This bird's eye view of Grand Avenue, looking north, pictures the straight and wide downtown thoroughfare on an old postcard of about 1912. Annals of the City of Kansas by C.C. Spalding, 1858, shows a black and white lithograph of Market Street (later called Grand Avenue.) It shows the same wide and straight line from the Missouri River levee. Here on the turnpike road to the city of Westport, wagon trains made their way west. According to Spalding: Grand Avenue is decidedly one of the handsomest and most attractive streets in the state and is destined to become one of the principal streets of the city. All mail routes, either to the Territory or to Eastern, Western or Southern Missouri are through this addition. Again, all the great New Mexico travel, which consisted last year of over 9,000 wagons, passed through Grand Avenue. Mayor Milton McGee, a big booster for Kansas City, laid out Grand Avenue wide enough so that he could turn his horse and buggy around without having to back up. Part of the McGee addition (the city's first) containing 240 acres of level and unbroken land, south of 12th Street, Main to Holmes, and outside the city limits then, is shown here. All are business buildings, but when platted in 1856, it was for small homes. The grounds were a portion of the estate of James McGee, this same being the largest landed estate in the county. Milt McGee met arriving steamboats, sometimes with a band, and took newcomers to this area and sold them lots for their new dwellings.In the center can be seen the red tapestry brick building of The Kansas City Star, completed in 1911, the architectural design of Jarvis Hunt, who also built the Union Station. High above the rooftops looms the electrically lighted sign of Firestone Tires, over the Firestone building, which extended from Grand to McGee Street. Firestone no longer operates a business at this address. Kansas City Times, June 19, 1987.
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