The Mayor on 18th and Vine

Nary a post in May. Let’s get this blog back on track, starting with the mayor.

My May was monopolized with putting together the new Jam, hitting the streets now. It’s a special issue, marking the publication’s thirtieth year. As editor, I decided to celebrate by looking not back but ahead and asking this question: What is the future of jazz in Kansas City?

Articles quiz Mayor Sly James on the future of 18th and Vine; Cheptoo Kositany-Buckner on the American Jazz Museum; John Scott and Gerald Dunn on jazz clubs; Dan Thomas and Bill McKemy on jazz education; and Angela Hagnebach and Hermon Mehari for a pair of perspectives from musicians.

You can download the issue from the Jazz Ambassadors web site here. Better yet, pick up a copy around town (12,000 of them are printed) for the cozy feel of slick paper between your fingers as you peruse.

Or here’s another alternative. Each week I’ll reprint one or two of the stories here, for wider distribution and because their only other online presence – a PDF – doesn’t show up in online search results like a well-scoured blog.

This week, a committee of the Kansas City Council is considering a $27.6 million bond proposal for improvements to the 18th and Vine district. Mayor James offers his perspective in the Jam interview, we’ll start with that article. This is going to be longer than a typical post, but since this is the blog’s first missive in a month, I’m not really taking up more of your last thirty days than I normally would.

Each article is accompanied by a photo of the subject reading Jam. I’ll post those, too.

*****

The 18th and Vine district is Kansas City jazz’s soul. It’s a district at the cusp of major changes. In April, ground was broken on construction of the nation’s seventh Major League Baseball Urban Youth Academy in Parade Park, directly behind the jazz and Negro Leagues museums. The next week, the city unveiled details of proposed district improvements totaling $27.6 million. And a new executive director is leading the district’s anchor, the American Jazz Museum, into its twentieth year. Jam sat down with Kansas City Mayor Sly James to discuss the future of 18th and Vine, starting with the MLB Urban Youth Academy. What is it?

 

MAYOR SLY JAMES: It is first and foremost going to be an opportunity to engage 600 to 1000 kids a year in baseball as a vehicle for a lot of different things. It will teach kids the skills needed to play baseball, and some who have talent will move higher than others. But all who are there will be in contact with people who know the game, know how to teach the game, and follow a basic philosophy that’s been promulgated by [Kansas City Royals General Manager] Dayton Moore and the way that he built the team. You’re looking for certain things and you’re teaching certain things, like team before self. Character is important. Leadership is important.

But also it’s going to be an opportunity for kids who might ordinarily just be hanging around to do something that’s conducted in a safe environment under the watchful eyes of adults and have fun doing it.

It will also provide some academic support. They’ll calculate the flight of a baseball over the wall and use baseball and statistics as a way of teaching math. There will be opportunities for kids to learn what it means to be a groundskeeper, what it means to be a concessionaire. You want to be a broadcaster? Go up and broadcast this game. But the main thing is that it is going to use baseball to improve the lives of urban kids in a way that hasn’t been done.

The physical layout will consist of two large fields, one a championship field – the fences, I think, will be 400 feet to center, some big alleys – a little league field and a softball field. And then a building where instruction can take place during twelve months of the year with an infield, batting cages, pitching cages, and classrooms. The whole operation will be operated by the Royals as a low level minor league type of a deal. They’ll pay for it for twenty years and run it like they run their team.

I’m really excited about this for a number of reasons. What it does for kids in this community is huge. We know from our summer programming that when kids are engaged, juvenile crime and victimization goes down 18 per cent. We also know that kids, when given an opportunity to do something positive, will take it.

What we’re doing is putting a bunch of kids in the area of 18th and Vine, which means they’re going to be there with their parents. There will be people from different parts of the city and the region coming in to play games at 18th and Vine. 18th and Vine should have more foot traffic. Hopefully, retail will spring up organically in order to satisfy some of the foot traffic. There will be people who are in the Negro Leagues museum and in the jazz museum, expanding the reach of those two places. Bringing people to the area means there’s going to be more exposure of the assets in the area.

The next phase is more assets need to be in the area. We need more rooftops. We need more retail. We need more eateries. If I could, I’d probably go down there and try to get me a space and get a little ice cream stand that’s open up on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays in the summer and sell tons of ice cream to kids who are out there playing ball and waiting for games to be played. That’s the type of stuff that may come about.

There are also other things that are going on, and this is in conjunction with a different plan [the proposed $27.6 million in improvements]. There will be lots of discussion about what that should look like in the coming weeks, how do we make 18th and Vine more viable and live up to the history and tradition.

Last but not least, I think there is something in the works to stop having the Gem Theater be dark for three-fourths of the year. It’s a great venue and we don’t have enough activity there. There’s been conversations about a contract with some entertainers who would fill that on an ongoing basis. That’s not finished yet, but it’s something that I hope gets finished soon.

JAM: With the baseball academy attracting more people, proposed improvements in the area, and the Crossroads area growing towards the east, are we starting to see more of an alignment of the district with the rest of the city?

MAYOR JAMES: That’s the goal. That’s the articulated and tangible goal of connecting east Crossroads to 18th and Vine in a seamless way.

The problem that we have is that along 18th Street it gets kind of quasi-industrial, not very inviting. Lots of concrete, the overpass, things that don't necessarily say, hey, we’re pretty, come see us. So we’re looking at some options to make changes there.

Early on I did a Mayor’s Institute of City Design with Charleston Mayor Joe Riley. When you do that, you select an area of the city that you’d like to examine and talk about and have some input on in terms of changing what it is. The area I selected was 18th and Vine.

The biggest thing that came out of that was to get more people down there as frequently as possible, for a couple of different reasons. Number one, the more people you have down there, the more activity that will be generated and the more incentive there will be for people, even on a pop-up basis or a food truck basis, to create economic activity. Then you will have incentive to increase that economic activity by connecting to the east Crossroads. You also generate more buzz.

Getting the urban youth baseball academy there brings more people down. The next step is working with the Downtown Council to get more people down on First Fridays and those types of things, so we can start that constant flow. If you have that constant and you’re a resident down there and you see every week there’s an additional 2000 people walking on the streets of 18th and Vine, and you’ve got an idea for shakes and ice cream or hamburgers and hot dogs, or bandaids and cigarettes, whatever it is you want to sell, now all of a sudden you’re saying, this might be viable. How about a coffee shop? Anything. Just get some retail activity down there so that you’re always generating activity on the street.

But that also requires that we continue to build out housing. We have to have the rooftops in order to be sustainable for those times when people aren’t there. If I live in the area and there’s not a coffee shop on the street, then I’m going someplace else for my coffee. If there is a coffee shop, then me and the other people who live in the same area might bump into each other there, have a conversation. Now we’re talking neighborhood. Now we’re talking cohesiveness. When you have people come together as neighbors in a cohesive way, good things happen. That’s what we’re shooting for. That’s the plan and the target.

