A 1915 post card pictures the tree-lined Paseo, looking north from Armour. One of the popular new electric cars is parked nearby. This was a fashionable new residential district in 1905 when Hans Dierks chose a site at the northwest corner to build his massive 3-story, 16-room brick home. The home is shown at the left. Dierks had already established several successful coal and lumber businesses in Nebraska with his brothers before he came to Kansas City in the 1890s. He headed the Dierks Lumber and Coal Company, Dierks & Sons Lumber Co. and related corporations here, and later extended the companies southward, into Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma, many of the businesses lying along the route of the Kansas City Southern. The lumber executive occupied the Paseo home until 1924 when he took up a residence in the fashionable new Sophian Plaza Apartments. The Paseo residence stood empty for 10 years and suffered some damage from a fire before it was razed in April, 1933. Kansas City Times, April 25, 1973.
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