Kansas City
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 were 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, the development of the nation’s allegedly first shopping plaza built to accommodate the car (Country Club Plaza) and the rejection of a civic center moved in an entirely different direction. Why?
Businessmen and Machines
The story of nineteenth century Kansas City’s Parks and Boulevard/City Beautiful initiatives revealed a municipal policy system so immature that it appeared to be under the influence of no discernible or sustainable coalition. This semi-chaotic policy process fits with the image of a near-anarchistic policy system developed in Chapter 3. The wealthy business elites and their civic associations and chambers kept the City Beautiful initiative alive through numerous charter reforms and legislative/referendum approvals, and navigated it through the barriers created by an independent Public Works Commission to the eventual formation of its own independent Parks Commission. Eminent domain and bond issuance proved to be the sine qua non of successful implementation of the Kansas City version of City Beautiful.
By the turn of the century, however, with the Progressive Movement on the rise, new forces had entered the policy scene. In particular, the political machine was playing a larger role in the policy process—a role not entirely congruent with the conventional image of machine politics. No social reform mayor appeared on the stage; instead what showed up were several ward bosses who liked each other less than their business opponents disliked them. Divide and conquer and shifting coalitions of businessmen and ward bosses lasted for nearly two decades. Economic development initiatives were left to private actors who could navigate successfully through the fractured process. Eventually, in the middle 1920’s structural reform reared its head—only to be captured by a resurgent ward boss who had finally forged a county-wide political machine.
James Pendergast, an Ohio-born Irish hotel owner-saloon-keeper had by the middle to late 1880’s became the First Ward’s Democratic Party boss. By 1892 he was elected to the City Council—remaining there until he retired in 1910. Pendergast shared power in the Council with a number of other ward bosses and the occasional businessman. By 1902, he controlled about half of the City’s Democratic vote, but over that decade he had his ups and downs—still Pendergast by the turn of the century was the single most powerful ward boss who exercised disproportionate power within the city and county Democratic Party. He was not, however the Boss. Patronage was the source of his power. He controlled hundreds of jobs on the police force, some private breweries, and the near-monopolistic Metropolitan Street Railway Company. His younger brother, Tom, was installed as Superintendent of Streets. Still, shifts in control of state government and the intense opposition of other ward bosses, notably Joseph Shannon seriously limited his influence over policy. In these years, James Pendergast was described as “the undisputed boss of Kansas City’s First Ward, the most important political leader of its north side, and always a power to be reckoned with in any important local decision”.[4]
Pendergast’s First War, “hell’s half acre”, whose residents were described by the Kansas City Star as “the human derelicts of the North end, the bums, the hoboes, and the vagrants” and “and lacking in schools and churches, but well-provided with saloons and brothels”[5] were unlikely to be supportive of the Parks and Boulevard version of the City Beautiful. Yet their votes were absolutely necessary for city council approvals, victorious bond referenda, and periodic charter reforms that were essential to the success of that early economic development strategy. And James Pendergast provided them at crucial points along the way. The wealthy one per cent Businessmen operated through their civic associations, charter reform associations, the chamber, and the Kansas City Evening Star owned by William Nelson, an intense Progressive who regularly sent reporters to cover Cleveland’s social reform mayor Tom Johnson and his illustrious goings on. Nelson’s favored initiatives reflected his view of how a city, the size of Kansas City should develop.
Nelson argued that Kansas City had reached a stage of development which demanded certain changes of emphasis in the making of community decisions. Economic growth, while its value was never denied, was, according to Nelson, no longer an adequate goal for a city which had after all achieved it. There were other ‘requirements for a great city’, for ‘every city aspiring to the size and characteristics of a metropolis. … Now comes the second act of the play … Now comes the era of permanency—the manhood as compared to the youth of the city’. … The new stage of growth brought with it the need for control; street-cleaning, building inspection, parks and boulevards, improved sanitation, and limitation of utility franchises.[6]
Nelson’s frequent ally for this agenda was James Pendergast. He supported honest garbage-collection system, the parks and boulevard initiatives, bond issues for infrastructure, funds for a municipal water plant—“Whenever it was felt that public credit could be used for expansion and modernization, its leading boss and its leading Progressive reformer were on the same side”. Pendergast’s support even extended to Progressive electoral initiatives such as the direct primary and for honest voting at the ballot box. Why? Pendergast did not depend on ballot box stuffing. His influence with First Ward voters was so strong, his actual power was exercised by “turnout”—he could just ask them to stay home and not vote. When they voted they voted with such high turnout they could swing elections. He delivered critical referendum vote majorities as high as 25-1.
