Home Specific Projects Kansas City, MO Publications Book—The City Beautiful Movement in Kansas City by William H. Wilson
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Book—The City Beautiful Movement in Kansas City by William H. Wilson

A city is not beautiful by accident. It is, by design or indifference, an ugly, unplanned array of buildings and streets that becomes beautiful only when men strive to transform its deformities, as they did in may United States cities during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. That collective effort was called the City Beautiful movement. This book is the story of that movement, and the men who led it, in one midwestern metropolis—Kansas City, Missouri.

Because of the compactness and heightened interaction of life in Kansas City, as in any urban area, many men took roles in early city planning. The important planners are introduced with detailed biographical information and a full statement of their contributions.

William Rockhill Nelson — editor of the Kansas City Star .

August R. Meyer — a wealthy refinery owner who was the first president of the city's permanent park board and co-arthur of the 1893 Report of the Board of Park & Boulevard Commissioners establishing the Park and Boulevard System of Kansas City, Missouri.

Delbert J. Haff — the lawyer who constructed the legal framework necessary to the fulfillment of the plan.

George E. Kessler — landscape architect and city planner, first "secretary" to the park department, "Engineer to the Board" and writer of the engineer's report of the 1893 Report of the Board of Park & Boulevard Commissioners establishing the Park and Boulevard System of Kansas City, Missouri.

Contents
  1. Early Efforts and the Press
  2. Colonel Nelson and His Star
  3. First Legal and Political Steps
  4. George Kessler and His Plan
  5. A Charter Amendment and a Jubilee
  6. The Battle Against the "Mossbacks"
  7. Jarvis Hunt and His Union Station
  8. Fulfillment of the Plan
Originally published in 1964 by the University of Missouri, The City Beautiful Movement in Kansas City was developed from research done by William H. Wilson as part of the History of Kansas City Research Project, 1960-62. This project, which spawned a number of works of scholarship on Kansas City history, was supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and was directed by A. Theodore Brown.

The second printing of The City Beautiful Movement in Kansas City was made in commemoration of the centennial of the founding of Kansas City Board of Parks Commissioners, and was underwritten by a grant from the William T. Kemper Foundation-Commerce Bank, Trustee.

William H. Wilson is professor of history at the University of North Texas. He is the author of The City Beautiful Movement , Coming of Age: Urban American, 1915-1945 , Railroad in the Clouds: The Alaska Railroad in the Age of Steam , Carl F. Gould: A Life in Architecture and the Arts (co-author), and History of Hamilton Park, A Planned Black Community in Dallas.

The City Beautiful Movement in Kansas City is available for $15 plus postage and handling.