remaining section of the Independence-Westport Road (later called the Santa Fe Trail) in Hyde Park. This road or trail came down Troost and turned west, crossed the creek on what is now Harrison, due westward over that section of Gleed Terrace, then on through lots 15 through 18 of Hampden Parkway, through the land on the west side of Holmes, the last two lots on the East side of Janssen Place, on through Notre Dame land and down just below where the Eagle Scout Memorial is now, then slightly northwest to about the southwest fence corner of the Riederer home, and then at a right angle across the creek and up the hill through old Junior College to the high ground of 39th Street, which ended at McGee.

This was the famous overnight camping place for those Westward bound for over 30 years. There was plenty of water for the livestock in the streams, and for the people there was the spring. There was also plenty of room on either side of the creek to circle the wagons with the animals in the circle so that they did not wander and be stolen by the Indians (there were no Indian attacks as far as is known) but they did steal.

This area was called Cave Spring, actually it consisted of cracks in the Argentine rock formation that went back in a north-northwesterly direction for a considerable distance. Bill Toedman, who lived on 39th Street, insisted it went many blocks, and it became a danger to the many adventurous boys bent on exploration.

When in the early part of the century, Hampden Place and Hampden Parkway were over platted, Charlotte was cut through from 37th Street to Gleed Terrace, the cave was blocked, the water diverted into the sever in Harrison Parkway, and the entrance filled with the excess dirt. It's location, however is easily discernible today by the curve of the ground, the outcropping of the rock and the circle of trees.

1911 picture courtesy of the Parks, Recreation and Boulevards Department of Kansas City, Missouri. Picture taken from west side of Gillham, north of Westport Junior High School. Locust Street did not go through and the Eagle Scout Memorial is not there. Right stone wall still exists. Remanents of the Santa Fe Trail are north of the middle stone wall.

By Lyle Kennedy, undated.

If we were to take one of today´s golfers to 36th Street overlooking Hyde Park, with the old bed of Harris Creek still plainly visible, and tell him that this was the first golf course in the area (believed to be the first west of the Mississippi), he would probably look askance, tap his forehead to indicate his opinion of our mental stability and walk off. But this was really where golf started n Kansas City&endash;because Kansas City had not yet annexed Westport.

When T.H. Mastin, J.J. Mastin and Seth Ward platted the Hyde Park subdivision the two block long, one block wide gully, which is now Hyde Park, was platted as blocks 22 and 31. But that was before architects had begun to suit their building designs to fit the terrain. There were no cantilevered houses or multilevel houses terraced down a hillside. Therefore, the steeply sloping lots along the gully were considered useless as building sites.

By some unknown agreement with the Hyde Park Land Company the residents who lived near blocks 22 and 31 had the gully surrounded by an iron fence with locked gates. For more than 50 years thereafter, the residents of the more modest homes in the James Hunter subdivision to the north referred to the fenced area as the place "where the rich kids used to play."

Harris Creek with headwaters at 30th Street drained about one square mile by the time it reached 39th Street and turned east through the gap. During the wet seasons this must have been almost a river, but in the dry seasons, fed mostly by springs, it must have been a beautiful little valley, and an great place for the children of the neighborhood to play. Just south of 37th Street (which was never cut through) the land leveled out, and the water of Harris Creek which ran through the property, spread out into a large shallow "bog."

In the early 1890´s a young Scot by the name of Stanley Young came to Kansas City from Boston. Since golf originated in Scotland and was very popular among Scotsmen, Young brought golf clubs with him when he moved to Kansas City. He naturally assumed that any city of 132,000 would have a golf course, but alas, it was still a "cowtown."

Young kept on the lookout for a place where he could practice his golfing and eventually found the little fenced park and obtained permission to use it for practice.

Soon the men living on McGee on the west side of the park and those on Oak, now Gillham Road, on the east became interested in Young's strange activities and went down to watch. When they expressed an interest in the game, Young ordered clubs for them from Boston and a golf club was born.

It is probable that a green was built at the northwest corner and possibly another in the southeast corner.

Within a few years so many men had joined the club that the playing area became overcrowded. Officers were elected and as their first order of business began a search for a larger tract of land for their club. The Officers were Joseph Hubbard, 3622 Locust; Charles Washburn, 3523 McGee; Joseph Peppard, also on McGee, and Henry Van Brunt, 3617 Oak.

An article appeared in the May 6, 1896 edition of the Westport Sentinal Examiner which stated that the Hyde Park Golf and Country Club was moving out into the country and had purchased 120 acres on the west side of Santa Fe Road (now Wornall Road) between what are now 51st and 55th Streets. The club, said the article, planned to build a clubhouse designed by architect W.C. Root. The clubhouse is described as having a glassed-in veranda overlooking the golf course, locker rooms, a dormitory, kitchen and dining room.

Soon after Westport was annexed by Kansas City, the club changed its name to the Kansas City Country Club, and it remained at its location on Santa Fe until 1926 when it moved to 62nd and Indian Lane. Mrs. Jacob Leander Loose, who lived at the Walnuts across the street from the club, bought the club´s property when it moved and give it to the city. We know it today as Loose Park.

By Lyle Kennedy, undated.

February 8, 1887, H. P. Simpson filed the plat for the Kenwood Addition to the City of Westport. This had been the south forty acres of the A. G. Ragan farm—Commonwealth (Armour) to Tremont (37th) and from Oak to Holmes. It was at the end of the Real Estate boom of the 1880’s, so only the lots on Locust and those facing Hyde Park of Oak had been sold, and two houses on Locust (3608 and 3632) were under construction. From is front porch at 620 East 36th (1896 Directory *) Stilwell could look into the beautiful undeveloped woodland, east of Locust. Stilwell could look into the beautiful undeveloped woodland, east of Locust. Although he and his trust Company were committed to the financing of modest homes, he envisioned there a residential area for he more affluent, so he purchased the lost south of 36th facing cherry and Kenwood and the two small farms and part of another at the south end. He then employed George Matthews, an architect, to lay out the plan for the area.