What is my point in all this? While some political scientists talk about social reform mayors being “populist”, my reality is such mayors were able to attract lower and working class votes. The Pendergast ward machine represented lower and working class Kansas City—and it sucked the political life from any potential social reform mayor. Effective ward bosses and social reform mayors could not coexist in the same city! Secondly, Progressive reformers and ward bosses could work together in furtherance of a common agenda—or not, of course. They were not necessarily zero-sum policy actors. But they weren’t always friends either.
They differed radically regarding public franchises. In 1908 the bosses got together to kill the Progressive favorite the Public Utilities Commission and Pendergast held off Nelson’s attacks on his patronage-filled Street Railway franchise—in fact voting in 1909 to extend its franchise for forty-two years. Yet Pendergast and Nelson closed ranks to support municipal ownership of the water company and earlier in 1895, and again in 1906 he supported municipal takeover of the gas company. In 1909 Pendergast supported the relocation of the Kansas City Union (railroad) Terminal—from his First War—to a location four miles away. The greatest and most consistent gulf between reformer and ward machine was in social legislation—in particular, gambling, prostitution and later prohibition. In fact, control of the police was important to machines not just because of jobs, but importantly because it permitted loose regulation of these activities. Pendergast consistently opposed state takeover of the municipal police function, defeating a charter amendment to do so—he also, unsurprisingly joined forces with other ward bosses to stop civil service in its tracts.
Despite differences, then, machines and business could come together. Nothing better demonstrates this than an economic development-related event in 1900. Advocated as early as 1884 by Nelson and his Star as a ‘requirement for an aspiring metropolis’ was to construct a convention center. He continued his lobbying for more than a decade, until with Pendergast support, one was authorized. Finally funded, and its design chosen on the basis of an architectural competition, the Convention Hall, accommodating 20,000 visitors, opened for business in February 1899. . Within weeks, it signed the Democratic Party to hold its 1900 national convention. Then, in April 1900, three months before the Democratic Convention, the Center burned down—completely destroyed.
Within hours of the fire, the convention center commission telegraphed the Democratic Party informing them that nothing had changed. The Center would be rebuilt and ready to hold the Convention on time, and on budget. The Commercial Club, the corporate franchises, the largest firms in the city raised the private funds, hired a new architect to design the facility, and lent their engineers and workers (a hundred and fifty men cleared the site). Unions put aside their bitter resistance to private ownership and joined in the effort. One union leader commented: “The rich man wants to make Kansas City a good place to live in, but the poor man must. A man who has capital can go somewhere else … but we can’t afford to move to satisfy our tastes. Convention Hall has been, and is, a bigger thing to the poor man than to the man who has plenty of money”[7]). In ninety days the Hall was rebuilt and opened for the Democratic Convention that nominated William Jennings Bryan for President.
Kansas City and the City Efficient
Kansas City had lived with its 1889 charter (the one that authorized the Parks Commission) for nineteen years—not because it wanted to, but because it took that long to get another one. Already by 1901 a laundry list of changes and reforms, including civil service, prompted the formation of the Kansas City Civic League. Affiliated with the National Municipal League, it attracted over 700 members, mostly business and professionals. In 1904, Republican Mayor Neff created a Commission to draft a charter. He filled it with the leaders of the Commercial Club, Real Estate Board, Bar Association, the newspapers, and other key business leaders. The draft proposal that emerged provided for a stronger mayor, with veto, civil service, and seven boards/commissions appointed by the mayor to administer municipal affairs. The proposal split the business community—and an opposition business group, the Citizen’s Committee formed. Needless to say, the machine was sympathetic to the latter[8].
The resistance to charter reform was, always a concern with taxes, but most feared the loss of checks and balances that the existing, more Jeffersonian, policy system contained. A strong mayor was disconcerting—and the charter reform ignored a vital proposal to require franchises to be approved by voter referendum. In the charter referendum that followed (1906), the voters soundly turned it down—surprise. Turnout was spectacularly low, and the solid machine-dominated wards provided the votes for its defeat. So in 1907, another Republican Mayor set up a new commission, added some boards and commissions to the list, subtracted some controversial ones, and added a limited referendum for franchise approval, and in a separate ballot, a recall amendment. Most important, it included sections to build a key street car viaduct from the machine-controlled north end to the central business district and the industrial areas of the city. Workers could get to work and shop cheaper and faster, and a proposed brand new massive City Beautiful-style railroad terminal could go forward. In the 1908 referendum that followed, Pendergast sat on his hands, and his rival war boss, Shannon supported both the charter reform and recall. The former passed nearly 3-1 and the recall lost. Included in the approved 1908 charter reform was the creation of the first public welfare commission in the United States.