JAM: When the improvements proposal was first discussed last year, you expressed concerns, perhaps about what kind of private funding it would leverage.

MAYOR JAMES: My concern was simply this, and it remains a concern regardless of what project it is: having money is not a plan. Have a plan and then figure out how to finance it. What we had was money but no real plan. It doesn’t make any sense to have money out there and say, we’re going to use this to help 18th and Vine, or we’re going to use it to help Brookside, or anything else. What are you going to do with it? Is this best idea? Who’s vetting this? What are you going to need? Is this sustainable on its own down the road, or is this something that’s going to be a one-shot wonder? All of those things need to be answered and that planning is still in the process.

I want to separate two things. Number one, I want to separate my desire to see 18th and Vine completed in a way that is responsible, that creates jobs and activity, and brings it back to something approaching its original glory. I want to see that happen. But I am going to always be critical of the way we get there in order to make sure that we’re being efficient and that we’re actually using money to accomplish the goals that we need as opposed to shooting at a false target.

When we get the planning done, and it becomes clear what the money is going to be used for, how it needs to be allocated, then I’m for it. But until there is a complete plan and it’s been vetted and everybody is on board, I’m going to reserve some judgement on it, which is totally different than the overall goal of seeing the improvements. That’s not going to change. This is something that Councilman Reed has been championing and, although I agree with the ultimate goal, I want to see more meat on the bones before I join.

JAM: Do you have a reaction to the specific projects that were announced?

MAYOR JAMES: I don’t have a reaction to specific projects. My reaction to any project of this type and scope is, is it catalytic and is it sustainable? I don’t want to do something where in five years it’s going to be, hey, we need another ten million dollars or, hey, we need to do something different here because it’s not working. I want to see all of that taken care of on the front end. Sustainability is huge and being catalytic is huge. We want things that cause other things to happen. We want things that say to people outside, look what’s happening here, maybe I ought to join. Then you’re having the influx of private money that’s going to supplement it and make it a much more vibrant area.

I look at the money coming from the city as a point of leverage. We need to leverage those dollars into other things that bring in private investment because that’s how you’re going to build wealth in the community. That’s how you’re going to build minority businesses and minority pride in a minority neighborhood that does the things that it used to do. Those are my goals.

JAM: Is it appropriate for the jazz museum to continue to receive substantial funding from the city?

MAYOR JAMES: Depends on what you mean by substantial. I do think it’s appropriate for us to ask the jazz museum, when are you going to be able to live without it? The jazz museum is in the same building as the Negro Leagues museum. They’ve been heading in different directions financially. Why?

There’s new leadership at the jazz museum in Cheptoo. I have a heck of a lot of faith in that lady. I think she is going to turn things around. So my position basically would be, let’s not hamper her ability to turn it around by making her budgetary problems so severe that’s all she’s able to concentrate on.

However, there has to be an understanding that, hey, we expect you to be able to be self-sustaining at some point, so what are you doing to work in that direction? I think that’s a fair thing to do. It’s a fair thing to do with Negro Leagues and I think they’ve done it. So if one can do it, the other can.

That’s especially true now that I think there’s going to be more people in that area. There will be a lot more foot traffic in that building when the the urban youth baseball academy starts. It’ll be a lot of kids going to the Negro Leagues museum, but it’ll be a lot of adults there with those kids who will want to see both museums. It’s an opportunity to do some cross-marketing. It’s an opportunity to make some sales that may not have been made. It’s an opportunity to do programming. When you know there’s going to be big crowds, you draw people in. There’s all sorts of opportunities there. I have every belief that Cheptoo will recognize those opportunities and seize on them. I know she’s planning a jazz festival for next year. That’s marvelous and a good thing to do.

JAM: Do you like to get out and hear jazz?

MAYOR JAMES: Oh yeah, I do.

JAM: Who do you like to hear?

MAYOR JAMES: Bobby Watson. I’ve asked Bobby Watson to play at two states of the city. I love going to 12th Street Jump. I like Hermon Mehari. I love Joe Cartwright. I think he’s a fabulous pianist. One of my favorite all-time musicians, period, is Pat Metheny. I love Pat Metheny. There’s a lot of good musicians. I also like blues, so I listen to a lot of blues.

JAM: Is there anything you’d like to add in conclusion?

MAYOR JAMES: I think we’re looking at the beginning of a renaissance at 18th and Vine, which is why I want to make sure it’s done right. I want to make sure that as we’re rolling this out, it’s being done in such a way that it will excite people and engage them and cause them to come down, and keep that spirit growing. It’s all at our fingertips. When it happens, it’s going to explode and it’s going to be a vibrant area. I’m also keen on the economic activity phase because it should be an economic center in the community. It’s not functioning quite at that level yet but we have an opportunity to shape it in a way that it will.

27.6 Mil for 18th and Vine

Probably the earliest efforts to build a jazz hall of fame in Kansas City date to 1969. That group envisioned it near 12th and The Paseo. In 1997, following decades of fits and starts, feints and fights, the jazz museum opened, along with the Negro Leagues museum, the Black Archives and a rebuilt Gem Theater, at a cost of $32 million. The city has contributed ongoing support in the decades since, and rightly so. The Kansas City Museum and Liberty Memorial receive annual budget dollars, so why shouldn’t museums honoring this city’s greatest contributions to the world?

Last week, the city announced plans to consider, from their official press release (here), a “bond-funding commitment of $27,637,162” for the district. Never mind that the figure originally quoted last year for the district was $7 million, then leapt to $18 million in January, and is now hovering at 27.6 (skyrocketing numbers with each public pronouncement is a questionable strategy). Instead consider that the city shovels $12 to $15 million into the Power and Light district every year. By comparison, a one time shot-in-the-arm of $27.6 million to 18th and Vine sounds fair.

The proposal. It can be viewed or downloaded as a PDF here.

Importantly, the list of projects paves some major historic district holes. Three in particular stand out.

New, refurbished and nicely faked facades (towards Woodland) have lined most of 18th Street for two decades. More recently, refurbished homes and apartments have made Highland Street surrounding the Mutual Musicians Foundation wonderfully more enticing. But Vine between 18th and 19th streets has remained the jazz district’s ghost town. That block, boasting the remains of the Cherry Blossom night club and the first black-owned auto dealership in the United States, is arguably one the most significant to 20th century culture. Yet discussion when the new district proposal was first announced was to tear down history in favor of building something deemed more useful, maybe a parking garage.