On March 3, 1897, he and three associates filed the plat of Janssen Place, named for his Dutch friend and business associate, August Janssen. There were 16 large lots on each side of a double driveway and a wide center parkway. Hugh stone pillars with a flower garden in front framed the entrance on 36th Street and made it the most attractive residential development in the Kansas City-Westport area.

Janssen Place was not one of Stilwell’s quick successes, for in 1906 he sold his interest, only three houses had been built—327 Mrs. Batchelor, 348 Frank Tyler and #2, J. H. Tschudy. Yearly thereafter other large homes were built, the last of the “original” homes being that of J. W. Jenkins #54, completed in 1917. All the homes had large carriage houses, some with turntables, and years later when Bob and Ann Tschudy sold #2, Bob remarked “we had a cow and a team in those days but so did everyone else.

*The 1892 Directory shows that he lived “on Humbolt between Cherry and Holmes,” and Moshers at the “N. E. corner of Humbolt and Cherry”. Humbolt is now 36th Street. Which house was Stilwells? Several might be, or, was it demolished and the “modern” built on the site?

By Lyle Kennedy, undated.

In 1906 when the Cave Spring was being sealed and the water diverted into a storm sewer, William Mulkey, then 82 years old and the oldest living early settler, was interviewed by a reporter and told the following story:

"I came here with my mother and grandfather when I was only 4 years old. We were the third family to locate above the Big Blue. A scouting party of Mormons, headed by Joseph Smith came here in 1830, and in 1831 they established a settlement on the N.E. corner of 35th Street and Troost Avenue. The remains of the buildings and fences were seen there as late as 1872. Smith soon established a school in a log cabin about 100 yards northeast of the cave. There were only 12 families represented in the school when I first attended there. We brought bottles of milk to school with our dinners and always put them in the cave until noon. I have explored the cave for maybe 100 years with other boys."

There is no record of land owned in the area by James Mulkey, the grandfather. By 1886 William Mulkey is the recorded owner of 125 acres from Brush Creek to 55th Street, and from Holmes to Troost. William R. Nelson purchased the north 45 acres in the early 1900s, and platted a development called Mulkey Park.

The Mormons did not own any of the land he describes, although they did own about 2000 acres in various tracts between 27th Street and 63rd Street, and between Prospect and State Line. Joseph Cockrell patented the Cave Spring area in 1833 and William Marston patented the 80 acres from 31st to 35th, Troost to Paseo, in November 1831.

William Mulkey is credited with building the first brick house in Kansas City at 13th and Summit, and lived there from about 1858 until 1803 when the City condemned the land for a public park.

Some historians give the location of Joseph Smith's School at a site about one and one half miles from the Cave.

Where was it really?

Apologies to Dickens were unnecessary - a third alleged location has now come to light just by accident. In reading the microfilm of the K. C. Journal-Post, searching for information on an entirely different matter, we find in the November 29th, 1925 edition a long article refuting the more traditional location of the settlement of Colesville and the first schoolhouse, and placing it approximately one mile south.

On the south bank of Troost Lake there stands a seven foot granite monument with a large brass plaque stating that it marks the site where Joseph Smith and eleven other men, symbolical of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, laid the first log for a meeting house which was also to serve as a schoolhouse. It was placed and dedicated on September 14, 1963.

Tradition had long placed the schoolhouse in that general location, and it was owned by the church under the name of bishop Edward Partridge, as was all of their land. Haskell and Fowler in The City of the Future place it in Spring Valley Park, a few blocks to the east. The archives at Independence and Salt Lake City indicate only that is "was twelve miles from Independence at the edge of a prairie in Kaw Township." As the "crow flies" this would be in Kansas, but by the meandering Santa Fe trail any one of the locations would be possible.

There may have been a pond where Troost Lake is, and certainly springs, but the dam now existent is man-made. Spring Valley also must have had many springs, and is a beautiful valley park today between Woodland and Brooklyn.

Site #3

In 1925, the centennial year of the Santa Fe Trail, the Missouri Valley Historical Group placed some markers along the old trail, and were anxious to find the location of the Mormon settlement, Colesville, and the school house, for the trail was supposed to have passed nearby.

Letters were sent to all known Mormon and Latter Day Saints historians but no clues except as stated in Part II, other than it was near rich land and was later surrounded by cornfields, and a dairy was established there.

It was know that the Mormon land had been confiscated or sold for taxes as quickly as possible, also that a Joshua Lewis was a leading lay member of the church and that at least one conference had been held in his home in 1832.

An appeal was made to Jesse Crump, a Vice President of the Kansas City Title Company, and a great-great grandson of Daniel Boone to identify the Lewis land. He could find no land entered in that name, and learned that all the church land was held by Bishop partridge. He did, however, find that a tract which had been occupied by Lewis was sold for taxes in 1844. It was the 3500 blocks of Wayne and Highland Streets. A look at that location quickly found that there had been a spring at the rear of 3526 Highland, and quite a gully running southward. They picked this as the site of the schoolhouse and church, the first logs of which were laid by Joseph Smith and 12 other "Saints" on August 2, 1932. No monument was erected there.

From a source not given in this article it is stated that the schoolhouse burned June 28, 1913, and that it was riddled with bullet holes. That location is more than half a mile from the Sante Fe Trail. So far no news article has been found in the newspapers on or near that 1913 date of the burning of such an historic structure. We may never know the correct site.

Where was it?

How far did you walk to school when you were a child? There is an old saying that the older we get, the farther we walked. No doubt the present generation will brag about how far they rode the bus.

W. H. Chick, who lived where Allen School is now located at 42nd and Summit, says, at age 80, that we walked a mile west through the woods to school, and on long lunch hours went swimming in Brush Creek. A mile west would have put the school well into Kansas, in Rosedale, and at least one and one half miles from Brush Creek. Wm. Mulkey, ages 81, claims to have attended the Mormon School located just northeast of the Cave Spring just below Gleed Terrace, and many times saw Joseph Smith get water there. Mrs. Ada MacLaughlin, long time teacher of History at Westport High, and a respected historian, spend the summer of 1933 in research. She also places the school at about 35th and Campbell, and the Mormon settlement, Colesville, at Armour and Troost. The Mormons did not own this land.