The 1908 charter, compromise that it was, quickly became old fashioned and quite inadequate to Progressive reformers, such as Nelson and the Chamber of Commerce elites. New forms of government, first the commission form, and then the city manager seemed to be what Kansas City needed. The older Civic League was replaced by a Nonpartisan Commission Government League and in 1914 it ran a slate for election as mayor and city council (with Republican Party endorsement). Its platform was to establish a commission form of government. Again, the business community fractured and the machine Democrats beat them soundly and took over city government.
By the time the 1916 election rolled into place, however, several significant changes in Kansas City politics and occurred. First, James Pendergast retired and then died. James was able to pass on his machine to his younger brother Thomas. Thomas and Shannon, the rival ward boss commenced an intense fight (both tried to create a city-wide machine, it appears). The leader of the Progressives, William Nelson died. The incumbent mayor was Shannon controlled and the fight between the ward bosses ensured a return of the Republicans to the control of the mayor and council. The Republican mayor (George Edwards) was determined more than ever to change Kansas City’s form of government. He set up yet a new group to draft a charter reform for a commission government. It fractured almost immediately as several of its members advocated a city manager form instead. The commission advocates eventually resigned en masse. The National Municipal League, now pushing the city manager plan, flooded Kansas City with speakers and resources. All the key business groups lined up in support (as did the local Socialist Party)—a local organization, the Model Charter and Good Government League was set up to coordinate the public appeal and ensure victory in referendum and state legislature.
Despite all this support, all heck broke loose. In retrospect, it seemed that change was too much and too fast—and nearly every grouping in the city split in half, including the rank and file business community. The small council seemed to many as being too powerful—and many feared the bosses would take it over more easily—the bosses feared the opposite. The Republican mayor who wanted the commission form opposed it also. The newspapers split. The charter reform lost in a fifty/fifty vote. In the months that followed, nearly every group formulated its own version of a proposed charter—none was able to secure consensus. The Republicans and the business community divided into bitterly opposed factions and the machine ward bosses each tried to crush the other. As one Pendergast official observed “Every sixty days, the nuts in this town want a new charter”. And so began what turned out to be a seven year struggle to pass City Efficient charter reforms.
The bitterness might have lasted for a very long time, except that the population continued to increase dramatically in these years to 324,000 by 1920. Access to clean water became a first order crisis as the existing water distribution system neither pumped or distributed enough to meet demand. The water crisis, with its embedded need to both fund and install new infrastructure on a massive scale, triggered its own need for charter reform. In the political anarchy which consumed the city, a new political/economic leadership began to form and attempted to figure out how to bridge the gaps. That leadership gathered around Henry M. Beardsley, a lawyer and the first president of the defunct Civic League, a former Republican city council member as well. But if Beardsley was to take leadership, he needed an organization’s resources to do so. That organization was the Kansas City Chamber of Commerce.
In 1917, in the midst of this anarchy, the chamber, led by its secretary, John Guild, created a “civic department”. Guild had just been hired away from Dayton, Ohio which had just recently approved and installed a city manger—in fact, at the time, the city manager plan was known as the “Dayton Plan”. Guild brought in another Dayton chamber official, Walter Matscheck, to head up the civic department. The department was to function as a clearinghouse for information about community affairs, improvement of government services (a sort of activist municipal research league). The first step was to focus on amending the state constitution to permit Kansas City to implement its charter reforms. In early 1919 the Chamber launched a campaign to secure such a home rule amendment. Enter Henry Beardsley who assumed the job as Chair of this campaign. The eventual state home rule amendment lost (1918) in the required state-wide referendum—rural voters sent it down the river. A second, two years later, was approved—with the machine’s support and the personal financial participation of Thomas Pendergast.
