A new profile of J.C. Nichols, the realtor who had an inordinate influence on the development of Kansas City in the early 20th century, and whose legacy is now informing a current school of urban planning, airs on KCPT. I'm not a big fan of Nichols's taste in architecture (we live in a stone shirtwaist that exudes Midwestern values, while Nichols was a notorious Europhile who favored Tudors and Tudor bungalows). Still, there's no denying the guy had ideas about community design that still apply today. Here's my review.
For a more caustic take on the legacy of Nichols, here's a Tom Frank essay that helped form my first impression of Kansas City when I read it in the mid-1990s. It's from his old Chicago magazine The Baffler.
I grew up in K.C.K., and heard when I was young that J.C. Nichols wanted to build the Country Club Plaza on the Kansas side -- but the local officials there turned him down.
Do you if that's a true story? If it was, imagine how different Wyandotte County would have become over the decades -- and who knows what sort of shape Johnson County would have taken.
Posted by: Richard | June 19, 2006 at 10:02 AM