USA > Missouri > Centennial history of Missouri (the center state) one hundred years in the Union, 1820-1921, Volume I > Part 101
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THE MAKING OF A CITY
squirrel pasture." And yet this Cliff Drive in the opinion of many visitors to the city is the crowning feature of the system and is unsurpassed anywhere else in the United States.
Several miles of perfect roadway have been built along the face of this bluff at the timber line. The limestone cliff rises sheer on one side, the waving tree- tops on the other. The park board acquired this bold front of Kansas City, buying a narrow strip between the top and the bottom of the bluff, a distance of two miles and more, for $625.000. This now is North Terrace Park.
The Method of Assessment.
Within each park district the board by resolution selected the lands and the connecting boulevards. Recommendations were made to the council. Or- dinances were prepared. Proceedings in the circuit court condemned the lands. Values were fixed by juries and the same juries assessed the benefits in specific amounts against the land in the park district. These assessments were against land only. To make the assessments as easily borne as possible it was provided that they might be paid in annual installments. Usually the period was twenty years. This enabled the property owner to realize the benefits as he was paying for them. Those who desired to pay promptly and relieve their property of the park lien could do so within sixty days after the verdicts of juries were ren- dered to court. As the lands condemned could not be taken until paid for. the balance necessary after sixty days had passed was obtained through the issue and sale of park fund certificates. These certificates represented the assess- ments unpaid and due through a series of years. They had back of them these collective assessments. The city treasurer was trustee for the collection of the assessments and the redemption of the certificates. Courts, as already stated, decided in test cases that the park fund certificates were not obligations of the municipality and did not conflict with the city's debt-making power. By this novel method the park board was able to raise large sums and to build the park and boulevard system of Kansas City. Within each district an assessment for maintenance and improvement is made against the lands only of that district. The original cost of a boulevard, however, except the tree planting, is charged directly against the ground fronting on that boulevard. This is the exception to the statement that the assessment for improvement and maintenance is against the whole district.
The Playground Policy.
Wherever the system has penetrated well settled localities, the policy has been to provide playgrounds for children, tennis courts and baseball diamonds for older youth. Every part of the city has its playgrounds. The park board early adopted the recommendation to acquire the ground and to establish a recreation field in the East Bottoms, where many railroad shopmen and em- ployes in other industries live.
There are playgrounds in West Terrace Park. The Paseo has its play- grounds. Where that chain of small parks widens into the twenty-one acres of the Parade is an athletic field, a sunken portion of which becomes an outdoor skating rink in winter. There, also, is the free bathhouse, the gift of the Mega-
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CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF MISSOURI
phone Minstrels. This was the circus lot in the old days. It affords the ball ground and other means of recreation for a large neighborhood. No Kansas City boy finds it necessary to board a street car and ride miles in search of a baseball field.
Two of the small parks changed completely the character of the surrounding residence sections. The twenty-seven acres of Spring Valley, before becoming public property under control of the park board, bore the suggestive name of "Razor Park." One of the economies of the board transformed an abandoned quarry into an ideal playground for children with admirable location for gym- nasium apparatus. A driveway winds through this park. The wooded slopes rise on either side to an encircling fringe of fine homes. The spring which gave the name to the park feeds a pretty lake.
Holmes Square is less than three acres in extent, but it has its free bath, its gymnastic apparatus, its sand court, its bubble fountain, its shelter. The devel- opment of this playground in the midst of a tenement neighborhood has changed the children from little vandals into self-appointed guardians of the place.
A recreation center, in the Kansas City 'definition, means more than an open space. It includes see-saws, swings, ladders and a variety of apparatus, baths and comfort stations, in addition to the baseball and tennis grounds. There are no signs, "Keep off the grass." Every lawn space on every park in the Kansas City system is in use without restriction.
To the widest possible extent the parks and boulevards have been planned to afford proper recreation and entertainment. But the policy to exclude catch- penny shows has been rigorously upheld, although through many a sharp contest and with the refusal of temporary revenue.
One of the "eccentricities of topography" favored the creation of a lake covering several acres by an inexpensive dam. The lake was stocked with fish and the proper season finds fishing added to park recreation in the midst of Kansas City.
Some of the Practical Details.
When the original plan was submitted the landscape architect advised that "all structures for operating purposes and for convenience and comfort of the public, which are artificial and more or less out of keeping with natural scenery, should never be permitted to become conspicuous in either design or color." This policy has been carefully observed. The barns, comfort stations and sim- ilar structures are so located and so screened as not to offend the eye. The use of the limestone in rough state for many structures and the location of them near the limestone cliffs have been in the line of observance of such policy.
