11th and Grand Avenue, Looking North

An old post card 11th and Grand Avenue looking north, Kansas City, Mo. pictures Kansas City's widest street at the time, about 1912. Horse-and-buggy, automobile and street car traffic fill the scene near the east arcade entrance to the Emery-Bird-Thayer Store. The biggest retail dry goods store in the state of Missouri is the way Emery, Bird, Thayer was described in a brochure of Kansas City in 1902, printed by the Union Bank Note Company, lithographers. The brochure stated: The illustration portrays the magnitude of this wonderful store. The structure is interesting and beautiful to see. It is built of pressed brick, iron, terra cotta, copper and Lake Superior brown stone, the interior furnishings being of hardwood. Around the outside of the building and on three sides is an arcade 450 feet in length furnishing an attractive place for viewing new and interesting lines of merchandise continually on display. The building has seven floors which if spread out would aggregate 214,000 square feet.The store, extending from Walnut to Grand on 11th, was successor to the old Bullene, Moore, Emery & Co. which began operations in Kansas City in the 1860s. Architects Van Brunt and Howe designed the building. When Milt McGee, early-day mayor and city planner, platted his farm as McGee's Addition in 1855 and made Grand Avenue the central feature, his friends told him the street was too wide. None too wide to turn a two-horse wagon, he replied. Kansas City Times, April 14, 1978.