In 1925 the Missouri Valley Historical Society determined to locate the site and enlisted the assistance of Jesse Crump, an expert in land titles. Crump determined that Joshua Lewis, a leading member of the Church had a home in Colesville and tried to find a record of his land. It seems strange that an experienced abstractor would have not known that all of the land patented by the Mormons was held in the name of the Bishop, Edward Partridge. He finally located the tract near 35th and Highland, and found a few old-timers who remembered the spring nearby. An on-site inspection even today will confirm that there was a spring at one time nearby. He uses the data of June 2, 1832 as the data of construction, whereas the church and other sources give it as June 2, 1831.

How do we trust this kind of testimony? Yet the Mormons did own this land.

On September 14, 1963 a group of Mormon and Latter Day Saints officials, and many city officials dedicated a monument placed at the south end of Troost, near the more traditional site, a few blocks east in Spring Valley Park. The Mormons also owned this land.

Colesville and the Schoolhouse

Twelve miles from Independence at the edge of the prairie is certainly not a very good clue to the location. The road, later to be called the Santa Fe Trail, left Independence in a southwesterly direction until it passed Pilcher, a small village just north of present Hiway #40: there it continues west for a mile or so and turned back northwest crossing the Blue at about 29th Street just east of Topping; continuing westerly and crossing Jackson at about 25th Street; there it curved back southwesterly to Prospect near 28th Street.

It turned west there for a few blocks, and would certainly have been in sight of Spring Valley Park with its many springs, and the fairly level ground to the east and northeast. By this route it appears to be about 10 1/2 miles from Independence.

There the trail turns south and crossed Paseo at 35th Street in about one more mile. The trail continues southwest and crossed Troost at about 36th Street and at about mile 12, crossed above Old Cave Spring. With slight changes in the route any one of the three could have been the correct site.

Several of the Mormons were killed at Colesville and Independence, and Joseph Smith was killed later in Nauvoo, Illinois. Even if we had letters written by these men describing the terrain as it was in 1831"-1"3, it probably would not be recognizable today. In 1906 Mulkey said that although he had not been there in many years, "if his sight was good enough he would follow the ravines and find it." Actually even in 1906 most of the ravines had been filled with the leveling process that goes with the expansion of a city.

So if the Hyde Park neighborhood wishes to claim the first schoolhouse in the city, it would seem that that claim is as good as the others. While admitting to some bias, this writer chooses the site about Cave Spring.

By Dona Boley for Troost Together presentation; 1986.

Troost Avenue was named after Benoist Troost, one of Kansas City’s earliest physicians and civic boosters. Benoist Troost was born November 17m 1786, in Bois Le Duc, Holland. After serving in Napoleon’s army as a hospital steward, he migrated to Independence, Missouri.

Soon the “Town of Kansas” on the levee a few miles northwest beckoned. By 1848 the town site had four brickyards, one steam mill, ten stores, three taverns and a livery stable serving about two hundred families who lived nearby. On April 18, 1953, in the city’s first mayoral election, Troost was defeated for the position by William Gregory, the vote being 36 to 27.

In 1854 he became an organizer-trustee of the city’s premiere newspaper, The Kansas City Enterprise. In additional he served the city as councilman in 1854. Troost was also instrumental in founding the Chamber of Commerce of Kansas City in 1957.

Troost Avenue at more than 100 blocks long is one of the longest and straightest of Kansas City’s north-south arteries. South of the Missouri River, Troost virtually bisects the geographic center of the city and near its mid section between 31st and Linwood reaches the city’s highest elevation.

In a span of 50 years, Troost Avenue mad the transition from fenced farms to suburban mansions to businesses.

One of the first if not the first residence in the area was the Rev. James Porter, who came in 1834 and acquired the land between 23rd and 31st Streets, Holmes to Vine. He built a mansion on Tracy. Other fine estates soon followed and Troost from 28th to Linwood was a cluster of mansion s of an exclusive social group.

As an example three residences occupied the east side of Troost, 31st to Linwood. The northern estate consisted of 20 landscaped acres. A partner of John D. Rockefeller’s in Standard Oil built the $115,000 southern mansion. This was one of many that cost over $100,000. this section of Troost reached the apex of its popularity as a suburban district by 1885 when the cable traction was extended south to 33rd.

In 1900 the city limits had been extended to 49th Street and small businesses and tall apartment hotels were being built along Troost. By 1920 the transition to businesses was completed and the South Central Business Association was formed. The Association boundaries were 27th to 36th Streets, Gillham Road to Michigan. This area constituted Kansas City’s first outlying shopping center.

In the days’ prior to transcontinental expressways and bypass construction the corner of Linwood and Troost was widely known as the “crossroads of America”—as the heart of the “Heart of America.”

There were many first at that time on Troost:

The Wirthman building at 31st Street was the first building to be floodlighted.

The 3100 block was the first in town to install parking meters—for a 90-trial in 1936, resulting in the humiliating disclosure that there were not enough cars around to justify them.

The areas two Fox Midwest Theaters, the Isis and Apollo, counted on a combined attendance of between 13,000 and 15,000 patrons a week.

The Apollo was the grand daddy of film theaters dating about 1911 and was the first so-called family theater and had it’s own parking structure.

At various periods when widening projects were proposed, the proposals were snowed under by objections form the South Central Business Association. “Although width is important to streets that are traffic arteries, trade thrives best on narrower avenues.”

In 1969 the South Central Business Association disbanded after 50 years of fighting hundreds of battles, some big, some little,e but all aimed at promoting the best interests of that area radiating from 31sst and Troost.

The next thirty years have not treated Troost kindly and we are now at the stage where this once thriving area is a shadow of its former self.

