A comma apparently was omitted by the German publishers from the post-card title, The Canyon City Park, Kansas City, Mo. The title should have read, The Canyon, City Park, Kansas City, Mo. The canyon pictured is part of North Terrace park, one of the city's earliest parks, which is located along the Missouri River bluffs, from Highland to Belmont. Today it is called Kessler Park. The first 5 1/2 acres of the park were purchased in 1885, and it was expanded to 282 acres by 1920. Chestnut, running north and south, is pictured at the right with horse-and-buggy traffic. Heim's brewery and bottling works are in the background. In 1901 a 5-span steel girder bridge over the gorge was built on Lexington Avenue. Plans were drawn by Waddell and Hedrick, bridge builders. (Early records refer to the gorge as the Agnes Avenue Gorge. Agnes and Chestnut are one and the same north of 9th. The street name was changed from Agnes to Chestnut north of 9th in 1895.) There were double street car tracks, a roadway and sidewalk over the structure. The Missouri Valley Room of the Public Library has a 3 volume printed report, used in a court case against the Metropolitan street railway system, describing the bridge and its construction in minute detail and giving sketches, elevations and a detailed appraisal of costs. Material, men, grading, dirt removal, concrete, anchorage metal, steel, donkeys, tin cups used by the workmen and even the penwipers for the bookkeepers are included.The total cost of the 386 foot bridge over the chasm, as given in the report, was $87,663.10. Today automobile traffic flows in two lanes over the bridge and pedestrians use the sidewalk over the structure known as the Lexington Street Viaduct. Kansas City Times, July 5, 1975.
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.