The original $7 million proposal included $160,000 for demolition. The $18 million version included, per a Kansas City Star article, “$5.3 million to replace dangerous buildings on Vine Street with mixed-use development.” Sanity appears to have prevailed. The new plan, according to the official document, includes $4,960,461 for “stabilization of facades of historic buildings in the 1800 block of Vine Street to prepare the area for construction of new infill development. The facades of historic buildings at 1814, 1816, 1820 and 1822 Vine St. are projected to be preserved and incorporated into this project.” The Cherry Blossom facade stands at 1822 Vine.

The proposal also includes $4,200,000 in public money (up from $1 million in the first two proposals), to be matched with $4 million in private funding and in-kind services, for the Buck O'Neil Education and Research Center, more commonly recognized as the Paseo YMCA. Specifically, the money is to “construct a north entrance including a lobby, elevator, stair tower, and renovation of the Education and Center.”

The charter creating the Negro Baseball Leagues was signed there on February 20th, 1920. This building is a Kansas City historical monument. Completing its renovation and reopening it to the public are key priorities of any historic district funding. This city needs to be celebrating in there on February 20th, 2020.

This map illustrating the projects can be downloaded here.

A new parking lot is in the proposal, between Lydia and Grove streets (Grove is between Lydia and The Paseo) on the south side of 18th Street. But, more importantly, the proposal includes $3,043,350 to “enhance street and pedestrian lighting and bump outs on 18th Street from Lydia parking lot to Attucks School. Provide connection between Bruce R. Watkins overpass and the historic 18th and Vine district.”

The 18th and Vine district will never thrive as an oasis surrounded by an urban moat. It must connect in a welcoming way to the Crossroads area. People who know the area and who are comfortable in the city recognize there’s nothing to fear. But that excludes a substantial number of area residents. The surrounding corridor looks more inviting than it did twenty years ago but it’s not inviting enough. Few improvements will boost 18th and Vine more than extending its welcome mat at least to the Bruce R. Watkins overpass.

Those are the most critical projects. Also in the proposal:

$1,743,194 for the American Jazz Museum for “design and construction of Blue Room expansion and new café, construction of exhibit and lobby improvements, and equipment upgrades for the Gem Theater.”

$432,109 for “repurposing of the existing structure located at the north side of the American Jazz Museum to allow for a new fully equipped stage for summer music events.” This one also includes $7 million in private funding. Its title calls this an outdoor amphitheater.

$747,241 to “move Horace Peterson 18th and Vine Visitor’s Center from 18th Street museums building into north space of Archives facility.”

$140,000 to the Mutual Musicians Foundation to “install a wheelchair lift and new masonry walls along the historic building.”

$1,832,016 in city funds plus $1,150,000 in private funding for a “public-private partnership for the design and construction of the KC Friends of Alvin Ailey facility, a multipurpose space with class space and offices” at 1714 E. 18th St. That’s between the Kansas City Call building and the Boone Theater.

$1,229,781 for “rehabilitation of Kansas City’s Historic Boone Theatre.”

$405,000 for “replacement of building systems” in the Lincoln Building.

$5,651,587 for a “public-private partnership for the design and construction of a new retail building with upper-floor market rate housing and office space.” The map accompanying the proposal shows this development fronting the south side of 18th Street between The Paseo and Vine Street, then wrapping around the corner and a bit up Vine.

$105,000 for “construction of a west doorway with enclosed patio for existing restaurant space” at 18th and The Paseo, outside the building where a couple of restaurants have come and gone.

$1,028,821 to “design and construct fountain on City property at the southeast and southwest intersections of 18th Street and The Paseo.”

$1,182,602 for “construction of lighted, landscaped lot on 19th Street between Lydia and Grove Streets.” The project map actually shows this lot extending from 19th to 18th streets.

Finally, management and administration is broken into multiple buckets such as planning, historic preservation, marketing, project management, and maintenance. But it boils down to $2,962,000 for management and administration.

All the Pieces

The difference in body language caught my attention first.

I sat in a meeting early this summer, in a conference room near 18th and Vine, that included several staff members from the American Jazz Museum. I noticed the way one sat angled in his chair, the edge in a voice when one spoke, the wayward gaze of another. We’ve all sat through gatherings on a bad day. This was different. There was an overarching sense of disgruntlement and defiance, not with the topic at hand but with something else.

Two months later, I sat down to talk with the new interim CEO of the museum for a Q and A in the next issue of Jam magazine. As I walked through the jazz museum offices, I was struck by a fresh feel of excitement, animation, a spark not present before. The difference was palpable. The body language had changed.

That’s just one of the changes Ralph Reid is shepherding through the American Jazz Museum. Following 35 years at Sprint, retiring as Vice President for Corporate Responsibility and President of the Sprint Foundation, Reid brings unique experience and a new outlook. He’s focused on how the museum’s brand is perceived, a key to the success of any corporate behemoth or civic institution. And his words suggest a comprehensive vision, of recognizing the museum’s role in selling the complete 18th and Vine district.

That’s especially important following last week’s announcement at the Negro Leagues Museum. The museums’ back yard is about to change. In a joint venture between the Kansas City Royals, Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association, the country’s seventh MLB Urban Youth Academy will be built in Parade Park. From Mayor Sly James’s website (here):

The Academy and park improvements will be developed in two phases:

•  Phase I includes two full-size baseball fields, including one with permanent and portable bleachers for tournament play; two youth baseball-softball fields; a half-mile walking trail with views of the baseball and softball diamonds; relocated basketball courts; relocated and renovated tennis courts, and a new playground near the community center.

•  Phase II includes the indoor training facility with a turf infield, batting cages, pitching mounds, restrooms and concession facilities for the diamonds; a Great Lawn that will serve as a front yard for the Academy and as a shared event space, and additional parking.

Here’s the layout, with the museums highlighted in yellow (clicking on the image should open a larger view):

Phase 1 is scheduled to be completed in a year. Fundraising continues for phase 2 with the hopes that the training facility will be standing a year later.

This development brings with it the potential to transform the 18th and Vine district. The district never did and never will thrive on jazz alone. In the 1930s, jazz was the soundtrack to vice. It needs a new companion.

But this district faces special challenges. I’ve quoted often from a 1979 study commissioned by the Black Economic Union and funded by the Ford Foundation which said, in part, that even then people feared coming into the area. The city needs to address an image ingrained for decades and underscored just this past Sunday when, at 2:40 a.m., four people were shot at 18th and Highland, one seriously (news reports here and here). These incidents must end. This isn’t The Plaza where stories of woebegone youth surprise. This is what too many people anticipate here, so they don’t come. The five o’clock news cannot open with reports from the district of “an uptick in crime” and a resident saying, “This is a horrible street to live on” while you ask parents to send their kids to play baseball in the neighborhood park.

Because the possibilities here are incredible.

