Video Series Shines Spotlight on Mrs. Sam Ray Postcard Collection
We're putting the spotlight on some of our favorite special collections in a new video series from the Missouri Valley Special Collections. First up? The Mrs. Sam Ray Postcard Collection (SC58). Watch and learn how a septuagenarian became Kansas City's most prolific public historian.
Reader Mike McGrew wrote to KCQ and asked, "Has there ever been a velodrome constructed in Kansas City? I understand there was a nationwide wave of competitive cycling races in the late 19th and early 20th century." Here’s what we found.
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.
Hundreds of Kansas City Area Yearbooks Now Available on KCHistory.org
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.
