Kansas City's Parks and Boulevards

By Patrick Alley and Dona Boley

A fast-growing frontier community transformed itself into a beautiful urban model of parks and boulevards. In 1893, East Coast newspapers were calling Kansas City “the filthiest in the United States.” The drainage of many houses emptied into gullies and cesspools. There was no garbage collection service, and herding livestock through the city was only recently prohibited. Through the diligent efforts of a handful of recently arrived citizens, political, financial, and botanical skills were successfully applied to a nascent parks system. “Squirrel pastures,” cliffs and bluffs, ugly ravines, and shanties and slums were turned into a gridiron of green, with chains of parks and boulevards extending in all directions. Wherever the system penetrated well-settled localities, the policy was to provide playgrounds, tennis courts, baseball diamonds, pools, and field houses. By the time the city fathers were finished, Kansas City could boast of 90 miles of boulevards and 2,500 acres of urban parks.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Oct 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781439648001

Patrick Alley

Patrick Alley is an investment advisor and historian for his local historic neighborhood association. Dona Boley is an advocate for the historical Kansas City, Missouri, Parks and Boulevard System. Alley and Boley also coauthored Images of America: Kansas City’s Historic Hyde Park.

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Missouri

INTRODUCTION

Almost 25,000 people lived in Kansas City, Missouri, when the first railroad bridge crossed the Missouri River in 1869. Most streets were unimproved, city finances were in shambles due to extensive fraud, large public improvement bond issues had not passed, and there was no water system. But there was a vision of what Kansas City could become. A vision shaped over the next 40 years making this rustic town a vibrant, healthy, well-planned community. An extensive parks and boulevard system was an important part of that vision. The combined efforts of a charismatic newspaper editor, a prominent businessman, a shrewd attorney, a skillful landscape architect, and a powerful political boss were all needed before the vision became reality. By 1880, Kansas City’s population had doubled to 55,000, and it would double again to 119,668 by 1890. New arrivals and established residents recognized the need for planning and beautification.

The effort began in 1872 when J.W. Cook offered land at $2,000 an acre to the city for a 40-acre park. The offer was turned down. Cook was back in the summer of 1877. The council again failed to act on his proposal, but they did grade the old graveyard at the southeast corner of the original town for a public park. This became the city’s first park in 1880. The old graveyard park led the press to complain that a larger plot of ground was necessary, and the newspapers began an editorial campaign for city parks.

Park advocates wanted a park board with the legal powers necessary to condemn and control the required land, to be free from political interference yet subject to political checks, and with its own independent source of revenue. To accomplish this, the advocates needed either the state legislature to grant powers to a park board, or to convince the people of Kansas City to incorporate these powers into the city charter. It would take eight years of legislation and twelve years of litigation before the legal framework was in place that allowed the successful implementation of the parks and boulevard system.

The charter of 1875 allowed the city to condemn land for parks but required the city to pay in full before it could take possession and required the city to get state permission to issue bonds for any improvements. In 1889, the voters did approve a new charter creating a park board, but one powerless to issue bonds. Meanwhile, the state passed legislation that created a parks board with powers to create a park district within Jackson County. This law became effective in November 1889. But the newly appointed park board ceased in January 1891, when the Missouri State Supreme Court declared the law unconstitutional.

This motivated a newly formed Municipal Improvement Association to launch a campaign to amend the park provision of the 1889 charter. The citizens approved, and in 1892, Mayor Ben Holmes appointed a new board with the power to issue city bonds. August Robert Meyer, president of the Municipal Improvement Association, became the first president of the new parks board. Meyer, a multimillionaire businessman, arrived in Kansas City in 1882 and became an early advocate for beautification. With extensive travel in the United States and Europe, he gathered ideas for park development. He knew that a good deal of our work will have to be education. The parks board’s great early achievement was the 1893 Report of the Board of Park and Boulevard Commissioners. The report was a collaborative effort of Meyer and landscape architect George E. Kessler. It was a detailed and comprehensive look at Kansas City’s topography and traffic patterns, population density and growth, its industrial and residential sections, and its prospects for future development. It was, in a word, urban planning. It contained three sections: a letter of transmittal to the mayor, a detailed report from the board, and a technical report. Meyer wrote the main body of the report and Kessler wrote the technical section. The 1893 Report has provided the urban design framework for Kansas City.

Although the report looked well on paper and was highly commended by the press, the power to go ahead with practical work was still lacking. Kansas City could not issue any more bonds. The city’s debt-making power under the state constitution was exhausted. The only way to acquire parks and boulevards was through special assessment or taxation against benefited property. An 1893 state law empowered the board to form park districts and issue certificate bonds on the park system. It was practically an amendment of the charter. No one knew if it would stand up in court. When the act passed, the park board brought a friendly suit to the Missouri State Supreme Court as a test of the board’s power to condemn land for park purposes. The court found the act unconstitutional and voided the law.

What appeared to be a knockout punch for park advocates actually cleared the way to provide the legal foundation for today’s park system. Delbert J. Haff, a Kansas City attorney, was hired to draft new amendments to the charter. The amendments granted the park board power to sell tax certificates to pay for confiscated property, provided for a condemnation jury to set values, set the board’s membership at five, provided for the board’s control over all parks and boulevards, continued the three park districts, and required a minimum of one park in each district. These amendments, known all over the country as the Kansas City park law, were on the ballot of a special election in 1895.

Leaving nothing to chance, supporters formed a citizen’s association for the charter amendments to develop campaign literature and hold public information meetings. Summaries and editorials appeared in the daily press. William Rockhill Nelson arrived in Kansas City and started the Star in 1880. Nelson was an early and strong advocate for parks and boulevards. His paper became the public face for establishment of a parks and boulevard system in Kansas City. The Star’s most effective technique was a combination of repetition, adulation, and humor. James Pendergast, alderman and political boss, was solicited to be an advocate for his ward. Pendergast was a proponent of public improvements. More boulevards, parks, and public buildings meant more jobs for his followers and more prestige for himself.