If the city can stymie the stories of violence, the coming of the beloved and Snow White-sweet Royals, with Major League Baseball, can bestow the district with equivalent of the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. They can draw a new audience. Will it be a large enough crowd to entice new restaurants and shops? That’s the hope.

I suspect Mayor James has been pushing for East Crossroads development incentives in part because this revitalization is coming. That’s another element necessary to begin to dispel languishing fears: the district needs a not-so-scary-to-nonurbanites connection to the rest of the city.

I’m aware of two clubs which at least sometimes book jazz being courted to East Crossroads. Could this city, in a few years, boast of Green Lady Lounge accompanied by some new jazz cohorts jamming in an area that leads to an 18th and Vine district with The Blue Room, the Mutual Musicians Foundation broadcasting its new radio station and a Major League Baseball facility training future major leaguers? Many discussions are preliminary. Money needs to be raised. So much could yet fall elsewhere or simply fall apart. But today, all of the critical pieces are dangling for that vision to be a possibility.

The vision. I spoke with Ralph Reid just two weeks after he took over leadership of the American Jazz Museum. He was uncomfortable attaching the word vision to his ideas and plans. Yet, Reid’s Sprint experience in community outreach and his time spent on the boards of other major not-for-profit organizations brings the experience and vision needed at the jazz museum during a time of district transitions. He’s another critical piece.

A few weeks ago, on KCPT’s Kansas City Week in Review, I watched as the panelists speculated on whether Ralph Reid might consider staying on at the museum past his designated interim role. I thought, I know the answer to that. I asked him that question earlier in the week. And the answer is…

…in the next issue of Jam, available around town starting later this week.

(I can be such a tease.)

Blueprints and Lost Clarinets

It’s pure coincidence. The Star ran a pair of articles examining the languishing development of 18th and Vine and the American Jazz Museum, 25 years after their announcement. Meanwhile, I was posting a brochure detailing the museum promised us at that time.

The Star’s evaluations of the district ranged from unflattering to downright appalling. But probably most appalling was the anecdote opening the second article:

“Back in 2004, the Woody Herman Society lent the jazz great’s clarinet and a few other things to the American Jazz Museum. But when it came time to return the stuff, the museum staff came up empty.

“It took three years to find the clarinet.

“Herman’s lifetime achievement Grammy award? Missing even longer, although museum staff eventually tracked it down in 2012 after the Woody Herman Society filed a police report and threatened a lawsuit.”

Later, the article notes: “...The American Jazz Museum is a signature institution that needs more revenue if it’s going to improve its own exhibits and programs.”

And when looking to improve those exhibits, don’t use the Woody Herman Society as a reference. I’ve never run a museum. But I can’t imagine that losing loaned historic artifacts is recommended for building donor confidence or winning accreditation.

Yet, disturbing as it is, that tale stands as but one impediment to the museum’s and the district’s growth. The articles touch on what I’ve maintained for decades is the district’s greatest hurdle: its isolation.

In 1987, two years before these articles begin, I was shown plans for the area. I had just taken over as chairman of the Kansas City Jazz Commission, and the then-director of the Black Economic Union (BEU) was recruiting my support.

In the BEU’s office, blueprints covered a table. These were the plans BEU was pursuing to redevelop 18th and Vine. The building known today as the Boone Theater (and then as the Armory building) and the Mutual Musicians Foundation were cornerstones. Structures along 18th Street, eventually torn down to accommodate the museums, would have mostly remained. New buildings would fill long-empty lots at 18th and The Paseo and at 18th and Woodland. Housing would dot but largely surround the core district.

It was a beautiful vision. But the vision was an oasis ringed by blight.

You cannot surround Disneyland with a moat and expect it to thrive. I saw plans for a magnificent island edged by blocks of decay. Driving through streets of industrial buildings and old structures ripe for demolition would not constitute a warm welcome. Surrounding neighborhoods were worse then, more dilapidated, before Bruce R. Watkins Expressway lapped 18th Street, removing some of the rot, and before anyone imagined the Crossroads as an artsy/restraunty district.

Except for people who already knew the area, I predicted that day, few would come.

Oh, I was told, there were plans for more housing and more businesses to ring the district, beyond what I saw in the drawings on that table. But there weren’t more plans. There were unrealistic dreams.

It was obvious that 18th and Vine needed to connect with the rest of the city. Only then could the district anticipate a critical mass, a daily density of people needed for restaurants and retail to prosper.

18th and Vine’s planners needed it to be a core cultural and retail area surrounded by ongoing waves of homes and shops. That’s the Plaza. That’s Brookside. That’s Prairie Village. That’s Leawood’s Town Center.

That was 18th and Vine in the 1930s. And that’s what, in the 1960s, had decayed beyond revival and was removed through urban renewal.

18th and Vine once thrived with homes and movie theaters and service stations and bars and doctors and lawyers and accountants and undertakers and the offices of the Kansas City Monarchs. Jazz was an element that helped build a unique environment at a unique time. But so was gambling and vice and the confinements of segregation.

It’s not coming back.

Today, beautiful new homes along Highland Street are offset by the embarrassment of historic shambles a block over on Vine.

According to The Star’s articles, the Jazz Museum took in just $159,000 on admissions in its last fiscal year. At $10 per adult, less for children, that suggests 20,000, maybe 25,000 people paid to tour the museum last year. That’s the number of people they need to be drawing in one day at their annual festival.

But you can’t put Disneyland in a moat.

How inviting is it to drive past the shell of a building with the word Asylum rising from its roof? That’s the historic Wheatley-Provident hospital, and thank God it’s still standing. But it was last used as a haunted house in the 1990s. Two decades later it’s still branded with Asylum. Doesn’t anyone recognize the image conveyed? Doesn’t anyone understand how that hurts?

It’s just one example.

It’s critical that 18th and Vine and the American history captured in that district survive. But jazz and Negro Leagues baseball alone cannot carry the district. They never did. The area still needs to connect with the city. In isolation, I don’t know how it grows the traffic necessary to thrive.

Twenty five years later, nobody has figured out how to draw people from all of those other waves of homes in the metropolitan area to a museum that can’t find the historic artifacts loaned to it.

That last sentence holds a heckuva lot of issues to overcome.

The Goat

“The tourist is backpacking through the highlands of Scotland, and he stops in a pub to get a drink. The only people in there are a bartender and an old man nursing a beer. He orders a pint and they sit in silence for awhile.

“Suddenly, the old man turns to him and says, ‘Y’See this bar? I built this bar with my bare hands. I found the finest wood in the county, gave it more love and care than my own child. But do they call me MacGregor the bar builder? No, no….’

“He points out the window. ‘Y’See that stone wall out there? I built that stone wall with my bare hands. I found every stone, placed them just so for the rain and the cold. But do they call me MacGregor the stone wall builder? No, no….’