A standard for boulevard construction was adopted in 1893. Results have . demonstrated fully the wisdom of that original plan. The landscape architect recommended and the first board of park commissioners, or as it was called then, the board of park and boulevard commissioners, agreed to this standard : "The width of the boulevards will be 100 feet and at no time should any less width be considered, since with less width it would be impossible to secure the effect of a parkway and at the same time give sufficient width of roadway. This space should be divided as follows on all routes not occupied by street railways:
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WEST BLUFF, OVERLOOKING OLD UNION STATION, BEFORE THE RENAISSANCE OF KANSAS CITY
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THE SAME WEST BLUFF AS IT IS TO-DAY
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THE MAKING OF A CITY
A central roadway forty feet wide, and parking thirty feet on each side; the park space will be arranged with a curb and gutter combined; next to this, turf sev- enteen feet wide; then eight of walk, and between this and the property line five feet of turf. On this space three lines of trees almost equally spaced will be planted."
This standard width of roadway and definite spaces for parking and number of trees were planned with a view to provide for the expected growth of Kansas City. The roadway was made forty feet wide because that was sufficient for all traffic purposes when the standard was adopted. The expectation of the board and of the landscape architect was that forty feet would accommodate all traffic on these boulevards for at least twenty years. Neither the board nor the land- scape architect, in 1893, could foresee the drift of city expansion. There is a present condition which could not have been taken into consideration at the time the boulevard system was designed. That condition is the rapidly develop- ing use of automobiles for pleasure riding. It is evident to all now that fifteen years instead of twenty is the limit for the forty feet of roadway on some parts of the boulevard system. The roadways will have to be widened.
The seventeen feet of grass between the curb and the sidewalk was left in order that, as traffic necessitated, a strip could be taken from either side and added to the roadway. This can be done as the traffic increases to the point of congestion of the present forty feet. The three rows of trees were provided in order that the outer or the row next the curb could be removed without spoil- ing the boulevard plan as the roadway might be increased in width.
In the planning of the Kansas City system full consideration was given to the needs of business traffic. In parks upon the line of natural thoroughfares there have been built two roadways: one as direct as the easiest grades will per- mit for the use of business vehicles, the other curving and winding to afford the maximum of landscape effect for pleasure riding. In places the park and the traffic roadway are side by side separated by a row of trees and strip of sod. The result of such planning is that traffic is facilitated by better roads and easier grades than existed before the park and boulevard system. At intervals on the traffic roadways in parks are placed watering troughs for teams.
One of the most successful economies has been the double use made of trees. As the boulevards were constructed three rows were planted on either side with twice as many trees as would be necessary after growth. As new parks and boulevards were opened, intermediate trees from six to eight inches in diameter on the old boulevards were taken up and transplanted. This has been done with very little loss. In a single season portions of the old barren circus lot, now known as the Parade, were given the attractiveness of a well shaded park. New boulevards, through this transplanting of large trees, at once vie in beauty with the older drives. Thousands of fine trees have done double duty. Thou- sands more are growing and will be utilized for extensions of the systeni.
Permanent Influences.
The earliest actual boulevard construction had far reaching influences upon the expansion of Kansas City. The first boulevard, as laid out on paper by the landscape architect, was intended to extend from west to east, in what was com-
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CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF MISSOURI
monly called the North Side. The trend of city growth and the extension of the residence district was in that direction at the time. The draft of an ordinance to carry out the plan of this west to east boulevard was introduced in the city council. It was defeated. Thereupon the landscape architect turned his atten- tion to north and south lines of the proposed system. Ordinances providing for boulevards and park connections between the north and south sides received favorable consideration and were passed by the city council. The construction gave quick and strong impetus to the growth of the city on the south side. That trend has not been checked. The greatest activity in boulevard extension and in park expansion is now to the southwestward, the southward and the southeastward.
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Centers of congested population, growing more aggravated yearly, were abolished to make room for parks and boulevards. It is a notable fact that other centers of the same character did not take the places of those thus removed. The marked influence of the park and boulevard movement has been to scatter population until today Kansas City is built over a greater area than almost any other city of 'similar size. Next to residences on the boulevard or with park frontage, the Kansas City family endeavors to live as near as possible to some part of the system. The result is this wide distribution of all classes: To a large extent the problem of congestion has been eliminated for Kansas City. There is no present indication that the next generation will have to deal with that problem.
The standard of residential architecture has been raised. Kansas City homes today average above those of any other city in the same class of population. There is no doubt the creation of these many miles of boulevards has prompted the owners of property to exercise more taste in planning and to spend more money in building that they would have done on ordinary residence streets. Both the architecture and the surroundings have felt the influence of the parks and boulevards.
