Kansas City Houses: 1885-1938

• Explores the development of Kansas City's affluent residential districts beginning with Quality Hill in the 1850s, through the boom years of the 1920s, including the Sunset Hill and Mission Hills districts• 40 houses are profiled in detail, including floor plans, architectural drawings, and photographs of interior architectural elements• Newly commissioned photographs by noted local photographer Bruce Mathews• Appendices include architects' biographies and a selected catalog of 60 additional houses represented by one exterior view and a caption listing original owner, architect, and date completedThis long overdue study documents the rich heritage of Kansas City residential architecture, signifying the importance of this booming midwestern metropolis between 1880 and 1930. The forty houses within this book were erected by the city's leading plutocrats, such as newspaper publisher William Rockhill Nelson, whose fortune helped establish the Nelson-Atkins Museum; minerals magnate August R. Meyer; lumber baron Robert A. Long; oilman Ernest C. Winters; and Walter E. Bixby of Kansas City Life Insurance. Among the noted architects profiled are Edward W. Tanner, Henry F. Hoit, Louis S. Curtiss, the firm of George Brown Post in collaboration with Kansas City based architect Roger Gilman (Dean of RISD 1919–1929), and Mary Rockwell Hook, one of the first women to study at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris. Most of these houses were designed in the European and American revival styles prevalent during this period, yet each is distinguished by a midwestern sensibility.