Kansas City; City Beautiful as a “Stroll in the Park”
Kansas City started down its city beautiful path in the early 1870’s. In those years, into the 1890’s, the goal was to build a parks and boulevard system a` la` Olmsted and Central Park. The Kansas City parks initiative was pure and simple driven by wealthy elites, notably the owner of the Kansas City Star, William R. Nelson. For a decade and a half, the Star pounded the parks movement week after week, letter to the editor and assigned articles by Star reporters. “Nelson’s systematic and resolute crusade for a parks and boulevard system … began in the mid 1880’s. There were three reasons for his crusade. The first was Nelson’s love of beauty [he loved art and possessed a notable collection ] …. Also the park and boulevard movement dovetailed nicely with [his] ‘good roads’ transportation campaign. Lastly, Nelson wanted the rough-hewn Kansas City to match his vision of a progressive, stable community, blessed with an active, corruption-free government.”[1]
The Star’s campaign “combined repetition and adulation”. In article after article he celebrated the glories and successes of parks in other cities. His campaign added a subtly to the usual simple “bigger and better than you” competitiveness seemingly inherent in our urban hierarchical competition. For Nelson, Kansas City was left out of the pleasures and benefits of parks; it was simply deficient in not having what other cities had. Cities destined to become a great metropolis had to have parks. But the immediate issue at hand was the city’s lack of a structure to build a park system; it needed to create a parks board. That required local legislative action, state authorizing legislation (charter reform), and a local approval referendum. Each time another city achieved one or another of these steps, Kansas City readers were sure to hear about it[2]. Chicago, eight years previous to the Columbian Exposition, was the model to be imitated; in the years leading up to that break-through event, Chicago and Olmsted created a mighty park system—which Nelson’s just had to copy. Creating the park board was the Kansas City’s first step.
For the better part of fifteen years, proponents for the park board argued their case—and got essentially nowhere. Finally, the logjam broke and state legislation authorized a park board in 1899 in that year’s new charter. But the board had no powers to issue bonds to pay for its proposed park system—and it had to convince an independent, and uncooperative Real Estate Board to condemn the required property. The board by itself was insufficient to its purposes. Local legislation was pushed hard to remedy these deficiencies, and with the muscle of wealthy elites, it was shortly approved—but a now hostile Real Estate Board failed to take action, and the city made no funds available. Wealthy elites could force legislation through, but could not stop foot-dragging. The Parks Board shot itself in the foot by trying to force the state to grant these powers; it backfired when the state Supreme Court found the city legislation to be deficient on a technicality and reversed the earlier municipal legislation. By 1891, a Parks Board without powers existed—and that was it.
Abandoning the Parks Board, new legislation established a Commission under a new charter supported aggressively by the newly-formed Kansas City Municipal Improvement Association. The corporate muscle behind this sweeping charter reform was overwhelming, and caught up in its caboose was the Park Commission, complete with bond issuance powers. The corporate elite was duly appointed to the Parks Commission by the mayor. The president, August Robert Meyer, a wealthy, German-educated owner of the Kansas City Consolidated Smelting and Refining Company, took over the lead from Nelson. Utilizing support from the city’s powerful, Commercial Club, Meyer pushed the previously uncooperative elements into slow, grudging conformity in support of the parks and boulevard system. Joined by the young, German-born and educated landscape architect, George Edward Kessler. The Parks Commission secured a small, twenty-one acre, piece of land from the Real Estate Board and began to build a park and garden.
The twenty-one acre start was as much frustrating as gratifying; it was not the park and boulevard system found elsewhere. Olmsted after visiting the city in March 1893 urged, given the almost indifferent support behind the city’s parks movement, only one additional park—which was not well received by the locals. The shock of the Great White City also hit hard in October 1893. In a report submitted that month Kessler summarized Kansas City park adherents’ commitment to do more. “We are but just beginning to realize that by beautifying our city … we not only will do our duty to our citizens, but we shall create among our people warm attachment to the city, and promote civic pride, thereby supplementing and emphasizing our business advantages and increasing their power to draw business and population.”[3] Their plan was for three separate large parks connected by wide tree-lined boulevards. These would, it was believed, lead to new wonderful, respectful residential neighborhoods which would replace the shanties of white and black residential areas in their path. The parks and boulevard movement was drifting into slum removal suggestive of what was later to occur.
The 1893 Plan was picked up on by the Star; the mayor and Kansas City’s political machine, led by James Pendergast joined in the parade, as did the Commercial Club. The problem once again involved bond issuance. Kansas City was bumping against state debt limits; the choice was between the park system, or, a new, badly needed water pumping station. The solution was local legislation which created a new form of debt issuance, a certificate, which did not count against the debt ceiling. The victory was short-lived as like previous local legislation the state Supreme Court held it violated the city charter. So back to charter reform went the park movement advocates—and in 1895 they secured yet another charter reform which not only legitimized the certificates, but finally removed the now Department of Public Works (the old Real Estate Board) from its ability to oppose or slow down boulevard construction and eminent domain. A citizen improvement association was set up and the necessary popular referendum proved victorious. The support of the Pendergast machine provided votes the wealthy elites could not.
Finally in 1895, with a powerful structure, the Parks Commission endowed with the necessary powers was ready to go forward.. A spectacular land donation in 1896 of more than 1,300 acres was like manner from heaven. Boulevard construction started—and then the roof, shingle by shingle fell in. “For almost four years [to 1900] … opponents of the park organized a series of petitions, public meetings, delegations to the council and the park board, court fights, substitutes for Kessler’s Plan, and an attempt to remove Meyer from the Park Commission”. The issue was the expense, the cost to implement the plan. Parks, compared to other projects was superfluous, a whim of the city’s wealthy. Most of the opposition came from the larger business community—the city’s small business and real estate industry. A Taxpayer’s League formed. Eventually law suits to the state Supreme Court resulted. In a series of decisions, starting in 1899 and ending in 1908, the Court finally upheld the certificate issuance.
While effective opposition was over after 1900, the City Beautiful in Kansas City had badly split its business community. The system put in place during these years, including its crowning jewel, the Paseo, was visually impressive, and it elicited considerable local support once in place. Nevertheless, after this lengthy and hard-fought success, the Kansas City Parks Movement phase of the City Beautiful was fairly well over—a side show to a new phase of City Beautiful. The next phase, the Union Station moved in an entirely new direction, toward revitalization of the CBD and a construction of a civic center complex.
[1] William H. Wilson, The City Beautiful Movement (Baltimore, the Johns Hopkins Press, 1989), pp. 101-102. This case study is principally drawn from his chapter 5, “The Struggle for an Urban Park and Boulevard System in Kansas City”.
[2] William H. Wilson, The City Beautiful Movement, op. cit., pp. 102-103. An 1875 charter reform permitted Kansas City to exercise eminent domain. The only structural vehicle, however, authorized to use that power was the Real Estate Board, which concentrated on streets and roads and was populated by engineers less enamored with arts and beauty, and more mindful of expense.
[3] William H. Wilson, The City Beautiful Movement, op. cit., p. 109.
Ron W. Coan 