Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Then and Now in Postcards (Part 2)

I'm still working on my "infrastructure" blog, so here's another batch of postcards from "old" KCK in the meantime. I hope you enjoy them.

If you haven't already seen my other picture posts, you might be interested in:


We're going to jump around a little in time today, with a couple of fairly recent postcards to go along with the ones that are much older.

As always, you can click on any picture to get a much larger view if you want to see more details.

Although it's much newer than the rest, I thought you might
like to see this aerial view of Minnesota Avenue looking west.
There's no date on the postcard, but it has to be before 1969
as the Grund Hotel is still visible at the corner of 6th and Ann.
State Avenue is visible at the right side of the photo.
Minnesota Avenue is the most visible east-west street.
That's 5th Street running left-to-right in the foreground.
Those of you who know the area will definitely want to click on the
picture to enlarge it for a better look. There have been a TON
of changes in these past 40 years.

I couldn't get an airplane to take a "now" photo, but
just for the heck of it, I took the same photo as above and
labeled some of the biggest and most visible changes.

This is probably taken from the same airplane as above,
but with the camera turned toward Fairfax Airport.
Many of you might not know that there was a downtown airport
on the Kansas side of the river (that's the Missouri River
coming in from the top right and the Kansas River coming
from the bottom left - Kaw Point is located where the come together).

Many of the structures shown in the aerial shot above
are still in place today. However, this photo from
Google Maps shows how the current GM Fairfax Assembly Plant
is located on the same land that used to have airport runways.


Someday I should devote a "then and now" blog to all of the churches
(of every denomination) that seemed to occupy every other street corner
on the eastern end of town in "old" Kansas City, Kansas.
This is St. Anthony Church on a postcard dated 1912.
The church is still located south of City Hall
and across the street from Memorial Hall.

Here's St. Anthony Church as it stands today.
Notice that the two towers in front have been added on to.

What a cool playground!
This is Splitlog Park located between Splitlog and Ohio Avenues
just west of 7th Street. This view is from the northwest corner
of the park looking toward the southeast.

Oops! Where did all the park equipment go?
Sorry for the shadows. Took this late in the afternoon.
You can still see remnants of the old stone steps
at the right of the picture and at the far end of the park by Ohio Street.

This postcard and the one below are from 1909.
We were proud enough of some of our residential streets
to put them on postcards!
This is 9th Street looking south from Minnesota Avenue.

The sun was in just the wrong place when I took this "now" picture.
The lay of the land and the location of streets and alleys is the same,
but the view is dramatically different today.

This postcard is also from 1909.
I "think" this is looking east on Barnett
from the corner of 9th and Barnett.

Until next time, have a great week!

~ Brian

bmckiernan@wycokck.org
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