Plaza Towers

The story

Written by AI from this property's National Register nomination and the record above; every sentence is checked against its sources before it appears here. Corrections: privacy@treealive.com

Plaza Towers, listed in the National Register in 2016, is a nine-story apartment building at 209 Emanuel Cleaver II Blvd. in Kansas City, Jackson County, built in 1950 in the Modern Movement and Art Deco styles.

Why it's listed

It was listed under criterion C, with local-level significance in architecture; the nomination gives its period of significance as 1950, when construction was completed that spring. George E. McIntyre and Charles A. Smith are named as its architects.

Physical character

The building rests on a concrete foundation and combines brick and concrete walls with terra cotta and a reinforced concrete frame, under an asphalt roof. Brick piers set off rectangular fields of orange brick, with diaper-patterned brickwork and spandrel panels arranged in bilateral symmetry.

Historical context

A frame dwelling had occupied the site since 1916, and it was demolished in 1949 to make way for Plaza Towers, whose construction was completed in the spring of 1950 by the Morris Hoffman Construction Company. The Federal Housing Administration was associated with the project, which a 1949 newspaper article announced, and the building served as an apartment building from 1950 to 2015, reaching full or near-full occupancy soon after it opened.