Kansas City History

[longviewmo]

Is all of the hilltop downtown loess? It looks like what they were digging in those pics. How far down is the bedrock?

Supposedly, when the loess was removed, either side of second street in 1867-1872, the bluff was taken down 40 to 100 feet, to bedrock.

However, the bluff geology is not uniform, and there were a series of gullies that cut through the bluff down to the river. These gullies roughly coincided with many of the streets that now exist, Grand(Market), Walnut, Delaware, Main, and Broadway.

In the recent past, there have been drillings, either side of third street in the River Market, for building piers, elevator hydraulic shafts, etc... that have gone as deep as 65 feet without hitting bedrock.

I heard a rumor a long time ago that Delaware Street was actually filled in one story to the current street level. That would make the basements the former ground level. And in some buildings you can actually see the old front doors in the basement. When they were cutting the bluffs down they dumped the material in the streets....Sounds crazy to me, but intriguing. Loftguy/Fang/anyone heard anything crazy like this?

They've done it in plenty of other cities, so it isn't that far-fetched.

[loftguy]

Is all of the hilltop downtown loess? It looks like what they were digging in those pics. How far down is the bedrock?

Supposedly, when the loess was removed, either side of second street in 1867-1872, the bluff was taken down 40 to 100 feet, to bedrock.

However, the bluff geology is not uniform, and there were a series of gullies that cut through the bluff down to the river. These gullies roughly coincided with many of the streets that now exist, Grand(Market), Walnut, Delaware, Main, and Broadway.

In the recent past, there have been drillings, either side of third street in the River Market, for building piers, elevator hydraulic shafts, etc... that have gone as deep as 65 feet without hitting bedrock.

I heard a rumor a long time ago that Delaware Street was actually filled in one story to the current street level. That would make the basements the former ground level. And in some buildings you can actually see the old front doors in the basement. When they were cutting the bluffs down they dumped the material in the streets....Sounds crazy to me, but intriguing. Loftguy/Fang/anyone heard anything crazy like this?

I've wondered this in a few buildings, over the years. There are a lot of buildings that have open "vault" areas the length of the building under the sidewalks and some have the appearance of having been a main entry at one time. I don't know if this vault was a planned area in the original development, or if there was some grade change that resulted in this condition.

The only one that specifically comes to mind at the moment, is the old Volker Building, now known as Riverbend Lofts, at 200 Main. A couple of folks on this forum know that building well. Your thoughts?

[loftguy]

This is the prevailing condition in the Pioneer Square district in Seattle.

What was previously the first floor, is now the basement and new entries were put into the second level, or the buildings were constructed upon to bring the entry level to the new street level.

Someone here knows why this raise in street level was required. Please share, otherwise I'll have to go to the trouble of a Google search, and after spending time on KCRag, I've actually got real work to do!

[aknowledgeableperson]

One guess would be to elevate the area to keep it from flooding. Plus one has to put the dirt somewhere and that place would reduce the hauling time and costs.

[cknab1]

Here is the quick answer. We learned this when we did the underground tour a couple of years ago. Great tour with a lot of local info.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Underground

[FangKC]

I've wondered about what they did with the fill dirt myself. It was a massive endeavor to move all that dirt using only horses and wagons, and men digging.

What is fascinating is that they excavated the streets first, and left the bluffs in place on the interior blocks for some time afterwards because houses and buildings were already constructed there. The property owners often had steep staircases to climb up and down to get to the streets.

I am guessing that a lot of the fill dirt was taken and dumped in lower-lying ditches and ravines along the river to smooth it out, and also used as the fill dirt along the river in places like where Berkley Riverside Park is now.

That area also had to be smoothed out so the railroads could be constructed.

I am also guessing that some of the riverfront area next to the river was lower than it is now, so they used the fill dirt to build up the riverbank higher. I've seen photos where they sunk wood pilings next to the water's edge and backfilled dirt behind the pilings to create a level riverfront.