Kansas City today is a city with more taste and beauty in its homes and their surroundings than any other community of corresponding number of people in the world. It has no slums. The unit of real estate is 50 feet front, which means elbow room. Every street outside of the business section is tree bordered. Every dooryard is a well-kept lawn. The houses, as a rule, stand on terraces from three to half a dozen feet above the street. The spacious veranda is another rule. Creeping vines, rose bushes, pots of flowers are everywhere. The side street house that cost $1,000 is as smart in fresh paint as the boulevard mansion which cost $100,000. And this wonderful transformation in a city's homes, small and great, is the uplifting effect of the parks and boulevards.
So well has the park district plan worked that Kansas City has extended it rapidly. The city was divided into three park districts when the original park and boulevard system was designed. Later the city was divided into eight park districts. Each district bears its own park expenditures, or the larger part of them. Each district is anxious to develop and improve its own share of the system. Each has its own park and boulevard problems. The district divisions are natural ones, suggested by the topography and by the character of settlement. The municipal government has found it advisable to adopt these district divisions
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THE MAKING OF A CITY
of the city for other public utilities. Instead of following ward boundaries the city carries on several kinds of public work by park districts.
Real estate men discovered years ago that frontage on boulevards easily doubles the market price of lots on streets two or more blocks distant. Kansas City today is acquiring many miles of boulevards which cost the park board nothing for original dedication and construction. Future extension of the boule- vard system is assured by this profitable experience of the past. To obtain the first boulevards it was necessary to condemn strips of ground and to construct roadway, parking and walks, assessing the cost against property. Today, as additions are made to the city, owners plat the ground to include boulevards, dedicate and build such boulevards at their own expense and deliver them finished to the city. The platted locations of these new boulevards must receive the approval of the park board. The specifications for construction must be passed upon by the park board. The actual work must be done under the regular super- vision of the park board inspectors. Upon such conditions miles of boulevards have been added to the system. Additional mileage without condemnation or special assessment will come into the system as the city expands. The problem is a simple one. Acre property eligible as to altitude and convenient in distance from the business district is bought for $1,000 an acre. The cost of boulevards and other improvements is $2,000 an acre. As long and as far away as such land will bring for residence sites from $4,000 to $5,000 an acre, the platting and boulevard making will go on. This is not the building of new additions at the expense of the old. The new boulevards and park districts are being occupied to a large extent by a new population.
The Gridiron of Green.
Kansas City now has three chains of parks and boulevards extending from north to south through the residence sections. Three boulevards from west to east connect parks and intersect the north and south chains. These already existing parks and connecting boulevards make every part of the system easily accessible. Admiral boulevard begins across the street from one of the principal office buildings and within a block of the post office. Gillham road comes down to the site of the new Union Station, which is in the great dividing valley of the city. Cliff Drive winds for miles along the face of the palisades overlooking the Missouri river and the East Bottoms, with the labyrinth of elevators, railroad tracks and factories. West Terrace has its Outlook Point of massive masonry and castle effect with far-sweeping views of the packing houses, the Kaw river and, beyond, Kansas City, Kan.
Below the Outlook, part of the way down the steep bluff, is a park drive which follows the cliff around to the west and makes connection with Penn Valley Park. North and south through the heart of what a few years ago was the most thickly-settled residence section is the Paseo. It was created by con- demning a narrow strip, a distance of several miles.
Gladstone and Benton boulevards give the eastern part of the city its share of this improvement. Linwood and Armour boulevards are east and west bars in Kansas City's grand gridiron of green. Swope parkway, several miles long.
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125 feet wide, leads away to the southeast, to what will be the chief lung of the city when a million people must find breathing space within its limits.
Kansas City after Dark.
No one has obtained full appreciation of the Kansas City system until he has given midsummer nights to views of it. The passing of hundreds of automo- biles in almost continuous columns between the long rows of trees is of itself a scene to fascinate. Everywhere red lamps divide the boulevards into going and coming routes. The rule of right-of-way is universally observed by all vehicles. On one side of the red lamps the dazzling headlights all move in one direction, on the other side they pass in the opposite direction. From where the boulevard passes a rise, or crest, it is possible to see at once hundreds of these headlights moving in seemingly endless procession; the foliage glistens; the rows of trees take on exaggerated forms. Residents along the boulevards sit on their porches and steps night after night enjoying the spectacle. Along the strips of parking between roadways and sidewalks the park board has placed seats for the con- venience of those who choose to come from their homes on the side streets and 1 see the nightly parade. Never before in its history has so small a percentage of the population of Kansas City gone away for the summer season.
Cliff Drive by night takes on new character. On one side the great irregular masse's of limestone tower until they are lost in the darkness. On the other hand the illumination serves to accentuate the shadows in the depths of the forest be- low. On Cliff Drive as upon other boulevards and throughout the parks lamps are placed at unusually short intervals and add greatly to the night scenes.
