This Kansas City boulevard was an original jewel in 1890s City Beautiful movement

Editor’s Note: Past|Present is a video series from The Star that travels through time to show how scenes Kansas City depicted in vintage postcards look today. Have a postcard you’d like to share with our team? Tell us about it here.

Paseo Boulevard was an integral part of the ambitious Parks and Boulevard system that Kansas City brought to life in 1893 under the guidance of George Kessler.

The first two parks in the system included one bearing his name on the east side of downtown, while the other stood between the West Bottoms and Quality Hill.

The system’s premier roadway, which Kessler designed to move traffic elegantly through areas once marked by blighted and dilapidated housing, was called Paseo Boulevard-- after the Paseo de la Reforma in Mexico City.

The first section, finished in 1899, ran between 9th and 18th Streets, routing drivers along what had been Flora and Grove Streets, with a generous green space in between them.

Space that, especially along the north end, Kessler filled with gardens, fountains, statuary and a pergola. It wasn’t long before apartment buildings and grand homes lined a stretch of the road one observer described as “thronged with people.”

In fact, a 1980s application for National Historic Place designation noted that in the early 20th Century, “more postcards featured the Paseo” than any other place in town..

On the road’s southern end, decorative flourishes were evident but not quite as dramatic. A 1906 postcard featuring the view north from 17th Street shows well-manicured plantings, some modest dwellings and an intriguing shape looming in the background.

Turns out it’s Chace Elementary School (named for Charles Chace, an early KC mayor) which operated in the Paseo’s median near 14th Street until it was razed in 1913.

By 1919, work had begun on extending Paseo further southward. Today Kessler’s grand boulevard runs nearly ten miles, all the way to 85th Street.

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