[FangKC]

Yes, I knew that Seattle raised their streets up after the Great Seattle Fire.

Many people may not know this, but many parts of Quality Hill have a great deal of infill dirt. There was a fairly deep ravine that rain parallel to Broadway north and south between Broadway and Washington. In fact, I think there used to be a pond behind where The Quaff is now. Broadway, and the original Coates House Hotel, were constructed before most of this infill was done.

A lot of fill dirt was brought in to level out that ravine so building could be done on top of it.

I imagine they did a lot of regrading on Quality Hill when streets were put in, and dumped the dirt in that ravine.

There also used to be a pond north of Fifth Street and east of Broadway. I recall seeing a photo of it at some point.

There was another hollow in the area we know as the East Village now. That area has some significant fill dirt in it as well.

There are also photos of the New York Life Insurance building after it was built that show steep cuts along Baltimore and the area where the Central Public Library is now was much higher. I imagine Main Street runs atop a former ravine as well, and some of that dirt along Baltimore probably was used to fill and raise Main Street up higher.

I imagine that a lot of the River Market sits on fill dirt as well, since there appear to have been several ravines that cut through that area.

[aknowledgeableperson]

Several of the proposals to move the state line resulted in early Kansas City being part of Kansas, and not Missouri.

Don't forget the Platte Purchase in 1836. In 1837 this area became part of Missouri. Before this purchase the western boundry of Missouri was a straight line from Arkansas to Iowa. Just think, if the Platte Purchase area would have been part of Kansas?

[aknowledgeableperson]

Wonder what KC's history would have been if this annexation had been reversed. From a posting on Facebook.

"With one huge gulp in 1898, Kansas City doubled it's size with newly annexed territory. The City of Westport plus lands to the southeast and east inflated Kansas City's size to 16,821 acres. Citizens concerned with the growing costs of needed improvements filed suit in circuit court to reverse the annexation 116 years ago today.

Testimony given in these proceedings brought boosters back to earth when they learned the true price of city expansion. Fire Chief George C. Hale estimated fire department costs would increase fifty thousand dollars for a new fire protection district. The new pumping station and water mains could cost at least one million dollars.

The board of police commissioners needed to add three new police stations and a doubling of the police force. The court learned that one thousand new homes had been added in the annexed areas in just two years. The parks and boulevard systems were expected to be added also. Other departments estimated necessary improvements for new sewers, street grading, paving and street lighting in a two hundred page report."

[chaglang]

Maybe more like St. Louis, with a smallish center city surrounded by tiny municipalities.

[aknowledgeableperson]

A nice little summary of KC and WW I.

While Europe edged toward the catastrophe of World War I in June 1914, the overriding public issue in Kansas City was streetcars.

Yes, we were arguing about streetcars 100 years ago, as we are now.

The difference was that then we already had some 260 miles of rail. The controversy was about whether to grant a 30-year franchise to operate the system to an Eastern company.
...
Still, the general feeling here was that Kansas City, at a national crossroads with its river and rail connections, was primed for prosperity.

The city’s population had grown by more than half from 1900 to 1910 to nearly 250,000 and was on the way to more than 320,000 by 1920.

The Muehlebach Hotel was going up at 12th Street and Baltimore Avenue. Union Station, the third-largest train depot in the country, was nearing completion.

And Kansas City had just snagged one of the new regional Federal Reserve Banks, gathering 355 votes over 191 for Omaha and 132 for Denver. A local banker called it “one of the greatest boons that could possibly come to Kansas City.”
...
Lt. William Fitzsimons of Kansas City became the first American officer to be killed in the war. A graduate of the KU School of Medicine, he had gone over early and was tending the wounded in France in September 1917 when a German shell landed on his hospital tent. Former President Theodore Roosevelt wrote an editorial about him in The Star. There is a memorial to Fitzsimons at 12th Street and the Paseo.

Another Kansas Citian, Maj. Murray Davis, was killed Sept. 29, 1918, at the Battle of the Argonne Forest. His last words were, “Take care of my men.” There is a pocket park named for him at 40th and Main streets.

