Kansas City Architecture Series

Henry F Hoit designed many of Kansas City’s most iconic commercial and residential buildings, including the Kansas City Power & Light Building, the Kansas City Athletic Club, and the Bell Telephone Building. His relationship with R.A. Long resulted in the design of Corinthian Hall, Longview Farm, and the R.A. Long...

Elmer Boillot and Jesse Lauck designed houses in the Coleman Highlands, Sunset Hills and Country Club District neighborhoods, including The Walnuts. They were also responsible for the Phillips Hotel and parts of Unity Village. Local historian and author Tom Taylor examines the partnership of this archi...

Author, photographer, and local historian Bruce Mathews discusses Charles A. Smith’s work in the first installment of the Library’s 2016 Kansas City Architecture Series. Charles A. Smith left an indelible imprint on our city, planning more than 50 schools as architect for...

Mike Yeates and Andrew Mackey explain how they took an all-but-forgotten home and made it the office site of their business, The Real Estate Store. The home (9550 NE Cookingham Dr) is possibly the oldest in the Kansas City area and a rare early example of Gothic Revival architecture in the Midwest.

Jon Knight, who oversees design senior principal at Populous, describes the changes being made to the Board of Trade Building (4800 Main St.). The 49-year-old building will soon be the new home of Populous, the Kansas City-based architecture firm specializing in sports stadiums and arena design, as...

PGAV Architects’ Mike Schaadt and Kimberlee Ried of the National Archives at Kansas City explain how the Federal Historic Tax Credit and adaptive reuse technology allowed the Adams Express Building, previously a freight storage structure, to be converted into an archival facility us...

Local author, educator, and historian William Worley discusses the New York Life Insurance Building (20 W. 9th St.). Regarded as Kansas City’s first skyscraper and its first building equipped with elevators, today it serves as the Catholic Center for the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph....

A former employee of Frank Lloyd Wright, Clarence E. Shepard specialized in residential architecture and was an artist and landscape engineer. He designed more than 600 houses in Kansas City, favoring the Prairie School style. Among his work: the Judge Louis R. Gates House in Kansas City, Kansas, which has be...

Chicago architect George Washington Maher was a giant of the Prairie School movement, whose buildings are treasured by communities lucky enough to have them. How did Kansas City forget that at the turn of the last century, Maher designed a significant home — possibly the city’s first Prairie School structure &...

Steve McDowell and Rick Schladweiler of the architectural firm BNIM and Kansas City Ballet Executive Director Jeffrey Bentley explore how the century-old Union Station Power House Building was transformed into the award-winning Todd Bolender Center for Dance and Cre...