“He points out the other window. ‘Y’See the pier on the lake out there? I built that pier with my bare hands. I drove the pilings against the tide and the sand, plank by plank. But do they call me MacGregor the pier builder? No, no…

“‘But you [bleep] one goat….’”

– Transcribed from a TED Talk by Andrew Stanton, available at Ted.com.

*****

“To attract people, the leaders of a jazz effort in the Armory must face the issue of the safety reputation of the 18th and Vine area. Half of the white population and nearly three-quarters of the black, are nervous about the assumed dangers of the neighborhood; our researchers noted that white patrons interviewed at Gates’ and Bryant’s, who had come into the neighborhood mid-day, were nervous about coming back at night....”

— From a study on reuses of the Armory Building at 18th and Highland (more popularly known as the Boone Theater), conducted for the Black Economic Union in 1979.

*****

Today, just up Highland Street from the Armory building, sit beautiful houses. They line the road across from the Mutual Musicians Foundation, the last of the homes that were once integral to the 18th and Vine District. They have been refurbished for rent, as has the Rochester Hotel next door to the Foundation.

For too long, decrepit surroundings reinforced too many visitors’ fears of this inner city district. Appearances supported perceptions dating back decades. I would tell my suburban Johnson County neighbors I was headed down to the district to enjoy a show at The Blue Room, or at The Gem, or the late night jam at the Foundation. They openly wondered if I would be safe. And if I coaxed a suburban friend to join me, they would nervously survey the surroundings before stepping into the Foundation. Only then would the magic take over.

But not anymore. Now, these lovely homes and rentals are the surroundings a National Historic Landmark deserves.

Meanwhile, along 18th Street, everything has changed on the north side of the block since that 1979 report. Museums and modern offices and apartments have replaced old buildings and ruins that even locals described as the ghetto. Crowds fill The Blue Room, at the corner of 18th and Vine, nearly every weekend night. I estimate over 7000 people packed the grounds behind the museums for the Rhythm and Ribs festival two years ago.

Fans filling the Foundation for an overnight jam tell their friends about the welcome feel of the neighborhood. People visiting The Blue Room one evening, or a concert at The Gem, or the festival, tell coworkers and family about a wonderful night and how glad they are that they went.

That’s how it’s done. That’s how, over time, to change perceptions ingrained for decades. Perceptions can evolve, slowly, through good experiences and good news.

*****

From KCTV5.com on Saturday, September 28, 2013:

“Four people are in the hospital after an early morning shooting.

“The shooting took place about 4:20 a.m. at 19th Street and Highland Avenue outside of the Mutual Musicians Foundation....

“Four people were shot and all were injured. Police said at least two of the four people suffered serious injuries.”

From The Kansas City Star on October 9:

“[A] victim told police that he was standing outside when a fight broke out. He said someone walked up, stuck a gun in his back and demanded ‘his stuff.’ When he said no, the gunman shot him in the chest and leg, the victim said.”

From The Kansas City Star on October 1:

“Besides wounding four people, two of them critically, the gunfire has city and jazz district officials rattled....

“Rickie Ward...lives across from the foundation in one of those restored houses, the one struck by the stray bullet....

“‘I’ve lived in the Jazz District 15 years,’ he said, ‘but I don’t know if I want to stay here anymore.’”

*****

“Were you down there?” a neighbor asked. “Are you okay?”

I wasn’t there.

“I knew it wasn’t safe. You’re not going back, are you?”

*****

Original perceptions are vividly reinforced.

People only know the goat.

What It Is, What It Was

The last tour in this blog, a few weeks back, ended at the corner of 18th and Vine. So let’s pick up there. But this time, look down the south side of 18th Street, east from Vine. In this 1940s photo, Matlaw’s clothing store (owned and operated by a white Jewish family) ocupies the corner space in the Lincoln building. Gazing down 18th, you see the Gem Theater and the Boone Theater.

Today, Danny’s Big Easy holds the space once filled by Matlaw’s. The cars parked along the street are newer. Otherwise, the view is remarkably similar.

And here’s the other side of 18th street in 1940, across from the Gem Theater.

Today, this view is remarkably different. All of the pictured buildings and businesses have been replaced by The American Jazz Museum / Negro Leagues Museum complex. Today, new construction lines the north side of 18th Street in the Historic District.

On May 4, 1930, the members of Musicians Local 627 lined up in front of their new union hall at 1823 Highland Street. Standing with Bennie Moten’s orchestra is their pianist, Bill Basie, and singer Jimmy Rushing.

All of the musicians in the 1930 photo are gone. But the photo fills the wall when you walk into that building today, the Mutual Musicians Foundation, where their music lives. The houses at the right are gone. But the Rochester Hotel at the left was recently remodeled and reopened as The Rochester at Highland Place, apartments for seniors.

Across the street, at 1824 Highland, stood this single family home in 1940.

Today, the house has been beautifully remodeled as a duplex.

Next door in 1940, at 1826 Highland, stood this house.

Today, it still stands, recently remodeled for rental. Note that what was an empty lot south of it in 1940 today is filled with a modern apartment building.

Images of Vine

This tour starts at Nineteenth and Vine.

This is the Roberts Building, at the northwest corner, in 1929. The white building at the right of the photo, on Vine Street, was the first auto dealership in America owned by a black man. A December 23, 1929 article in one of this city’s black newspapers (in 1929, Kansas City was home to the Call and the American) reported:

“That a negro business man has bought outright a substantial building on a 70-foot frontage at 1826-30 Vine street for a location for his company was considered an event of major importance in the business district in that vicinity and along nearby Eighteenth street. Homer Roberts of the Roberts Company, a motor car agency selling only to negroes, has done this. He bought last week a 2-story building from John T. Sears for $70,0000.

“The structure was erected last spring for occupancy of the Roberts Company. A 10-year lease written then included a purchase option, which was exercised last week. The lease called for an annual net rental of $3600.

“The Roberts Company handles about ten lines of cars, this being permitted by manufacturers because the selling field is limited to negroes. Fifty-four workers, all negroes, are employed by the company….

“The purchase of the business property is to have a holiday aspect. The deed will be given the buyer on Christmas eve.”

Ads promoted an Oldsmobile Six Coach for $1075 (“With its Fisher body, Dueo finish and Balloon tires it looks the part of a winner”), or a Rickenbacker for $1595 (“Speed! The fastest train between New York and St. Louis takes twenty three hours eleven minutes. Cannon Ball Baker drove a Six cylinder Rickenbacker in seventeen hours, thirteen minutes”).

Homer Roberts died in Chicago in 1952.

Today both buildings still stand, boarded in plywood painted red.

Next to the onetime auto dealership, at 1822-24 Vine, stands the facade of the second most historic jazz structure in Kansas City, the Eblon Theater, later the Cherry Blossom nightclub. I wrote about it here.