KC Public Library, Star Magazine; September 3, 1995

Kansas City's first golf course was the Kenwood Golf Links, established in 1894. At the time it was one of only 17 golf courses in the United States. Situated between 34th and 37th Streets and Charlotte and Oak, Kenwood Links was a difficult course. One of the obstacles golfers faced was a herd of cattle that frequently grazed on the greens. A "herd law" was later passed by the city of Westport, after which the cows stayed in their pasture. The number of players at Kenwood increased rapidly over the following year, making expansion necessary. Eighteen months later, the players incorporated as the Kansas City Country Club. The new club at 52nd Street and Wornall Road, inside the Seth Ward farm. The course remained there until 1921, when the members were informed that they had five years in which to find another location. The present site of the Kansas City Country Club at 62nd Street and Indian Lane was opened Dec. 19, 1926.

By Ivan Waite for the Hyde Parker; October 1996.

The land and improvements in central Hyde Park known today as 701–5 East 36th Street and 3601–07 Holmes Street, has a very interesting albeit sad history.

In July 1896, Charles Edwin Small, a prominent attorney, bought for the amount of $4,479.75 all of lots 75–80 of Hampden Place, a residential subdivision in the newly established Hyde Park neighborhood.

Small´s intent was to build one grand residence for his wife and family, to cost no less than $4,000. This house became a landmark when boulevards and parks and other fine homes were built around it. In the late 1890´s, this undeveloped and pastoral property was about as suburban to Kansas City as could be found at that time, with the exception of a few mansions then constructed or under construction within Janssen Place.

In 1991, Small was appointed to the Supreme Court of Missouri to serve a four–year term. He was repainted in 1923; but in October 1924, the judge, then age 70, died suddenly of "apoplexy." His wife Laura Adaline (Hughey) Small was left with some very valuable real estate that included a large section of business property in the vicinity of 19th and Main Streets.

Unfortunately, Mrs. Small was also left with many financial encumbrances on these business properties, the most staggering being the four–month old $12,500 loan secured by the deed to the mansion. Of an estate of more than $90,000, the net value after outstanding debts and taxes were paid dwindled to only $20,000.

However, Mrs. Small managed to keep the mansion as her home until her death on June 25, 1926, at age 74. To settle her mother´s estate, her daughter, Laura Small, sold the mansion and grounds to Frank W. McAllister, who left the property unoccupied until 1934, when it was promptly demolished and debris removed from the site.

By Pam Anderson Gard; February 2001.

Hyde Park was the happening place in October of 1978 when Jeff and I bought our first house at 3643 Campbell. The couple before had done a partial restoration, it was clean and . . . oh the woodwork? We purchased if for 4500.00 over the list price of $37,000. The market was changing rapidly and we decided to look for a bigger house that needed more rehab. (We needed that like a hole in the head.) We listed the house and our good neighbor Bob Cody bought it. I remember thinking that the value would not increase much. But it has! With the improvements Bob has made it should be on the homes tour, hint hint.

IN 1980, we purchased our current home at 3608 Campbell for $44,000. Eighteen months before it had sold for $12,000. We paid at least 25% more than the old girl was worth but fortunately the neighborhood values have continued to support our new furnaces, roofs, kitchens and on, and on. We soon discovered that, like us, many of our neighbors were eating plaster dust and washing their dishes wherever they could find running hot water. Front porch sitting was the way to obtain free group therapy and the names of plumbers, electricians and other contractors.

On January 4, 1981, I began my career in Real Estate as an agent for KCOne. Two weeks later I sold my first house . . . 3115 Charlotte for a total of $19,000. Paul and Julie Rieck were my patient buyers. I was involved in twenty-one transactions that year and my total volume was barely over $1,000,000. That is an average of $47,600 per home. Hyde park has sure come a long way since then.

North Hyde Park had not yet seen very much activity, but Jim and Lisa Merrill changed that when they bought 3328 Harrison. They were instrumental in north Hyde Park’s resurgence especially when they began restoring houses as a business. The exorbitant interest rates of 1983 put an end to that. Fro example, a $55,000 mortgage at 17% interest affords a payment of 4822.00 (PITI). That same loan today would have a monthly payment of $465 (PITI). Agents rapidly learned how to do all kinds of fancy financing during those years. Owner finance, Wrap-arounds, Contract for Deed—I shudder to think of it.

When I met my good friends don and Mary Lou Wilkins in 1983 it was to show them 716 Gleed Terrace. I needed gas in my car so we stopped at a gas station in the neighborhood where Don was propositioned and invited to a “party”, and solicited to buy watches out of a gentleman’s jacket. Thank goodness the Wilkins were intrigued by this marketing method and ended up being terrific neighbors. Through the efforts of many the neighborhood is no longer wild and crazy.

616 E. 36th street was offered for sale in the mid 80’s and the Kansas City Historic Foundation bought it. I remember chicken bones and fast food bags—inside and out. The basement was half dirt floor. The kitchen area was a pit and literally the house was almost ready for he wrecking ball. The neighborhood rejoiced that what was obviously a fabulous house would soon be restored. Tim and Terry Stockwell bought the house before it was completed and added many of their own finishing touches. I worried about the appraisal because the Foundation had sunk a sizable sum into the restoration. That restoration was a pivotal change in the neighborhood and had an immediate effect on the escalating values.

Armour Boulevard was in serious trouble. The Wrenmore, Senate, Armour and Empire (Ritz) apartment buildings were in horrible shape and the expense to take them down was considerable. There was another even more horrible building at the corner of Armour and Charlotte that looked like it had been through a war. They’re gone now at great expense to the city and the neighborhood values have reflected that change.

The whole neighborhood began to look better because many of the houses had new driveways and fewer occupants so the cars were not parked bumper to bumper on the streets. Residents were sprucing up the landscaping and planting new trees and flowers. Grass instead of crab grass—what a difference.

