A full moon and dark clouds scudding by the bright lights at 12th and Main streets in Kansas City are pictured in this night scene, looking south, on a post card published in color about 1907. Well-lighted stores on both sides of Main are available to the many shoppers, the ladies dressed in long dark skirts, light shirtwaists and the huge picture hats of the day. A policeman, uniformed in dark blue, stands squarely in the center of the intersection. Street car tracks serve north- and southbound cars of several lines of the Metropolitan Street Car Company. Street signs of T.C. Brown's News Co. at the right side of the picture advertise Espina Havana Cigars. Hershfield's Watch & Jewelry establishment is next door south. Across the street the entrance to the seven-story Jones Store is crowded with people. The store was built at this location in 1895 and was Kansas City's largest department store. Iron rings, installed along the curb on Jones' frontage, were for the use of shoppers arriving by horse and buggy, who had the help of a uniformed Jones doorman to tie up their horses for a day's watchful care. Almost anything needed by the family was to be found at Jones: groceries, coal oil, lamps, brooms, blankets, linens, boots and shoes, yard goods, men's and women's clothing, corsets, underwear, carpets, hardware, stoves, furniture, etc. The Jones Store, rehabilitated and modernized, still stands at this location and also has six large suburban establishments. Kansas City Times, May 31, 1985.
Reproduction (printing, downloading, or copying) of images from Kansas City Public Library requires permission and payment for the following uses, whether digital or print: publication; reproduction of multiple copies; personal, non-educational purposes; and advertising or commercial purposes. Please order prints or digital files and pay use fees through this website. All images must be properly credited to: "Missouri Valley Special Collections, Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City, Missouri." Images and texts may be reproduced without prior permission only for purposes of temporary, private study, scholarship, or research. Those using these images and texts assume all responsibility for questions of copyright and privacy that may arise.
