The next time you leave Kirkwood and happen to make the turn onto Wornall, take a moment to look up at The Circle and the rocky hilltop on which it stands. Today we take for granted our paved streets and powerful modes of transportation, but 200 years ago that same limestone bluff presented quite an obstacle for travelers. You can see on the following page a plat from 1877, still showing the “bump” in the road that pioneers had to follow in order to pass this massive natural feature. To this day, Wornall takes a slight jog to the west to accommodate this historical landmark just south of the Country Club Plaza.

When we speak of the development of the Kansas City area and the Kirkwood property, we must begin with the people who first settled the area. Other than Native Americans, these initial settlers were of French descent. In 1821 Francois Chouteau and his wife, Berenice, traveled the Missouri River from St. Louis to establish Chouteau Landing, a trading post located about three miles below the great bend in the river — now the Northeast Industrial District. The low ground along the river proved risky, and after being flooded out in 1826, Chouteau rebuilt on higher ground at the foot of what is now Troost Avenue. Several other French families eventually joined the couple and formed what is considered the first white settlement in Kansas City.

Goods and settlers arrived via riverboat while Native Americans, hunters, farmers and trappers traded their wares. Indeed, commerce and the lure of new frontiers were beginning to establish the area as an important crossroads to the West.

Although French speaking explorers and traders were exploring the Missouri River as early as 1715, it wasn’t until the early 1800s that ferry owner, Peter Roi, improved a stretch of road that connected Francois Chouteau’s trading post on the Missouri River with small settlements on the Marais des Cygne River to the south. That early route was to become our present-day Wornall Road and its path led past the towering limestone bluff that Kirkwood’s Circle condominiums occupy today.

In 1833, an enterprising young man by the name of John Calvin McCoy (often called the “father of Kansas City”) opened a trading post about three miles south of the Missouri River. McCoy filed a plat and named his new location “West Port” because it was the last place that westward travelers could obtain supplies before heading out on the California, Santa Fe and Oregon Trails.

Additionally, McCoy had discovered a rock ledge that formed a natural landing for riverboats on the south shore of the Missouri River and named it Westport Landing (where Main Street meets the river now). It was here that his supplies were delivered by boat, ultimately supplanting Independence, Missouri as the principal supply station for thousands of emigrants.

At the same time McCoy was establishing Westport, a man by the name of Daniel Yoacham purchased eighty acres of land from the United States, which included the property now known as Kirkwood. Yoacham’s real estate spanned Brush Creek to the north and south and included an enormous, 300-year-old burr oak tree once standing at what is now Ward Parkway and Central. For pioneers who trekked west along the Santa Fe Trail, Yoacham’s tree was a welcome shady place to rest and fill water barrels along the creek. Yoahcom was also involved in the development of Westport as the first person to own a dwelling and tavern there.

In 1838 the 271-acre tract owned by Gabriel Prudhomme, which included Westport Landing, was purchased by McCoy and thirteen other men who then formed the Town Company. Legend has it that the new owners held a meeting at which they discussed possible names for their new township. Such names as Port Fonda, Rabbitville and Possum Trot were rejected in favor of “Town of Kansas,” after the Kansa Indians who inhabited the area.

Yoacham’s more inland property changed hands many times in the next few decades and was involved in the largest and most decisive Union-Confederate Civil War clash in Missouri. The Battle of Westport took place in late October, 1864. With 20,000 Union troops and a Confederate force of 12,000, the battle raged from the Blue River west across the state line and from approximately Westport in the north to modern-day Loose Park in the south. It was reported that residents of Westport stood on top of the Harris House and glimpsed parts of the battle. No direct evidence has been found to link the Kirkwood property directly to this historic battle, but with more than 30,000 troops in the area, it is probable that the high limestone bluff at Kirkwood was used as a lookout. It was at The Battle of Westport that the Union forces routed the Confederates and broke their power as an army in this area.

Finally, the original Yoacham land was sold to Malvina Lindsay in 1872. The Lindsay family sold parcels to many different individuals, but retained the land as a working farm on the limestone bluff that is Kirkwood today. Historical records show a large real estate boom during the summer of 1887 and that could be the reason the Lindsay family had the land platted.

In 1905, the children of the original Lindsay family sold the future Kirkwood land to E.D. Williams. And just twenty-eight days later, Williams sold to Kansas City visionary J.C. Nichols and his partner, John Schrader. It is interesting to note that the Lindsay farm, which occupied the future Kirkwood location for thirty-three years, had built their home on the exact limestone bluff that The Circle condominiums rise from today and the Lindsay orchard stood where Kirkwood’s lush garden grounds, The Park, now grows.