In recent years my customers have marveled at the amount of restoration most of our houses have been through. They say things like “Oh, surely this one was never in bad shape” and all I can think of is how awful it had looked with that nasty old bathroom in the dining room in 1981. Not to mention the mess the homeless person made when he took up residence because there was no lock on the back door of the then vacant house. One of my favorites was egg cartons glued to the ceiling of the dining room of 3653 Harrison. Did you know that egg cartons are great for acoustics? You learn something every day.

Of course, the most celebrated change is the opening of or Costco store. WOW! Our neighborhoods own Jim Glover is the guy who made it happen, so a band of Hyde parkers were there for the ribbon cutting ceremony with GLOVER FOR PRESIDENT signs. Thanks Jim!

This month I am celebrating twenty years in the business of selling Hyde Park homes. The neighborhood is very different than it was on January 4rh, 1981. Reflecting on the change makes me wonder what it will look like when I am 90 years old and my children take away the car keys thereby restricting my ability to sell these extraordinary houses. Time will tell.

By Susan Jezak Ford; January, 2002

At the turn of the century, the area known today as central Hyde Park was the newly fashionable suburb for he wealthy and socially prominent. Few current midtown residents, however, know the history of “Round Hill,” the once-magnificent four-acre estate of banker Henry C. Flower, located at 38th and Locust.

Henry C. Flower was one of Kansas City’s most prominent businessmen. Born in 1860, he came to Kansas City in 1885 and began practicing law. Despite having letters of introduction tot he city’s leading lawyers, he was unable to find employment in a law firm. He established his on office at Sixth and Delaware streets and his business quickly grew. He developed an acquaintance with New York financier James Stillman, who encouraged Flower to organize a bank in Kansas City. Upon this advice, the Fidelity Trust Company resulted, representing at the time of its charter more money than any corporation in the state. Flower served as president of the bank until 1919, when it merged with the National City Bank and became the Fidelity National Bank & Trust, where he served as chairman of the board.

Flower acquired a large tract of land south of Janssen Place in 1910 and immediately began transforming the site to suit his social standing. Building permits totaling $8,000 in anticipated expenses was submitted in 1910 to remodel and repair an existing house and to build a stone garage on the north edge of the parcel of land. Further construction occurred in 1913, as Flower expanded the front of the house with a two-story addition. The new addition was designed by Henry F. Hoit, one of Kansas City’s foremost architects who had designed homes for R.A. Long (Corinthian Hall and Longview Farm) and whose firm would be chosen to design the Kansas City Power and Light building in 1931. The property was renamed “Round Hill” and the entrance was moved from 38th and Janssen Place to 3823 Locust. The estate’s newly expanded home featured a sprawling Italian Renaissance design with a symmetrical stucco façade, columned porches topped with balustrades and an elaborate broken pediment over the main entrance. Brackets and dentil moldings provided ornamentation to the house’s simple, graceful lines.

Flower and his wife had two daughters, but the couple eventually divorced. In 1925, Flower donated Round Hill to the Sisters of Notre Dame de Sion in exchange for another property owned by the sisters—the former home of Kirkland Armour located on the northwest corner of Armour and Warwick Boulevards. Each of the exchanged properties was valued at the time at $150,000. The grounds of Round Hill were described as “the most beautiful in the city.” Laid out ten years earlier by the renowned landscape firm of Hare & Hare, the gardens extended east of the house just south of the Janssen place retaining wall and included hedges, a large flower garden, terraces and a pergola.

The Sisters of Notre Dame de Sion began building their new school in 1927 in a “Modern French” style. The three-story building, placed in front of the Flower home, was considered quite elaborate, constructed of buff brick and trimmed with stone. The building included three cafeterias, a kitchen, a swimming pool and a great hall, in addition to classrooms and dormitories. An enclosed passageway was built to link the new building to the former Flower home, which was used for office space. Over the years, the open porches of the house were closed in and second-story rooms were added to the side porches, as the building was adapted for various uses by the school. Still visible today, despite the changes, are the features that made this a distinguished house—the stretches of carved molding, the grand staircase and a library lined with bookshelves.

The historic lower school of Notre Dame de Sion still sits on Round Hill, now known as Sion Hill, above 39th and Gillham Road. The school provides a Catholic multicultural education to preschool through 8th grade students and has recently renovated its third story to accommodate a new science center. The fate of the Henry flower home remains unknown at this time, as the school has listed as a goal its removal and replacement with a multipurpose gymnasium building.

Note: The house was razed in 2003-4 in preparing for a new building.

By Diane Euston; The Martin City & South KC Telegraph; August 27, 2019

Recently I was asked why Kansas City has so many golf courses, and as a person who grew up playing the sport myself and even played on the Junior LPGA, I couldn’t help but to delve even deeper into Kansas City’s love of the links. The origin of hacking the little white ball around the course is an interesting history that many here know little about.

Kenwood Golf Links

Even though the origins of golf go all the way back to the 15th century in Scotland, golf didn’t reach the United States until 1888. In Kansas City, a group of people with ties to Scottish heritage decided to build a nine-hole course in the Hyde Park neighborhood in the fall of 1894. The course, called Kenwood Golf Links, was between 34th and 36thcStreets from Gillham (Oak) and Charlotte Streets. The ninth hole ended in the backyard of famed architect Henry Van Brunt’s home at 3617 Oak St. Alice Van Brunt, his wife, was one of the original founders of the course. It was the seventeenth golf course built in the entire United States.

William D. McLeod, one of the first members, recalled the condition of the first course. There were no bunkers, but there were “enough natural hazards” to make the nine-hole course difficult. The putting greens were anything but in stellar condition, and the only time the grass was ever cut was “when some ambitious player brought his own lawn mower out and personally performed the work.”

The clubhouse burned down a year after opening, and while maybe a dozen men and women swung their sticks on Kinwood [Kenwood] Golf Links in the beginning, the exclusive golf course was growing in popularity. It was clear they had outgrown their amateur course, so in 1896, they reorganized as the Kansas City Country Club and moved to a new, bigger location.

