For more than two decades, the Kansas City Landmarks Commission has donated hundreds of historical images to the Library’s Missouri Valley Special Collections – digital photographs and slides that contribute greatly to the MVSC’s efforts to document the city’s architectural history.
The latest map to be added to Missouri Valley Special Collections is one of the department’s most visually striking. This “Bird’s Eye View” or panoramic map, depicts Kansas City from an angled aerial perspective.
Beginning at the age of 72, longtime Kansas Citian and avid postcard collector Mildred Kittle Ray began writing her "Postcards from Old Kansas City" columns for the Kansas City Times and the Kansas City Star newspapers. For nearly 30 years, Ray would select one of her many postcards and explain its history and significance to her readers.
The Kansas City Public Library is pleased to announce the addition of 1,109 digitized yearbooks to our digital history site KCHistory.org. Resulting from more than two years of work by Missouri Valley Special Collections staff, the Kansas City Area High School Yearbooks Collection has tremendous research potential.
In this week’s installment of “What’s your KCQ,” a nostalgic reader asks: “What was the name of the upscale restaurant in the downtown Kansas City airport? I remember eating there as a kid about 50 years ago.”
Cities are always changing. Old buildings are demolished, new ones built, and some that remain get major facelifts to meet current trends—sometimes only to be restored to an early incarnation a few decades later.
July 3 marks the 150-year anniversary of the opening of the first rail crossing over the Missouri River.
Missouri Valley Special Collections received two unique donations in April 2018. Though completely different from each other in format and content, both illuminate aspects of Kansas City’s past often overlooked....
Huron Indian Cemetery was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971 thanks to the impassioned and persistent efforts of Eliza “Lyda” Burton Conley and her sisters Ida and Helena.
March 16, 1881, marked the first day on the job for 27-year-old Carrie Westlake Whitney as the new Librarian of the Kansas City Public Library.
