Historic preservation
New Digital Collection Highlights KC’s Historic Preservation Efforts
Urban development in Kansas City took off at the end of World War II when the American Housing Act, part of President Truman’s Fair Deal, allowed for cities to demolish blighted areas to make way for new public housing. With the end of the war and the economic depression behind them, people gravitated toward modernization and many historic buildings and neighborhoods in Kansas City were lost to urban renewal.
Urban Demolition Leads to Preservation
Platted and developed during a citywide building boom at the turn of the 20th century, Kansas City’s Hyde Park neighborhood boasts not just one, not two or three, but four areas added to the National Register of Historic Places between 1980 and 2007.
KCHistory’s New Cache of Historical Photographs Underscores Work of City’s Landmarks Commission
For more than two decades, the Kansas City Landmarks Commission has donated hundreds of historical images to the Library’s Missouri Valley Special Collections – digital photographs and slides that contribute greatly to the MVSC’s efforts to document the city’s architectural history.
The Library proudly announces the addition of 262 newly digitized photographs showing a variety of historic structures and districts spanning the 1940s through the 1980s, a period of rapid change for the city.
New Slide Collection Captures Kansas City in Flux
Cities are always changing. Old buildings are demolished, new ones built, and some that remain get major facelifts to meet current trends — sometimes only to be restored to an earlier incarnation a few decades later. New roads are paved and old ones rerouted as new areas of the city are developed and historic ones refashioned. This was particularly true in Kansas City during the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s.