From Prospect Point or the Colonnade of North Terrace, the East Bottoms far below present a different appearance after dark. All of the ugliness of the freight yards and industries by day is hidden by night. The headlights of the engines, the swinging lanterns of the brakemen, the illumination of the moving trains, the many colored lamps at the switches and crossings, the commingling of thousands of gas and electric lights, with the roar and the whistles and bells for accompaniment, make up a combination of light and sound which perhaps has no counterpart elsewhere.
From West Terrace, another city's night lights are visible, those of Kansas City, Kansas. Extending from the foot of the terrace one and one-half miles straight across the West Bottoms, almost fringing the banks of the Missouri river, is a double row of brilliant burners marking the course of the viaduct.
The summit of Observation Park is still another of these vantage points for night spectacles. There the vision sweeps an entire circle with the city spread out everywhere. To the northwestward are busy railroad yards and industries. To the north is the commercial center with hundreds of electric signs making a profuse glare of light. In every other direction are the long rows of gas lamps on the boulevards and streets of the residence sections with the reflectors of the automobiles moving hither and thither like so many shooting meteors.
The Bearing on Municipal Problems.
The system has done much toward the solution of several municipal problems. The city hospital, built at a cost of $500,000, has park frontage. The advantage
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THE MAKING OF A CITY
of such a location for such an institution is evident. As the time comes for the erection of public buildings, sites on boulevards or parks are naturally the first choice. Educational and charitable institutions, schools, asylums and hospitals are being located with studied reference to the park and boulevard system. Nearly every building erected for such purposes in Kansas City during the past five years has been located with boulevard or park frontage.
When the railroads determined to remove the passenger depot from the West Bottoms to the valley between the North and South Sides of Kansas City, thus creating entirely new routes of entrance and exit for travel, the plan accepted by the city provided not only for tracks and for station roon on a magnificent scale, but for a spacious plaza in front. As the result of this reservation there can be established no business within several hundred feet of the new depot.
Local nomenclature in Kansas City has undergone great change with the coming of parks and boulevards. Twenty years ago the people spoke of various localities as West Bluff and East Bluff, as West Bottoms and East Bottoms, as O. K. Creek and Goose Creek and Brush Creek. Those names were short. In that respect they were consistent with the temperamental quickness and directness of speech which are characteristic of the community. Kansas City talks and acts with rapid decision. Moreover these pioneer names of localities were apt in de- scription. Bluffs were bluffs and bottoms were bottoms in the strongest defini- tions of the words. Brush Creek was a marvelously crooked channel in the midst of a tangle of forest and vine growth. Goose Creek suggested its chief utility in the period of early settlement. It was quite in accordance with the Kansas City economy of vowels and consonants that the Kansas river became the Kaw; that Pennsylvania street was contracted to Penn street; that many similar changes in original names occurred. With the evolution of the park and boulevard era, successive boards of commissioners did not part from the Kansas City habit of speech; they indulged in no stilted, high sounding titles; they gave to these improvements of the landscape names which were short, easily pronounced, and so applicable in description that they found immediate acceptance by the public. Some of these names of parks and boulevards were given with little consideration in the planning; they were in a sense accidental. But they seemed to apply so well that the board used them as they were designated on the plats and the citizens adopted them.
By way of illustration it may be recalled that Penn Valley Park was so desig- nated in the first platting because it was a broken jumble of depressions through which Pennsylvania street found its way. It is Penn Valley Park today and probably will be Penn Valley Park for all time to come.
The Paseo was applied in the beginning to describe a proposed combination of long, narrow parks, bordered by drives, which was to be a passage extending north and south through the eastern part of the city. There was nothing in the landscape naming that quite fitted this proposed improvement. The Paseo was taken from the Spanish. It means passage. It became at once of general use on the part of the newspapers and the public. The Pergola in the Paseo and the Colonnade at the edge of the Plaza overlooking the great wooded gorge in the North Bluff describe those architectural features.
The Parade is a widening of the Paseo into a plain of several acres adapted
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CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF MISSOURI
by its central location and level surface to purposes of drill, of public gatherings and of general recreation. It forms a natural outdoor skating rink in winter. The Grove is just that-a collection of magnificent forest trees in the midst of the residence section of the city. West Bluff became West Terrace because the terrace idea was applied to redeem that unsightly locality. Cliff Drive is so briefly expressive that not only has it taken with all of Kansas City but lives in the memory of visitors from all parts of the world who have seen its great nat- ural beauty.
Observation Park is the former Reservoir Hill, the lofty elevation in a city of hills which furnished a natural site for the waterworks reservoir. The ground surrounding the reservoir was turned over to the park board for treatment. The hill is crowned with a stone observatory overlooking great sections of the city.
Gillham Road is a tribute in name to a former vigilant member of the park board.
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