Thomas Hart Bent in Public Library

[CatHerder]

Daniel MacMorris, a Kansas City muralist and portrait artist, painted the two murals inside the downtown library. They were in the Missouri Valley Room (local history) and Art and Music rooms. After the library moved out of the building, the murals were scheduled to be auctioned off at a fine arts auction in Overland Park in 2004. But just two weeks before the sale, the library pulled the paintings because the then-director hadn't asked for board approval to sell them. As of 2010, the library still had them in storage with no plans to display them. They would need restoration work and there was concern that they portrayed an outdated (probably politically incorrect) historical view of KC.

The glass mosaic tile mural outside of what was originally the children's library (later the KC Board of Ed entrance) was by another Kansas City artist, Arthur Kraft.

The Ozark National Life Building at 500 E. Ninth St. was constructed in 1895 as the previous home for the Kansas City Public Library and was extremely crowded (among other problems) by the 1950s. Much time, effort, and study in the late 1950s went into planning where to build the new library in 1960. The planners took into consideration the surrounding business, government, education, and transportation system of the time and tried to project what form they would take in the future. They predicted that development in the area south (behind) the new library would flourish, for example, but for most of its existence the same parking lots and small, older buildings occupied that area. The interstate highway system was new, and they didn't know that it would result in white flight. It was expected that the library would continue to receive heavy use by visiting classes of schoolchildren during the week and would be the main library resource for area college students. I could write reams about this, but the upshot is that most of what they took such pains to plan for and predict did not come to pass. The modern, futuristic library they wanted to create started becoming obsolete almost immediately.

When I visited that library as a college student in the mid-'70s, it was still meticulously maintained: I vividly remember the expanse of shiny waxed floor in the entrance lobby. It was an appealing and comfortable place to browse the stacks and settle in with a magazine.

In the 1980s, the KC public library system seceded from the KC public school system for tax and funding purposes. After that, the Board of Education, perhaps out of spite, did the bare minimum to maintain the library portion of the building, which occupied roughly everything from the 5th floor down.

By the time I worked there in the late '90s, the behind-the-scenes work areas were the worse for wear. The dusty fiberglass curtains by my window had hung there, unlaundered, since the building opened. If walls got damaged or soiled, they remained that way. Our cobbled-together office furniture was decades old. It was all so grubby and unappetizing I could barely get my lunch down on my first day of work.

While this building was not a pleasant place to work at the end of the library's occupancy there, it was a shame that it was allowed to deteriorate to the point that it had to be demolished. Especially for a hotel that didn't materialize.

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by CatHerder

Daniel MacMorris, a Kansas City muralist and portrait artist, painted the two murals inside the downtown library. They were in the Missouri Valley Room (local history) and Art and Music rooms. After the library moved out of the building, the murals were scheduled to be auctioned off at a fine arts auction in Overland Park in 2004. But just two weeks before the sale, the library pulled the paintings because the then-director hadn't asked for board approval to sell them. As of 2010, the library still had them in storage with no plans to display them. They would need restoration work and there was concern that they portrayed an outdated (probably politically incorrect) historical view of KC.

The glass mosaic tile mural outside of what was originally the children's library (later the KC Board of Ed entrance) was by another Kansas City artist, Arthur Kraft.

The Ozark National Life Building at 500 E. Ninth St. was constructed in 1895 as the previous home for the Kansas City Public Library and was extremely crowded (among other problems) by the 1950s. Much time, effort, and study in the late 1950s went into planning where to build the new library in 1960. The planners took into consideration the surrounding business, government, education, and transportation system of the time and tried to project what form they would take in the future. They predicted that development in the area south (behind) the new library would flourish, for example, but for most of its existence the same parking lots and small, older buildings occupied that area. The interstate highway system was new, and they didn't know that it would result in white flight. It was expected that the library would continue to receive heavy use by visiting classes of schoolchildren during the week and would be the main library resource for area college students. I could write reams about this, but the upshot is that most of what they took such pains to plan for and predict did not come to pass. The modern, futuristic library they wanted to create started becoming obsolete almost immediately.

When I visited that library as a college student in the mid-'70s, it was still meticulously maintained: I vividly remember the expanse of shiny waxed floor in the entrance lobby. It was an appealing and comfortable place to browse the stacks and settle in with a magazine.

In the 1980s, the KC public library system seceded from the KC public school system for tax and funding purposes. After that, the Board of Education, perhaps out of spite, did the bare minimum to maintain the library portion of the building, which occupied roughly everything from the 5th floor down.

By the time I worked there in the late '90s, the behind-the-scenes work areas were the worse for wear. The dusty fiberglass curtains by my window had hung there, unlaundered, since the building opened. If walls got damaged or soiled, they remained that way. Our cobbled-together office furniture was decades old. It was all so grubby and unappetizing I could barely get my lunch down on my first day of work.

While this building was not a pleasant place to work at the end of the library's occupancy there, it was a shame that it was allowed to deteriorate to the point that it had to be demolished. Especially for a hotel that didn't materialize.

Thank you for filling in the details and some more of the history! I spent a fair bit of time in my teenage years perusing microfilmed back issues of The Star and other newspapers, and old magazines, in the downtown Kansas City Public Library, and I also ventured into the Missouri Valley Room often enough.* It was a very attractive library, and it's a shame it never got the traffic its planners envisioned.

By the way, since it was both the Board of Education headquarters and the main public library from the date it opened in 1960, the entrance to the Board of Ed offices was always on McGee next to the children's library.

I wonder how things might have worked out for both the School District and the library had the Missouri legislature not changed state law in 1957 to raise the population threshold above which a city had to have a single consolidated school district covering all annexed territory as well as the original city. (And in retrospect, I wonder what fearful white people got the General Assembly to make this change as Kansas City approached the old threshold that would have required the consolidation. Or maybe it was plain old politics, for the consolidation would have wiped out the Center, North Kansas City, Hickman Mills and maybe even Grandview and Raytown school districts.)

*I also did the same thing at the University of Missouri-Kansas City library after that facility opened in 1973 or thereabouts.