A young man from Grandview with poor eyesight named Harry Truman became commander of an artillery regiment in the 35th Infantry in France. He trained and served with a nephew of Kansas City political boss Tom Pendergast, forming a relationship with that family that would set him on a path to the White House.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/governme ... rylink=cpy

[aknowledgeableperson]

Hmmmmm. Didn't realize that this was part of our local history. Wonder how things would have developed if it did happen.

The Annexation That Wasn’t

On January 21, 1879, the Kansas Senate passed a resolution that approved the annexation of Kansas City, Missouri. The Missouri legislature refused to adopt a corresponding resolution, however, and this attempt to incorporate Kansas City into Kansas went nowhere. Interestingly, it was just one of several attempts in the nineteenth century to annex Kansas City to Kansas.

The first push for the border alteration actually came from Missouri in the pre-Civil War years. In 1855, Mobillion W. McGee, a proslavery resident of Westport, Missouri, believed that if the Kansas territory annexed Kansas City and Westport it would gain thousands of proslavery sympathizers who could vote to make Kansas a slave state when it entered the Union.

No records of this attempt survived, but according to a Kansas City newspaperman named Robert T. Van Horn, he and Mobillion McGee gained the consent of a majority of the Missouri legislature and the Kansas territorial legislature at Shawnee Mission, Kansas, to move the Kansas border. A third associate, whose identity was never revealed by the other plotters, disappeared with a love interest before he could gain necessary approval from members of the U.S. Congress. The proposals never came to a vote in any of the legislative bodies.
...
In 1878, the Kansas City Times began publishing articles in favor of annexation, arguing that the bulk of Kansas City’s trade already took place with towns in Kansas. Most Kansas City residents, according to the paper, considered themselves to be Kansans, regardless of the lines on a map. Furthermore, much of the area’s development was occurring in what would in 1886 become Kansas City, Kansas. The area’s emerging cities would essentially end up as one metropolis, yet the state line spurred economic and political divisions that could potentially impair growth on both sides. The Times articles reasoned that in consideration of Kansas City’s desire to be annexed, Missouri would agree to the plan, provided that it was allowed to retain all tax revenue from Kansas City for a period of 50 years.

From the Kansas City Public Library, Missouri Valley Special Collections
Home > Research resources > Local history & genealogy > Local History > This Week in Kansas City History > The Annexation That Wasn’t

[Highlander]

Maybe more like St. Louis, with a smallish center city surrounded by tiny municipalities.

It's amazing how much more the St Louis area has been able to accomplish with regard to support for its cultural institutions and public works with all the small municipalities than KC has with a central city controlling much more of the area. Shows how incredibly important (and divisive) the state line has been in the evolution of the KC area. We were an up and coming city before WWII - only until a significant part of the metro started to spill over into another state.

[Eon Blue]

St. Louis has accomplished a lot, yeah, but they're nearing a turning point for their cultural institutions. Things like the Art Museum, the Zoo and so on are supported by a property tax in the City and County of St. Louis. Both of those are losing population to places like St. Charles County, Jefferson County and the Metro East. Now they're faced with two hard choices: charge admittance for residents of non-paying counties or try to get those counties to pass their own support taxes. The former would be unpopular and the latter is nigh impossible. I'd wager that the zoo tax would not have passed in Clay County here if a significant part of that county did not fall within KCMO boundaries, giving those voters a tangible tie to the institution they were supporting.

[Highlander]

St. Louis has accomplished a lot, yeah, but they're nearing a turning point for their cultural institutions. Things like the Art Museum, the Zoo and so on are supported by a property tax in the City and County of St. Louis. Both of those are losing population to places like St. Charles County, Jefferson County and the Metro East. Now they're faced with two hard choices: charge admittance for residents of non-paying counties or try to get those counties to pass their own support taxes. The former would be unpopular and the latter is nigh impossible. I'd wager that the zoo tax would not have passed in Clay County here if a significant part of that county did not fall within KCMO boundaries, giving those voters a tangible tie to the institution they were supporting.

