“It remade an ugly boomtown, giving it miles of graceful boulevards and parkways flanked by desirable residential sections, acres of ruggedly beautiful parkland, and neighborhood playgrounds in crowded districts.”

— William Wilson, The City Beautiful Movement in Kansas City

Today Kansas City ranks as one of the most creatively planned cities in the world. But that was not always the case. As a bustling river port, railroad junction, and muddy cow town whose population quadrupled between 1870 and 1890, Kansas City developed haphazardly. Visitors’ first view upon leaving the old train station in the West Bottoms was of a ragged, smelly hillside slum.

However, a transformation occurred, and much of the credit for it must go to civil engineer and landscape architect George Kessler, an urban planning pioneer, educated in Europe, who recognized how aesthetic urban design could influence a city’s commerce, culture, and social structure.

Kessler first came to the Kansas City area in 1881 when commissioned to design Merriam Park. His next project was an upscale residential development called Hyde Park. Adjacent to the property was a rugged, narrow, two-block-long hollow with steep slopes, limestone outcroppings, and thick tangle of undergrowth that investors feared would soon become home to the same cheap shacks that popped up seemingly overnight everywhere else in town.

Kessler took on the project in 1887, and demonstrated his ability to visualize, while just walking a site, which trees to cut down and which to leave, which slopes to smooth, and what the dramatic effect of jutting limestone outcropping would be when viewed from a perfectly placed road or path. The results in Hyde Park were so spectacular that, in 1892, August Meyer, president of the newly-establish Park Board, and his friend William Rockhill Nelson, threw their considerable support behind hiring Kessler as the board’s secretary.

At the time, Kansas City had few parks and no park planning. Meyer and Kessler assessed the situation and, in 1893, published their findings in the first Park Board report. Instead of seeing the steep hills, river bluffs, creek beds, and gorges of Kansas City as challenges, as earlier city developers had, Kessler saw them as aesthetic assets. In the paper, he described his vision of a system of boulevards that would curve gracefully as they followed easy grades to end in three large parks.

The plan eliminated blighted areas of the city, created natural divisions to residential, commercial, and industrial districts, reduced congestion, and placed recreational facilities within walking distance of neighborhoods. It included some of the first specifications for pavements, gutters, curbs, and walks, as well as other engineering advances like retaining walls, earth dams, subsurface drains, and reservoirs. And it considered patterns of commerce and traffic, establishing wide boulevards for carriages, which made the streets of Kansas City already prepared for the automobile when it soon came along.

Kessler’s first task was to tackle the unsightly West Bluff. There Kessler created West Terrace Park. In 1893, Independence Avenue was built to boulevard specifications. Two years later, Gladstone was completed. The next year, the Paseo flowed from 9th to 17th street. By 1900, Cliff Drive, North Terrace Park, Penn Valley Park, and Benton Boulevard were underway.

Kessler’s interconnected design based on the city’s natural features served as a model for other cities and continues to be a foundation for Kansas City’s growth today.

[ With appreciation to the Missouri Valley Special Collections of the Kansas City Public Library for photographs ]

Image Top Left:
Quality Hill, as it would have been seen by steam boat in the 1870s.

Image Left Middle:
The West Bluffs as would have been seen by visitors leaving the old train station in the West Bottoms in the 1890s.

Image Left Bottom:
Where once a hillside shantytown clung to the West Bluffs, the Kersey Coates Terrace was built in what would become West Terrace Park.

Image Middle Map:
This map shows the Kansas City Park and Boulevard System and extensions largely already in place by 1910.

Image Top Right:
George Kessler, the civic engineer and landscape architect most responsible for Kansas City’s transformation during the City Beautiful Movement.

Image Right #2:
Limestone outcroppings frame the five-mile long Cliff Drive in North Terrace Park (now George Kessler Park), unexpected beauty in the heart of an urban area.

Image Right #3:
Penn Valley Park is a signature piece of Kansas City’s much admired park and boulevard system.

Image Right Bottom:
Wide boulevards like Armour, designed for comfortable carriage rides, required no adaptation when automobiles came along.