Even though the state approved home rule allowed Kansas City more than enough latitude for its charter reform, and also provided a fair and reasonable process for its subsequent local and state approvals, the Chamber could not get its hands around the variety of groups and factions that developed their own versions of charter reform. All sorts of proposals floated through the city processes over the next several years; a variety of organizations were formed, campaigns launched—even the newly-formed International City Managers Association got involved. A weakly drafted amendment was placed on the ballot, but it failed to call for a city manager and actually diluted the existing civil service powers of the City. Even the Chamber opposed it—and it failed (1922). The problem, however, was the referendum’s defeat brought down the authorization to issue $11 million in water infrastructure funds. At this point, the water crisis again flared up and took center stage.
Forty organizations eventually got together to set up the “Citizen’s Water and Charter Committee”. Eventually over two hundred community organizations and groups joined with it. This time the public campaign to secure the necessary approvals actually was well-led and organized and in February 1924, the charter reform was approved, Pendergast in support, Shannon against, and intense turnout from the middle and upper class wards. The Charter itself had been written by the Chamber’s Matscheck. It contained the standard scientific management, city efficient structures: unicameral legislature, department heads responsible to the city manager, civil service, budgetary and fiscal powers, nonpartisan ballot, a hybrid (four at large, four wards) elections, and reasonably strong mayoral powers.
After nearly a quarter century, Kansas City had finally approved a city efficient form of government. It remains today one of the few Big Cities with a city manager form of government.
Wrap Up and Segue Way
We have come a long way since the beginning of this chapter. The world no longer looks ancient and we can begin to see images of our contemporary economic development world coming into place. The Progressive Era clearly was a formative period, critical to understanding the evolution of our profession. The Practitioner World is certainly in place with chamber-style economic development dominant in virtually every city of any size; the new-style, empowered, quasi-public port authority is coming on line, and a reasonably modern governmental capacity-building has been introduced to most jurisdictions across the nation. Many jurisdictions coming out of the Progressive Era have the ability to develop a political policy process sufficient to support serious policy-making/implementation in a variety of policy areas, including economic development. And the Policy World is also in place—playing a meaningful role in federal, state and sub-state economic development policy. Professions and professional associations on state and national levels have formed, universities and academic disciplines are being established and knowledgeable and impactful scholars are providing policy leadership and research. The media, principally in the form of “monthlies” such as the Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s Weekly convey policy issues to key managerial and opinion elites Professionally, the Progressive Era could be considered as our birth as a profession—even through the term “economic development” is far from common, if used at all.
While there is incremental growth in our profession during these years, the shock of a massive burst of “innovation” in a very short time span is also evident. Consider a sample of the professional goings-on in the 1909-1912 time span: the Chicago Plan, the city manager form of government in Dayton, Forest Hills, Perry’s book launching the community center movement, the City Beautiful, the establishment of the New York City Municipal Research Bureau, the incorporation of the American Institute of Planners, the National Housing Association, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the publication of Howe’s approach to community development, the first approval of nonpartisan elections, the Civic Center CBD (Cleveland Group Plan), and the spread of empowered port authorities. Each of these would have lasting impact on our profession. All within three years!
Perhaps the most important take away for understanding our future profession is hidden in plain sight during the Progressive Era. Economic development did not spring from any one source. Economic development did not blossom from a single root or from a lonely seed—but instead from a variety, a wide variety to dynamic movements which were mostly reactions to the rise of the industrial city and population movement, especially immigration. So we had chamber way, the rise of community development, city efficient, managerial Privatism and scientific management, social reform mayors, poly-nuclear Planned Communities, central city-focused community development, and physical development comprehensive planning. Hang on, there is more to come. Imagine, if the reader would, a world without an industrial city or immigration! How would contemporary economic development arise in such a fantasy world?
[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.
[4] A. Theodore Brown and Lyle W. Dorsett, K.C.—A History of Kansas City Missouri, Boulder Colorado, Pruett Publishing Company, 1978), pp. 108-114. Quote taken from p. 110.
[5] A. Theodore Brown and Lyle W. Dorsett, K.C.—A History of Kansas City Missouri, p. 114.
[6] A. Theodore Brown and Lyle W. Dorsett, K.C.—A History of Kansas City Missouri, pp. 115-116.
[7] A. Theodore Brown and Lyle W. Dorsett, K.C.—A History of Kansas City Missouri, pp. 128.
[8] Solidifying machine opposition was restrictions on gambling and saloons, as well as setting up an independent police commission
Ron W. Coan 