Hot Day in Kansas City

Saturday, July 28, 2012--Kansas City

Today was my day to try to experience Kansas City.  It worked out quite well considering the heat.  I made it to every place I intended to go but one.

I started by going to Country Club Plaza.  I've always heard about it mainly because I grew up in the Dallas area.  Dallas has a hard time of accepting that they were not first and the best.  They want to claim that their Highland Park Village was the first suburban shopping center in the US--designed and built as a shopping center rather than a collection of shops and restaurants haphazardly developing in a neighborhood.  Everyone else accepts that it was Country Club Plaza and Dallas now claims that theirs was the first INWARDLY planned and developed shopping center (meaning that the stores face inwardly and the cars park in a parking lot inside the center rather than on the street).  Like The Village in Dallas, The Plaza has a Spanish design.  However, it is a much bigger development with much more elaborate architecture and lots of fountains and statues scattered around.  Furthermore, unlike The Village in Dallas, it was not pinned in by the neighborhood.  The Plaza area has continued expanding and growing with wonderful hotels, apartment buildings, etc., that have developed for blocks around its periphery.  Because of that, The Plaza has remained THE destination in Kansas City since it opened in the 1920s.  I wandered the streets taking photos of the elaborate Spanish details in the designs and enjoying the general atmosphere.  As far as shops and restaurants are concerned, it is a mostly upscale center filled predominantly with national and international chains--H&M, Tiffany's, Forever XXI, P.F. Chang's, the Cheesecake Factory, etc.

From there, I headed just a few blocks northeast to the two major museums which are on either side of the campus of the Kansas City Art Institute.  I started with the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art.  Unlike the exhibits I saw yesterday, these were wonderful--contemporary art that required talent to be done and that showed artistic accomplishment.  From there, I walked to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.  It sets on a campus that is much like the grounds of a castle with a terraced lawn filled with sculptures (including 4 badminton gamecocks) produced by internationally known artists.  A comprehensive, large museum, the exhibits there varied--Greek, Roman, Asian, European, and American accomplishments in painting, sculpture, decorative arts, etc.  Their new Bloch Building housed a very nice contemporary art collection, too.  I paid to see their special exhibit which was drawing a large crowd--Decorative Arts at the World's Fairs, 1851-1939.  They had exhibits of glassware, ceramics, furniture, jewelry, etc., that had been displayed at various world's fairs as examples of work by the world's best artisans.  For each item, there was a note to tell when and where it was displayed, and often there was more information to tell why the piece was considered to be so special.  Many of them had notes indicating that they had won prizes given by the fairs.  

I had been out 5 hours already by the time I left there.  I headed toward the downtown area and stopped in what is called the Crossroads Art District just south of downtown to see an exhibit at a branch of the Kemper down there.  From that location, I walked uphill to explore downtown.  Unfortunately, it is mostly an office district, so it is like a desert on the weekends.  I took photos of some of the interesting architecture--the new twin theaters called the Kauffman Center, the science-fiction-looking towers of the convention center, theaters, older office towers, etc.

By the time I got back to my car, I was hot and dehydrated.  The temperature was about 98 degrees F and I had been away from the hotel for almost 7 hours.  I had planned to go a few blocks further to see the Crown Center, an office/shopping/entertainment complex built by the Hallmark Corporation.  It's sort of the Kansas City version of The Galleria area in Houston.  But I was tired, and neither the architecture nor the idea of going to a shopping center appealed to me.  Instead, I drove to the nearby Costco and bought a soft drink.  I drained the cup 3 times while there and had a "happy hour" sampling their tastings for the day.  Then I filled the cup a final time and returned to my room.

Steps Walked:  19,706!

Miles Driven:  Minimal, since I stayed within a few miles of my hotel