Kansas City has a rich heritage of residential architecture that speaks to the importance this Midwestern metropolis during its boom years between 1880 and 1930. The forty houses covered here 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 New York 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 Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris). Most of these houses were designed in the European and American revival styles prevalent during this period, although distinguished by a unique Midwestern sensibility. Contents: Introduction: Explores the development of Kansas City's affluent residential districts and park and boulevard system, from the 1850s through the boom years of the 1920s; 40 chapters: Each documents an individual house, with history of architect and patron, photographs, floor plans, and architectural drawings; Selected catalogue (appendix): 60 additional houses, each with an exterior view and a caption listing original owner, architect, and date completed; Architects biographies (appendix): 20 brief biographies of the architects and firms that designed the 40 houses profiled; Bibliography; Index. AUTHOR: Michael C. Kathrens is an independent scholar specialising in American residential architecture and interior decoration of the mid nineteenth through the early twentieth centuries, and has authored many books on these subjects. His forthcoming projects include Newport Cottages: 1835-1990 and The Houses of Ogden Codman Jr. He is a life-long resident of Kansas City. SELLING POINTS: ? 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 ? With 40 chapters including floor plans, architectural drawings, and photographs detailing interior architectural elements ? Includes many newly commissioned photographs by noted local photographer Bruce Mathews ? Appendixes include architects' biographies, and a selected catalogue of sixty additional houses represented by one exterior view and a caption listing original owner, architect, and date completed 168 colour, 334 b/w images
