East Bottoms

Today, Guinotte Avenue is a rather unassuming stretch of road running through Kansas City’s predominantly industrial East Bottoms. One hundred seventy years ago, however, the thoroughfare was the embodiment of one man’s dream to make Kansas City a global city and a center of Belgian immigrant culture in North America. Its history intrigued a local reader who asked What’s Your KCQ?, a partnership between the Kansas City Public Library and The Kansas City Star, for insight. Joseph Guinotte, the namesake of Guinotte Avenue, was born in the French-speaking Belgian city of Liège in 1815. A well-respected engineer by the early 1840s, he was appointed by Belgium’s king, Leopold I, to oversee construction of a railroad from Mexico City to Veracruz — under a government agreement to send engineers to construct railways in Mexico with Belgian materials. Before departing, Guinotte proposed to his sweetheart, Aimée Brichaut, and left with her promise that she would join him once he had settled in North America.