KCRag Forum

Is that 8th and Main under the left wing?

Am I seeing correctly that Commerce Trust used to be open in the center of the building? I wonder when that changed.

Between 1996 and 2002, according to HistoricAerials.

Light wells for light and ventilation were common before modern HVAC and lighting. No one wanted an office/desk far from a window. Now due to the former and also desire for larger floor plates these often get filled in. Another example is the old NY Life bldng(catholic diocese).

moderne wrote: ↑Thu Nov 01, 2018 2:47 pm Light wells for light and ventilation were common before modern HVAC and lighting. No one wanted an office/desk far from a window. Now due to the former and also desire for larger floor plates these often get filled in. Another example is the old NY Life bldng(catholic diocese).

I knew light wells were a thing--I did not realize they were often filled in. That strikes me as a somewhat large undertaking. Very interesting.

This also explains why there are "windows" in some of the conference rooms in the Trust building.

The New Nelson building was on the southeast corner of Missouri and Main Street. It was destroyed by fire. I don't know the exact year, but the library has a photo of it intact and dated 1949.



http://kchistory.org/content/new-nelson-building

Stumbled across this awesome aerial shot



The exact same shot today. Note that the houses in the bottom right are still there, as well as the red church at the bottom near the middle

I have that first b&w photo in a postcard used for retail promotion. In the upper left it says "Kansas City--HARZFELD'S-- Petticoat Lane." In the lower right it says copyright '45 Millard-Hahn.

Look at all the rooftop signs.

Back in the time when there were cocktail lounges in bus terminals. Good times.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present what may very well be the least appealing postcard of this fair city ever produced

Yikes!

Looking southeast from the top of the old City Hall building at 5th and Main.

Fang, what's the source of the photo? At the bottom left corner is the old City Market building, btw.

I've seen it without the captions on the library site before it went down. There are a few other pictures like it taken from the old city hall. I love them because they look like they could've been taken in london, with all the spires and smog

The library database is all screwed up right now because they are doing a migration and rebuilding the site. I've done some searches that end up on a wayback machine type situation. A lot of the photos just aren't showing up--just the text for the file.

I think I found the photo above on the Library of Congress site. It might have also been linked from Pinterest to someone's personal site. I can't remember.

TheLastGentleman wrote: ↑Wed Nov 14, 2018 10:12 pm Stumbled across this awesome aerial shot



The exact same shot today. Note that the houses in the bottom right are still there, as well as the red church at the bottom near the middle

This is a great picture (the top one). It's clear that long before the Interstate System arrived, there was a E-W street that separated what is now the River Market from the rest of downtown (the degree of separation being nowhere near as severe). That street can be seen in the top picture. Would that be the western extension of Independence Avenue? Or Admiral? Also what is the very busy and wide street joining that main E-W artery at a diagonal on the extreme right hand side of the picture? That would be roughly where I-35 comes across the Paseo Bridge today.

Sixth Street Trafficway is the east-west one. About mid-frame you can see where Admiral used to diagonal into it.

The topos at Historic Aerials show how the streets were realigned

There's one with the north loop but not the east loop.

This link below takes you to one of those slide rules where you can see the before and after changes for downtown Kansas City.

http://iqc.ou.edu/2014/12/12/60yrsmidwest/

Here's several early maps of Kansas City that show various alterations to the street grid over time.



















Kansas City aerial 1955. Look at how much density there was in the neighborhoods east of Charlotte stretching to Brooklyn.





If you want to see a larger version of the last photo, click here the link below.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/1950-039-s-Ae ... 7675.l2557