The night Kansas City saxophonists took down Coleman Hawkins in an infamous jam session at the Cherry Blossom began when Hawkins walked across the street for his horn, to the hotel where he and Fletcher Henderson’s visiting orchestra were staying, and where visiting bands commonly stayed, the Booker T.

This is the Booker T Hotel, at 1821 Vine, in 1936.

This is the site of the Booker T today, a parking lot. The building at the left of the 1936 photo still stands.

Cross back to the west side of Vine. Two houses stood next to the Eblon / Cherry Blossom. From 1940, here is the house at 1818 Vine.

Today, an empty lot sits next to the Cherry Blossom facade. The building at 1816 Vine still stands. The DeLuxe sign on it is a remnant of when this block served as a backdrop for Robert Altman’s film, Kansas City.

An all-black fire company, founded in 1890, was stationed at Engine House No. 11. Here it is, at 1812 Vine, in the 1920s. This company rescued victims of Kansas City floods in 1903 and 1909, and helped fight the 1900 fire that claimed Kansas City’s convention hall. In 1931 the company moved to a larger facility at 20th and Vine. This building reopened as a service station in 1935.

Today, the site is a gravel lot.

At the northwest corner of Eighteenth and Vine stood Fox’s Tavern, in this undated photo.

Today you’ll find a parking lot there. And a sign welcoming you to the 18th and Vine Historic District.

Bobby Watson's 18th and Vine Big Band at The Blue Room

About a month and a half ago, when they performed with The Kansas City Symphony, they wore tuxedos. This time, Bobby said, they were wearing their slippers.

I didn’t actually see anybody in slippers at The Blue Room last Saturday night. But with Bobby Watson’s 18th and Vine Big Band, I saw a stage filled with a who’s who selection of some of Kansas City’s best jazz musicians. I saw jazz legend Joe Chambers play vibes then drums. And I heard Bobby Watson swing a big band to rival any since Basie left town.

Face it: When you look over a stage and see musicians like Horace Washington, Steve Lambert, Charles Perkins, Gerald Dunn, Jason Goudeau, Hermon Mehari, Al Pearson, Roger Wilder, Bob Bowman, Ryan Lee – I’m not naming everybody – and Bobby Watson out front, you’re seeing a premiere mix of young and veteran Kansas City jazz talent in 2013.

You’re about to hear the big band Bobby assembled to play with the Symphony.

And then they start swinging a packed Blue Room with Kerry Strayer’s arrangement of Satin Doll.

Follow that with a version of Corner Pocket that may make you wonder if the roof’s coming off.

And that’s just the appetizer, because then Joe Chambers joins the band.

If you’re sorry you missed it, well, you should be.

But at least I can show you how a bit of how it looked. Below are photos from last Saturday night at The Blue Room with Bobby Watson’s 18th and Vine Big Band. As always, clicking on a shot should open a larger version of it.

Bobby Watson with his 18th and Vine Big Band, plus Joe Chambers on vibes

Joe Chambers

Bobby Watson

Charles Perkins

Al Pearson

Gerald Dunn

Hermon Mehari

The 18th and Vine Big Band

Watching Joe Chambers solo

Bobby Watson's 18th and Vine Big Band

Three Tales

It must have been the mid 1970s, because I started driving in 1973 and it wasn’t long after that.

The family business stood on Locust, just south of 18th Street. I worked there that summer. One afternoon, I drove a customer back to his business, on 18th Street between Vine and Highland.

I pulled the car up to a worn door, paint peeling from it, of an old brick building. Before stepping out of the car, the man turned to me in his seat and said, “You’ve heard of the ghetto, son? This is the ghetto.”

I had heard of the nation’s ghettos. I’d heard talk of them on TV, on The CBS Evening News, at dinner time in our suburban home. I’d wondered if Kansas City had one and where it was.

I didn’t know Kansas City’s heritage then. The closest our family came to jazz was listening to Frank Sinatra on 8-track tapes in the Buick, our nicer car.

All I knew was that a man who worked in an old building on 18th Street between Vine and Highland, in the mid 1970s, identified his neighborhood as the ghetto.

I’d ridden through there dozens of times, going to the ballpark on Brooklyn, to see the A’s play, or the Chiefs, or to eat at Arthur Bryant’s.

I never realized that was the ghetto.

*****

It was 1983 or 1984 and I was three or four years out of college. A friend I’d attended high school with now sold records at Penny Lane in Westport. He’d introduced me to Kansas City jazz. He’d sold me albums by Count Basie and Charlie Parker and Big Joe Turner. He steered me towards the classic Basie and Big Joe, not their newer recordings on the Pablo label. Those, he advised me, weren’t nearly as good.

I was attending the first or second 18th and Vine Heritage Festival one Saturday afternoon, walking down 18th Street, blocked off from The Paseo to Woodland, from stage to stage. My friend, who sold records, saw me and grabbed my arm. “Come with me,” he said.

We walked over to Highland Street then up to 1823 and into what I would later learn was the Mutual Musicians Foundation. There, on a chair on stage, sat Big Joe Turner. I worked my way up front, through the crowd, and stood an arm’s length away from Big Joe. I listened, awed, while Big Joe Turner shouted the blues.

I returned to the Mutual Musicians Foundation repeatedly through the 1980s. That decade, more than once, on a summer afternoon or evening, a woman might lean out from a second or third floor window of the Rochester Hotel, next door to the Foundation, and ask me if I wanted to come up for a good time.

People lived in the houses across the street from the Foundation and the Rochester then. Older people, who had probably lived there forever. Over time, they moved out, or died, I’m not sure which. Plywood replaced the houses’ windows and doors. Surely, eventually, those houses would fall down.

*****

I’d heard the homes were nearing completion. Then, last Thursday, a story on them spanned the front page of The Star. So I went to see for myself.

The 18th and Vine district once thrived through a mix of businesses and homes. A smattering of churches attests to the residential. Churches generally don’t locate where you only find music and booze. And the Mutual Musicians Foundation building itself was originally either a duplex or apartments (I’ve seen references to both).

I parked on Highland at 18th Street and walked south, past a church. About midway up the block, I stopped.

Music flowed from the Mutual Musicians Foundation. Inside, a band was rehearsing. Across the street I heard hammering and sawing. And I stood and gazed at beautiful homes. Rebuilt, quaint, nearly ready to rent. 

Three of the houses on Highland, as a workman walks by.

It’s not the Rochester Hotel next to the Foundation anymore. A new sign identifies the building as The Rochester at Highland Place. An enclosed staircase has been added to the north side. This building looks clean, inviting, a blue awning shading each new window. A banner facing Highland proclaims, “Your Search Is Over! Apartments at Highland Place.”