By E.R.S; date unknown.

The elm trees arch high and graciously now on either side of Armour boulevard, and that never quite ceases to be a wonder to one who saw them set out as skinny little saplings, looking like feather dusters.

But the glory of the elm trees is about the only glory that is left on Armour boulevard. The pride of circumstance, the pomp of power, the gleam of spacious living, all are departed. The Armours are gone, and those which whom they dined, drove, danced and sipped afternoon tea—they, too, are gone. The hurrying passerby could not tell you even where the Armours once lived, nor probably for that matter, how the boulevard got its name.

One Armour house remains, the tall yellow brick mansion at the southwest corner of Walnut street and Armour boulevard. It was built by Andrew W. Armour, and Charles W. Armour, his son, a tall, gray, quiet man, inherited it and lived there until his death. Further east a block, at the northwest corner of Armour boulevard and Warwick, stood the more elaborate home of Kirkland B. Armour, who was president of the great packing house here when he died. Old timers called him “Kirk” Armour. He was a handsome mustached man, found of good living, and admired of women.

His house was modeled on a French chateau. It was built of cream-colored pressed brick, cut stone, had curved plate glass windows and a roof of red slate. It boasted round towers, with conical roofs; it spoke in every aspect of wealth, success, American prosperity. It stood on a lot both wide and deep, with a wall of cut stone banking the earth about it, pedestal-wise.

Glorified Barn Entrance

Behind the house stood a barn to match it, more beautiful and spacious that most persons” houses, and that barn was a place of wonder and of beauty to a little boy whose father never was more than a 2-horse doctor. For there is a certain easiness among children which enables the ones from modest homes to fraternize easily with the sons of wealth. That was why those of us who were about the age of Laurence Armour (Kirk’s son) had access to his paternal stable; gazed improper awe at the sleek horses in box stalls, at the clean floors, the oiled hooves, the harness, gleaming opulently with silver mountings. The coachman and the assistant coachmen were imposing, well-fed persons.

A little way from the barn was a large elm tree mounted on a pedestal of earth, with a circular stone wall around it. This was, indeed, the most charming thing about the whole place to small boys, for there was a steel cable sunning from a branch of the tree to the ground, and a large pulley straddled the cable, with a rope and a stout wooden bar attached to the pulley. The trick was this: You climbed the tree, seized the wooden bar firmly and coasted to the ground at what seemed like break-neck speed, only it never broke anybody’s neck.

There was an older son, a. Watson Armour, quite grown up, and a little girl, Mary Augusta, who looked as though she might have come straight out of one of those beautiful box Valentines one never could afford to buy, but yearned for nevertheless.

Across Warwick boulevard, directly to the east, where the Bellerive hotel now is, was a stone house built by Lysander R. Moore, and long since vanished to make room for more profitable and public investments. The site of the Kirk Armour mansion is vacant; it has nothing of its old grandeur except the cut-stone retaining wall, the royal house and imperial stable having been torn down to lower taxes.

At the southeast corner of Warwick and Armour boulevards one of the pioneer houses of the great survives in good condition. This is the gray stone house built by Dr. Jefferson Davis Griffith, a doughty surgeon with a military manner, a military mustache and strong Confederate sympathies. I always viewed Dr. Griffith with awe after I learned it was his habit, upon emerging from a hospital operating room, where he had been at work, to pick up the dead cigar he had left when he went in, knock the cold ashes from it, bite off and chew the charred end! What a man! The Order of DeMolay occupies the Griffith house today; the lot still runs east a block.

Originally Armour boulevard was sharply limited. The city directory of 1901 gives it as extending only between Main street and Warwick boulevard, two brief but beautiful blocks. On either side of those limitations, the boulevard still was called Thirty-fifth street in 1901.

Two houses of imposing size stood at Armour boulevard and Main street, on the west side of Main. On the northwest corner was the cut-stone and red-tile edifice built by William Taylor of the John Taylor Dry Goods company for his beautiful young wife. It was passed later into the possession of Mrs. D”Estaing Dickerson, a tall gray woman, widow of a Kansas City doctor who had made much money. Mrs. Dickerson owned one of the first French limousines ever brought to Kansas City. It was driven by a liveried chauffeur, and in the back seat sat Mrs. Dickerson, erect and a little grim in appearance, with a poodle dog which looked snootily at little boys going by on foot. At least, little boys thought so. The house survives as a day nursery for children of the runabout age.

The other house then at the southwest corner—there”s a new drug store there now—belonged to Thomas H. Mastin. It had a round massive tower on the northeast corner, and was roofed with black tiles, brought from France. The architect of this house, which was built as massively it easily might have lasted for 250 years had Nature been allowed to take her course, was Stanford White, the great new Yorker, who designed Madison Square Garden in New York, with its statue of Diana; who created the New York Life building in Kansas city, looking down Baltimore avenue from Ninth street, with a great bronze eagle over its entrance.

Stanford White, as any schoolboy could have told you thirty years ago had been killed by Harry K. Thaw, a millionaire Pittsburgh playboy, who was jealous of the architect”s attentions t Evelyn Nesbit, a beautiful chorus girl who had been a member of the Floradora sextet, a glamorous theatrical group in New York musical comedy.

It was, of course, long before Death had laid a lurid garland on the brow of Stanford White that he designed the Mastin house. It was been a good many ears, as time goes on Armour boulevard, since the house was pulled own, first for a filling station, afterward a parking lot, and not its site to be occupied by a modern building for a drug stone.

Armour boulevard’s glory was brief. It began to grow great about the turn of the twentieth century and in two decades the wealthy persons who had built ornate houses there had for the most part moved farther south, and were looking for insurance companies to buy their Armour boulevard homes. Mrs. Jacob Leander Loose, at the southeast corner of Armour boulevard and Walnut street, was successful. The Phil Toll house, at the southwest corner of Warwick and Armour boulevards, stands as a melancholy monument to unachieved ambition; remodeling of it for business purposes was started, but never finished.

