All posts by Gabrielle Probert

Prospect Avenue from 50th St. to 52nd St.

My blocks on Prospect Avenue were from 50th Street to 52nd Street.  50th Street is just a couple hundred feet south of where 71 curves and then crosses over Prospect Avenue.  From my two blocks, especially between 50th and 51st St,you have a very good view of the looming highway.

The earliest record of my blocks I could find was from a Sanborn Fire Insurance Company map from 1917.  Not much was located in my section yet, a few buildings were dotted along the east side of Prospect.  One of these buildings was church.

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Overtime, my blocks developed and more buildings, residential and business, sprang up.  The church located there on the corner of 51st St on the east side of Prospect built a new building farther back from Prospect’s street-front.  It was larger and indicates that people were moving to the area.  This is a Sanborn Fire Insurance Company map from 1950.

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In 1951, Kansas City officials started planning out a north-to-south freeway and it would forever change this area of Kansas City.  Bruce R. Watkins Drive forced the clearing of large areas of developed neighborhoods.  This “parkway” now divided an entire community.  The church that had been growing here for decades was now gone, located directly in the highways path.

Cities are always changing and because of that the surrounding areas and neighborhoods around them are forced to change.  It’s like a domino effect, one change leads to ripples of change throughout a community.