The Rochester, left, and the Mutual Musicians Foundation, from the porch of one of the houses.

Just to the south, wrapping the corner of 19th and Highland, stand more newer and occupied apartments. And directly across 19th Street, where Highland dead ends, sits a modern residential community.

It’s a piece of the 18th and Vine District. There’s still work to do in the district. Historic Vine Street remains an embarrassment.

But this piece is bustling with music and life. People will come to the Foundation for music. People will live here, too, in enviable homes and apartments. It’s a piece of the district, presumably, much as it thrived long before I knew it.

Nobody will lean from these windows.

This is not the ghetto.

They Changed the Mutual Musicians Foundation

When you stepped into the Mutual Musicians Foundation, history embraced you.

You first see, looming over the lobby, larger than you ever imagined it really was, the 1930 portrait of members of Musicians Local 627 lined up before this building. There’s Bennie Moten. There’s Bill Basie. There’s little Jimmy Rushing. This is our version of the more widely known A Great Day in Harlem. But ours came first.

You stepped into the first floor’s main room, and you were engulfed by photos, clustering all walls, of the musicians who made this building unique. You saw their faces and felt decades of their presence. You understood that you were standing, exactly, where Count Basie stood, where Lester Young played, where Mary Lou Williams socialized, where Ben Webster enjoyed a drink. You’d be surprised if the ghost of Bennie Moten tapped your shoulder here, but it wouldn’t be unexpected.

You understood you were welcome in the space some of history’s greatest jazz musicians created. It was a feeling unlike any other, at least in Kansas City.  You knew otherwise, yet every sense suggested you had stepped out of the 21st century.

Not anymore.

The lobby photo remains. But the photos filling the downstairs walls are gone. They have been moved upstairs, where they’ve lost the cluster, accessibility and overwhelming intimacy they enjoyed for decades downstairs.

They have been replaced by interpretive panels.

Each of the three new panels reproduces select photos from the Foundation’s collection, with more significant musicians pictured individually. A few paragraphs of well-written history expand on the time period the panel covers. Photos and copy connect through swirls of names.

Why the change? Mutual Musicians Foundation (MMF) Vice President Anita Dixon explained:

The MMF is facing new times, new directions and was questioning whether the status quo was serving us. We came to the conclusion that it was not. We then consulted on several levels (both local and national) as to what would tell the story of the MMF through the eyes of the community from which it organically grew.

Local 627 was not just the place to play. It was a gathering place for children studying music, church groups with their box lunches and socials and many other things that Basie, Mary Lou and those we revere and love had much to do with. We wanted the story of the MMF to come through and the panels represent the entire picture of what happened.

Anita is a dear friend who I respect tremendously. And I understand when she further explains that the Board wanted panels to relate the history to the visitors who still crowd the Foundation for Friday and Saturday night jam sessions. And they did not just want to tell the history, but to portray it in the context of the African American community where the Foundation grew.

But these interpretive panels are the wrong solution.

They change the basic character of the Foundation. You’re no longer stepping into a cacophony of photos. You no longer feel like you’re experiencing a space as Prez and Ben and Mary Lou knew it. The feeling, the magic, of stepping out of the 21st century is gone. Now, you’re standing among three big, modern interpretive panels.

They were not necessary to achieve the Board’s goals. Just three of the photos which were already hanging, one per wall, could have been moved to accommodate the new historic copy. Tags identifying faces in the photos would have always been welcome. Those simple updates would have conveyed as much information as the interpretive panels reveal, but in a way that would have made you look for it a little bit, a way where it would have stuck with you more.

More than that, just walk outside. Look at the houses and hotel surrounding the Foundation. They’re being rebuilt. As soon as the construction is complete, stepping into the neighborhood will provide context to the kind of life which surrounded this landmark. Details and elaboration on the Foundation’s walls, done right, are fine. Experiencing the restored neighborhood will be better.

Part of the Foundation’s magic is that it is not a museum (“We are still not a museum,” Anita declares). It is living, thriving history. If interpretive panels providing historic context for 18th and Vine are needed, someone should be taking that up with the museum down the block and around the corner.

The Foundation’s new panels have been up for several weeks. But they will be officially unveiled at a ceremony this Friday, August 24th, at 2 p.m. at the Mutual Musicians Foundation at 1823 Highland.

Urban Renewal and 18th and Vine

As early as the 1930s, Kansas City Realtor, the publication of the Kansas City Real Estate Board, decried the effects of blight on property values in the Central Business District. The federal Housing Acts of 1949 and 1954 supplied funding to identify blighted areas, acquire and clear the properties, then redevelop the areas with public housing. 1954’s Housing Act termed this process “urban renewal.”

Kansas City became so good at urban renewal that in 1958, Look magazine, in its article, City Honored for Face Lift, awarded us its Community Home Achievement Award, citing our redevelopment of slum areas. In 1959, the American Institute of Architects awarded the Kansas City chapter its Citation of Honor Award, at that time given in just 15 instances over 102 years, for its plan to revitalize downtown.

So just what was it we did so well?

18 urban renewal projects, starting with North Side (1953 - 1960, 6.6 acres, along Main Street between Sixth and Ninth Streets), continuing with Attucks (1955 - 1965, 54.2 acres, from Truman Road to 18th Street and Woodland to Brooklyn, displacing 478 black residents, 0 white residents and 85 businesses), and concluding with 12th and Vine (1969 - 1972, 33.1 acres, displacing 309 black residents, 19 white residents and 49 businesses).

In between, South Humboldt (1956 - 1965, 27.6 acres, displacing 28 black residents, 203 white residents and 66 businesses) and East Side (1958 - 1965, 58.3 acres, displacing 88 black residents, 582 white residents and 95 businesses) cleared land for construction of the downtown interstate highway loop.

And there were 13 other projects.

18th and Vine itself was not a part of any urban renewal project. Neither of the studies I reviewed suggest it was ever targeted. But the surrounding neighborhoods were decimated. Contiguous stretches of homes and businesses were torn down then bisected by interstates, insuring they could never return. The density of population needed to support a thriving business district, which 18th and Vine had been, scattered and has never returned.

But it’s difficult to say these were the wrong moves. One history of Kansas City describes the land cleared for the North Side project, along Main Street, as a “skid row.” And of the Attucks project, adjacent to 18th and Vine, the book says, “This area contained as bad a slum as any in the United States. Here some families lived without running water or toilets, and some of the buildings had dirt floors.”

A March, 1950 article in Holiday magazine declared, “Kansas City is marked by sharp physical contrasts. There are tenements only a few blocks from skyscrapers, the landscaped lands of elaborate homes face vacant lots cluttered with billboards, and there are shanties only a short distance outside the business district.”

It’s easy today to look back and ask why we tore down all the jazz clubs, why we destroyed, arguably, our most significant history.