One of the most beautiful relics of Armour boulevard”s glory still survives shabbily. This is the yellow brick, Dutch colonial house at the head of Walnut street on the north side of Armour boulevard. This admirably designed home was built, and occupied for a lifetime, by Mr. and Mrs. Edward W. Smith. It stood as a symbol of gracious living and when Mrs. Smith”s household furnishings were sold after her death, it seemed like plundering. The green shutters which once gave the house distinction have fallen to pieces and been taken down, and the place looks bald and stark.

The one Armour house which survives, the 3-story structure at the southwest corner of Walnut and Armour, houses the Conservatory of Music today, and from its windows, especially in the summer, comes a continuous medley of student music.

Taxicabs go up and down the boulevard, where prancing horses trod. Persons who never heard of the Armours peer out eagerly, looking for lodgings in homes which once were mighty, and now are just old houses. There is one exception to that generality; at 520 East Armour lives Mrs. John F. Downing, n the home her banker husband built. [A parking lot is now at this address.]

By V.J.O. Saunders; Date unkown.

"Armour Boulevard extends quaintly from Broadway to the Paseo. Named in honor of Simeon D. Armour of the renowned Armour Meat Packing family, the Boulevard remains a vital, significant thoroughfare in the business and economic heart of Kansas City. Simeon Armour was a staunch Kansas City enthusiast; businessman, civic leader, and large landholder. He was also a powerful supporter of Kansas City's New Parks and Boulevard System; and held a position on the Park Board from 1892–1901. Though the Armour Meat Packing Co. headquarters was located in Chicago, IL, Simeon Armour and his family cheerfully made their home in Kansas City. The Armour Family Residence took up over two blocks, from Main to Warwick. Today, on its site, there now exist thriving businesses and a school."

Kansas City Times; unknown date.

The park board is to be congratulated for shelving the plan to cut Rockhill road north through Gillham park. Rockhill will be improved from Forty-fifth south to Sixty-third, but the integrity of the park will be preserved.

Perhaps the vigorous protests against turning Rockhill road into some limited form of traffic artery can serve a second, and possibly even more important function. In city after city across the country public objections are mounting against traffic improvements that destroy park land and other beauty spots.

The stir over Rockhill road ought to alert a variety of city departments–especially public works and traffic—to the fact that the people of Kansas City are not prepared to sit by idly as one landmark after another is wiped out. Some changes are mandatory as a city expands and they must be accepted as a price of growth. But a systematic destruction of the park and boulevard system cannot be tolerated.

There are those in this community who believe that Gillham road, as it winds up the hillside to the Nelson Gallery of Art, is one of the most beautiful outdoor settings in Kansas City. Surely it was one of the crowning achievements of George Kessler, the city’s pioneer landscape architect who turned out to be a genius at city planning as well.

The big thing now is that the crown will be removed form eh center of Rockhill road—a needed improvement. To the north, Gillham park will be saved. In the future, the people who drive that route, admiring the beautiful hillside and the stately trees, will be indebted to the park board for its wisdom in blocking a destructive project.

By Anne Peppard White; unknown date.

What Once Was “Lumberman’s Row” Still an island of Quiet, Dutch-Tinged charm in bustling Heart of City.

Just two blocks east of Hyde Park is Janssen Place, still a secluded spot. Driving through the great stone entrance on Thirty-sixth street, the rows of mansions on either side are like a monument to the millionaires of the early part of the century.

Mrs. Browning Fellers lived there from childhood until the day she was married. Her father, the late Jay Tschudy, built one of the first houses—a 3-story, red-brick home at No. 4 Janssen Place, with a deep, cool front porch and a stable larger than most of the residences of today.

Mrs. Fellers tells the story of how Janssen Place happened to be plotted and planned.

“A. E. Stilwell conceived the idea of an exclusive neighborhood with a 2-way street separated by a narrow green lawn and formal flower beds,” Mrs. Fellers said. “It was laid out on a simple Old World pattern of Holland, because the investors were a group of Dutchmen who were eager to invest in America. Sit seems strange that such a formal neighborhood should show up on the edge of town.

Lumberman’s Row

“We used to call it ‘Lumberman’s row,’ because many of the large homes were built by them. I wish I could remember all of their initials, but some of the first families to build there were Pickering, Bowman, Byrnes, Hicks, Tschudy and Batchelor.

“Everyone knew his neighbors and entertaining was done in our homes. There were plenty of servants and time for leisurely fun—croquet, lawn tennis, a weekly bridge club and a church sewing circle. There was horseback riding on the county roads which then lay just south of us. It was an entirely different kind of living and would seem very slow to this generation.”

Janssen Place still has the sleepy, Old World secluded look. Ruby Garrett, who lives at No. 73 Janssen Place, enjoys practicing golf shots in his large slopping back yard and can shoot 65 yards up to my putting green. It’s a grand way to keep in practice,” Garrett remarked last week.

“We bought this 3-story brick house from Wallace Robinson in 1930 and remodeled it into a duplex. It had been built by a lumberman named Byrnes, and I didn’t realize until we began remodeling what a solid place I had. Those old-timers built for eternity—triple-plate glass windows from basement to attic, hardwood floors throughout, a tiled Turkish bath, solid cherry bookcases and paneling, and the stable, which is now our garage, bigger than most modern homes.”

A Serene Place

“We enjoy living here because of quiet, space and nearness to town. There’s a neighborly feeling because we, as home owners, still have the responsibility for the entire place, since we own the street, sidewalk and the center green strip. We hire a caretaker to keep the green lawn trim I the narrow park and the flower beds blooming.

“I always get a relaxed feeling from the tensions of the office when I drive through the artistic classic-columned gate—the entrance with the Dutch name, Janssen. I wonder just who he was. I do remember A. E. Stilwell was the promoter and that there was Dutch money invested in the project.

“Two modern duplexes have been built to the south of us and two more down our street. They seemed dwarfed sitting beside the old homes, but it just shows some young people still do enjoy quiet and do not have to live where the crowd goes.”