That's true but St Louis was able to effectively bring in (at the time the tax was imposed) the wealthiest and most populous part of the metro (St Louis County) only because it is in the same state. The demographic shift towards St Charles County is relatively recent and it would be interesting to see if the residents there would approve such a tax. Sadly, the outlying suburbs in the US have kind of adopted an us against them attitudes with their central cities in the last 20 years or so and I suspect support would be limited. Still - something like Prairie Village has been as much of a part of the KC central core as anywhere in St Louis County and the only benefit KC receives for something like the zoo from that demographic is gate revenues and charity (like FOZ).

[warwickland]

St. Louis has accomplished a lot, yeah, but they're nearing a turning point for their cultural institutions. Things like the Art Museum, the Zoo and so on are supported by a property tax in the City and County of St. Louis. Both of those are losing population to places like St. Charles County, Jefferson County and the Metro East. Now they're faced with two hard choices: charge admittance for residents of non-paying counties or try to get those counties to pass their own support taxes. The former would be unpopular and the latter is nigh impossible. I'd wager that the zoo tax would not have passed in Clay County here if a significant part of that county did not fall within KCMO boundaries, giving those voters a tangible tie to the institution they were supporting.

at the same time, the zoo is expanding across I-64, the SLAM recently(ish) opened an addition, etc. it's not like those institutions are declining - st. charles co is well overdue to be brought into the regional asset funding fold, however. st. louis county wealth has a lot to do with supporting regional assets, beyond just the taxes. the day that dries up we are in trouble. i imagine older wealth in JoCo quietly supports a lot of regional/KCMO assets.

i've come to understand why people choose suburbia, but i"ll never get the "435 South" / St. Charles Co mindset. Political divides have a lot to do with it, I don't think West (St Louis) Co is as bad as the Dardenne Prairie/ Olathe crowd. I'd love to see like a map of the line of best fit where people stop saying Kansas Citian and start with the "i'm from Kansas" stuff. 95th and Antioch? I'd have much less of a problem living in PV, or something.

it seems like metro kc is not only cleaved by the state line, but its favored quarter suburbs most physically tied into the urban core (and the moderate republicans in toyotas middle ring) cannot be separated from white suv, inner-city snicker-joke-land beyond the outerbelt.

[Eon Blue]

at the same time, the zoo is expanding across I-64, the SLAM recently(ish) opened an addition, etc. it's not like those institutions are declining - st. charles co is well overdue to be brought into the regional asset funding fold, however. st. louis county wealth has a lot to do with supporting regional assets, beyond just the taxes. the day that dries up we are in trouble. i imagine older wealth in JoCo quietly supports a lot of regional/KCMO assets.

i've come to understand why people choose suburbia, but i"ll never get the "435 South" / St. Charles Co mindset. Political divides have a lot to do with it, I don't think West (St Louis) Co is as bad as the Dardenne Prairie/ Olathe crowd. I'd love to see like a map of the line of best fit where people stop saying Kansas Citian and start with the "i'm from Kansas" stuff. 95th and Antioch? I'd have much less of a problem living in PV, or something.

it seems like metro kc is not only cleaved by the state line, but its favored quarter suburbs most physically tied into the urban core (and the moderate republicans in toyotas middle ring) cannot be separated from white suv, inner-city snicker-joke-land beyond the outerbelt.

I'm delighted that those institutions are expanding and thriving. I also agree that the JoCo old money probably recognizes the value in the KCMO counterparts of similar institutions. Without the state line, it would be much harder to differentiate areas like PV and MH from Sunset Hills and Brookside. I'd love to see a survey of JoCo pin down where people start saying "I'm from Kansas" as opposed to KC. What's ironic about their self-identification with KS is that if you asked people residing in the other 98% of the state they'd probably say JoCo may as well be in Missouri, or at least incredibly distinct from what they think of as "Kansas."