We look back romantically today at the Reno Club, where Count Basie was discovered. It’s easy to mourn the history lost when looking now over the cracked pavement of the police station parking lot which replaced it. But saxophonist Buster Smith described the Reno Club as, “nothin’ but a hole in the wall. Just mediocre people mostly went in there. A lot of the prostitutes and hustlers and thugs hung out down there.”

Today, we decry tangible history no longer here. But at the time, urban renewal was clearing shanties and holes in the wall. Large swaths of population left and never returned. But many left for better conditions.

And in the mid-1950s, less than twenty years had passed since our most famous jazz musicians and the culture they helped build had moved on. It was too soon to recognize that the music, and barbecue and steaks, would define Kansas City forevermore.

Still, one resident, in the study from which many of the facts which open this post were quoted, looked back and noted:

“There had been semi-economic centers for black businesses that were around 12th Street, 18th Street, coming up Vine, say to 25th Street, because I remember Barker’s Market, Johnson’s Drug Store, and a cab company and a bunch of stuff like that. And all of the clientele was in walking distance, mainly because in the 1940s and early 1950s…people lived closer together. With urban renewal and people moving out, they lost their clientele.”

A look at population maps from 1950 and today make clear that 18th and Vine will not again be what it once was. Not in my lifetime, anyway. Right or wrong, not returning to what a district once was defines the heart of urban renewal.

But you can walk through the jazz district and see apartments and homes along 19th Street and along The Paseo, and more housing on Highland. You see a couple restaurants and a couple museums. You see modern offices. Yes, you still see some blight and you shouldn’t. But at the Mutual Musicians Foundation and at the facade of the Cherry Blossom, you can still touch jazz history.

I don’t know how the district builds beyond the groundwork. So far, nobody has figured that out. But, decades after urban renewal removed both slums and life, the groundwork is there for the area to grow into something better.

*****

Facts about urban renewal are quoted from the 2001 article, A City Without Slums: Urban Renewal, Public Housing and Downtown Revitalization in Kansas City Missouri. It can be read online here, or a PDF can be downloaded by clicking here. More illustrations and maps can be found in the 2009 thesis, Development at 18th and Vine: Understanding Problems and Formulating Strategies for the Future. A PDF can be downloaded by clicking here. The quote by Buster Smith is from the 1987 book, Goin' to Kansas City. Other facts come from the 1978 book, K.C.: A History of Kansas City, Missouri.

This 'n That 'n a Map

By this time, the Cherry Blossom was a bowling alley. But there was a post office just a couple doors away. The Street and the Booker T. Washington and the Rochester all stood as active hotels. You could see movies at The Gem. There's apartments and homes throughout the district. A filling station sits right along The Paseo, just south of 18th Street. And on 18th, across from what today we call the Boone Theater, and a couple doors down, you could find an undertaker.

I’ve been introduced to Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps. The Kansas City Public Library’s web site probably offers the best explanation of them:

“These maps, created by the Sanborn Map Company to assist fire insurance companies to assess the risk of insuring a particular property, are a great resource. Besides showing what buildings existed in a specific area at a certain time, the original shape (footprint) is illustrated, allowing you to pinpoint any remodeling or other changes that may have occurred over time. The footprints are color-coded to indicate building material (e.g., brick, frame, stucco), and other symbols are used to indicate roofing material, location of chimneys, water line availability, and other features….

“Because it was prohibitively expensive to reprint them, employees of the Sanborn company would use a base volume and paste over areas where significant change had occurred (e.g., a new building had been built). For example, a base volume may be dated 1909, but the changes within that volume could date as late as 1945….”

Or 1950, in the case of the Sanborn map for the 18th and Vine district, which you can view on the library’s web site, here. Controls on the site allow you to enlarge and scroll the map.

The map provides a fascinating snapshot of the historic district. It’s a layout of the district three years before urban renewal would begin transforming the surrounding areas. It would be fourteen years before the Public Accommodations Act would pass, forcing Kansas City businesses to serve black patrons. It had been fourteen years since Count Basie left for New York. Musically, we were midway between Lester Young taking down Coleman Hawkins in an historic jam session at the Cherry Blossom, and The Beatles appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show.

18th and Vine’s day as a jazz mecca had passed. The Eblon, which opened as a silent movie theater in 1923, became the Cherry Blossom nightclub in the 1930s and then the Chez Paree (where Jay McShann and Walter Brown performed nightly) in the 1940s, is identified on this map as a bowling alley. The building which opened as the New Rialto Theater in 1924, was renamed the Boone Theater, and later Scott’s Theater, here is a National Guard Armory.

The district at this time was segregated Kansas City’s vibrant black downtown. 18th Street from Paseo to Woodland is packed with storefronts. Likewise, Vine. Most businesses are not identified. But among the ones that are, you find a couple of drugstores, auto repair garages, a bicycle repair shop, filling stations, a couple of printers, photo shops, a post office, offices, restaurants, hotels, homes, apartments, churches, a movie theater, a pool hall, and a building at 1823 Highland that’s labeled, Club Ho[use].

The map is a glimpse of 18th and Vine at a particular point in time, somewhere between its days of jazz and sin and its days of museums and a giant neon greeting.

*****

Diverse Trio with Hermon Mehari, Ben Leifer and Ryan Lee. Millie Edwards and Michael Pagan. Joe Cartwright and “Duck” Warner.

So we know the jazz will be superb.

JazzBeats is a fundraiser for pancreatic cancer next Sunday, April 29th, in the Off-Broadway Theatre, at the edge of Penn Valley Park. It runs from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. The organizers describe it like this:

“Brunch style small plates brought to you by local Kansas City restaurants and food trucks. Our menu ranges from chicken and waffles to tacos to quiche and bagels.

“A come and go as you please festival… an atmosphere of mingling, toe tapping and food sampling.”

More information is on their web site, here.

*****

Two days later is May 1st. That’s International Worker’s Day. And you know what that means.

If you don’t, you can refresh your memory here. That’s the last time I photographed the People’s Liberation Big Band of Greater Kansas City, one of the quirkiest and funnest big bands you’ll find. And International Worker’s Day is their holiday.

Last year at The Record Bar, they celebrated in part by playing a portion of their score to the silent film Battleship Potemkin. I noted in the post, “They have a complete score ready if a theater would show the film. Anyone?”

How about we settle for a library.

On Tuesday May 1st, the People’s Liberation Big Band of Greater Kansas City will play their complete score during a showing of the silent film Battleship Potemkin at the Plaza branch of the Kansas City Library. A reception starts at 6 p.m. and the film at 6:30. Admission is free. More details are here.

Until last year, I never thought that International Worker’s Day would become a holiday I look forward to. But, frankly, this year I can’t wait.