All the original families of Janssen Place and Hyde Park have scattered. Their children’s children are living now in spick and span, efficient ranch houses in the suburbs. There they can’t explore the mysteries of dark, damp caves or have the thrill of playing, “run, sheep, run” in the private park or know the excitement of visiting a gypsy camp in the deep walnut woods behind their homes.

By Kate Oglebay White; unknown date.

Beneath the massive cottonwood tree, four Philharmonic musicians played German baroque brass music. That afternoon they were in Gillham Road; that night they would play in the ballet "Giselle."

And so it was that Water Experience was dedicated in Gillham Road. This old World War I parade ground has come a long way. Water Experience is a new idea combining a fountain and a pool where people are an integral part of the design. At the top of the steps, five fountains spill water down the steps and fill several shallow foot baths and one large pool. Concrete steps look like a cross between an angular Greek Amphiteatre and a set for Gene Kelly.

Mary Edith Lillis, Director of Recreation for the City, said, "If this were only a pool, it could be used only two months out of the year. This way it can be useful nine months." And she is reight. This $130,000 Federally Funded project provides a place for children to run and sprawl and splash and play almost all year.

Moments before the dedication ceremonies were to begin, Designer Claude Percy (Larking and Associates) was spotted down in a pit trying to turn the fountain on with a small pair of pliers. "The darn thing won't turn on," he muttered in a stage whisper. A helpful child tried to enlist the aid of Father Rodney Creuse for Divine aid. The priest obliged only to be innundated with water as the fountain spurted, gurgled and gushed it's maiden gush. Thus the dedication got underway.

Note: Gillham Road wadeing pool/fountain was built in 1976.

George Kessler’s general plan for Gillham Road was divided into two units: one for the north and one for the south—this was due to the fact that the two were in separate park districts—South and Westport.

1903: Section from 31st to 46th streets was acquired through condemnation.

1907: Section from 31st to 45th streets was completed.

Cost of acquisition of all of Gillham Road was $487,625.94.

Cost of Construction was $493,911.06.

Cost of Maintenance per the 1920 Souvenir booklet was $183,193.41.

In the period 1907-1910, Kessler prepared general plans for improving Gillham Road from 35th to 46th Streets. His plans provided for a comprehensive playground, field house, outdoor gymnasium, and ball field all located between 39th and 42nd Streets. In addition, there were numerous paths and other improvements planned throughout the ten acre park. There were never sufficient funds of the Westport Park District to carry out his elaborate plans.

1910: Bridle paths were constructed along Gillham Road from 38th to 46th Street and from 39th northeasterly on Harrison Parkway.

1913: The dangerous curve on 39th Street and Gillham Road was reconstructed making two entrances to Gillham Road on the south.

The Kansas City Casting Pool was constructed at 41st Street and Gillham Road.

1922: Gillham Road was made one way from 36th to 39th.

1940: The Kansas City Casting Pool was rebuilt and enlarged.

1976: Wading pool and fountain were constructed and the Casting Pool was removed.

1980’s: Two of the four baseball fields were removed.

1980: Exercise trails were added south of 42nd Street.

1981: A comfort station was erected near 41st Street and the wading pool.

1984: Parking was added to 41st between Gillham Road and Kenwood.

1985: Curb and pavement was rebuilt from 42nd Street to Brush Creek Boulevard

Several property owners around 36th and 38th streets purchased “undesirable” land in 1887. They hired George Kessler to turn the land into a park to protect the entire neighborhood from undesirable development.

Hyde Park was Kessler’s fifth project and his first in Kansas City, Missouri. His first project was Merriam Park in 1883. His next projects were Woodmere Cemetery in Detroit, Michigan, John Mastin Farm Grounds in Johnson County, Missouri and Simon J. Murphy Estate in Detroit, Michigan. Hyde Park is Kessler’s oldest existing park and is almost intact. Kessler did over 100 projects in 30 states.

Kessler preserved its natural features—limestone outcroppings and trees. He laid out walks, planted shrubbery, furnished seating and built a road encircling the edge of the park.

Eventually, Hyde Park became the Hyde Park Country Club, the predecessor to the Kansas City Country Club. The club was organized in 1896 and began as a neighborhood club. Tennis Courts, croquet and archery grounds were maintained in Hyde Park. At that time Hyde Park was fenced with only members having keys.

1902: Hyde Park was acquired by the Park Board as part of a condemnation for Gillham Road.

1906: Four pressure gasoline lamps were purchased for the park.

1907: A comfort station near 37th Street was built in the park. In addition the south end of the park was graded and seeded. Surplus trees from the park were transplanted to Harrison Boulevard.

1914: Studies for an ornamental terrace, fountain and steps were approved as a feature of the north end of the park. The plan never materialized due to the lack of money.

1915: A survey was made in Hyde Park by A. E. Shirling, a Kansas City naturalist, showing that the park contained 61 varieties of American trees. A large number of the trees were lost in 1940 due to a drought.

1980s: Comfort station was removed. Tennis courts rebuilt.

Hyde Park has exceptional significance in the area of landscape architecture and community planning.

It is the first of several Kessler designed valley parks anchoring residential neighborhoods which has survived essentially unchanged.

It is a complete demonstration of how a piece of “difficult” land was transformed through design into an asset that not only made the neighborhood highly desirable and raised property values, but provided a recreational resource to the community that continues to fully function in this capacity after a century of use.

Hyde Park is an important housing prototype for Kansas City and is referred to nationally as a successful example of a park serving as a social center for the homeowners living around it. This was more the case prior to the 1950s and less today.

Hyde Park played a formative role in Kansas City’s social history.

The form that Hyde Park took was dictated by the terrain. It shows how a boulevard can divide around a wide median to preserve an important natural feature and create a significant social amenity.

Hyde Park is especially significant for bringing Kessler and August Meyer together and establishing the relationship between Kessler and the first Park Board chaired by Meyer, out of which came the 1893 Plan for the park system.