The entry of J.C. Nichols into the land development scene was to have significant positive impact on the Kansas City area. Nichols’ vision was to develop entire neighborhoods and shopping centers designed with the automobile in mind, and thereby attract residents looking for a better place to live and work. But his shopping-district masterpiece, The Country Club Plaza, was seventeen years away.

At this time in 1905, Nichols was fresh from his first successful foray into the real estate development business having bought land on the high ground of 13th Street and Lathrop just before the flood of 1903 forced early Kansas Citians out of the river bottoms. It was an instant success and a neighborhood was built overnight. Without this initial fortunate outcome, Nichols’ development dreams may never have materialized.

Nichols married in 1905 and built a home at 5030 Walnut in the Bismark Place subdivision. Bismark Place is considered to be the first subdivision taken over by J.C. Nichols. He then sold the home sites to individuals. At that time there were no modern conveniences. It was a quarter-mile walk to the nearest spring for water and the roads were not paved. After that long first year, Bismark Place began to see improvements which included gas, water, sewers and electricity. This then, was the first modern enhancement to the land that would become Kirkwood.

Another visionary leader in Kansas City was William Rockhill Nelson, owner and editor of the Kansas City Star newspaper. Nelson was a proponent of coordinated city planning and residential development and he invited J.C. Nichols to meet with him. The two became fast friends, sharing the same ideals for the future of Kansas City. Nelson’s only daughter, Laura, also became friends with the Nichols family, and in 1910 she married Irwin Kirkwood. It is for Irwin that the Kirkwood Room in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is named.

Eventually, Nichols’ land holdings stretched from north of the Plaza, south to Gregory Boulevard and east to west from Troost Avenue to Mission Road, with the area to the east a hog farm and the weedy Brush Creek flowing below the future Kirkwood.

In 1922, plans for the 55-acre, Country Club Plaza were proposed. Nichols saw what others could not see in his grand idea. He brought to the Plaza the ideas he had developed while traveling in Europe and the Southwest, as well as hand-picked works of art to adorn the Spanish-style courtyards and sidewalks. It was a time of accelerated growth, change was in the air and the people responded.

During the decade of the 1920s, the Jacob Loose farm (today’s Loose Park) became the Kansas City Country Club. With the Plaza as its centerpiece, the area came to be known as the country club district — designed to attract the wealthy. At that same time, the Kirkwood area grew into a neighborhood of one- and two-story bungalow, entry-level homes (the aforementioned Bismark Place). Nichols and other developers continued to develop around this neighborhood for years; however, the last of the Bismark lots had been sold and Nichols no longer owned any of the future Kirkwood site.

When William Rockhill Nelson died in 1915, he left precise instructions of what was to become of his estate in the event of the death of his wife and daughter. Nelson’s deep appreciation for beautiful architecture and painting influenced his decision to donate the family home, Oak Hill and the 20 acres it stood on, to the city. And further, that an art gallery would be built and filled with the most extraordinary art his estate money (approximately eleven million dollars) could buy. The property is now known as the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

Laura Kirkwood passed in 1926 and Irwin carried out his father-in-law’s final wish. He arranged for the Nelson mansion to be razed after his death, and the site donated to the city for an art gallery. Irwin also had purchased the Kansas City Star and continued to run the paper in the spirit of William Rockhill Nelson. Irwin Kirkwood survived his wife by less than two years. He died in 1927.

J.C. Nichols died in 1950. After his father’s death, Miller Nichols became president of the J.C. Nichols Company. Miller was a worthy heir, preserving his father’s ideals and love of fine art, as well as sustaining inspired growth within the Plaza area. He soon began to reacquire the individual properties at Bismark Place that would eventually become Kirkwood. By the mid 1980s, the feasibility of developing the tract became apparent. All but one of the remaining parcels were then purchased for a total cost of $600,000 per acre and development plans were begun.

The proposed development was named Kirkwood Circle by Miller, who had the utmost respect for his father’s close friendship with Nelson family. We can only conclude that the property of Kirkwood was named after Irwin Kirkwood, who as the final heir to the Nelson estate, so keenly honored two great Kansas City men of vision with his own integrity and passion for the arts.

Looking north from atop The Circle condominiums at Kirkwood, it is sometimes hard to imagine that it all began at a weed-choked creek and a bump in the road.

{ Back to top }