Kansas City Houses 1885-1938

Kansas City has a rich heritage of residential architecture that speaks to the importance of this Midwestern metropolis during its boom years between 1880 and 1930. The forty houses covered here were erected by the city's leading plutocrats, such as newspaper publisher William Rockhill Nelson, whose fortune helped establish the Nelson-Atkins Museum; minerals magnate August R. Meyer; lumber baron Robert A. Long; oilman Ernest C. Winters; and Walter E. Bixby of Kansas City Life Insurance. Among the noted architects profiled are Edward W. Tanner; Henry F. Hoit; Louis S. Curtiss; the New York firm of George Brown Post in collaboration with Kansas City based architect Roger Gilman (Dean of RISD, 1919-1929); and Mary Rockwell Hook (one of the first women to study at the cole des Beaux Arts in Paris). Most of these houses were designed in the European and American revival styles prevalent during this period, although distinguished by a unique Midwestern sensibility.