Kansas City Geography and Architecture

Kansas City covers an entire geographical area of around 39.03 square miles. A total of 314.95 square miles of the portion constitute the land while water bodies include the rest of the domain. Kansas City takes the form of a bowl shape and is surrounded to the North and south by glacier carves limestone and bedrock cliffs. Kansas City is found at the junction between the Dakota and Minnesota ice lobes during the maximum late Independence glaciation of the Pleistocene epoch. The Kansas and Missouri rivers cut broad valleys into the terrain when the glaciers melted and drained. A partially filled spillway valley crosses the central city. More can be found here.

Local Architecture

The architecture of Kansas City, Missouri and the metro area includes significant works by many of the world's most distinguished architects and firms, including McKim, Mead and White; Jarvis Hunt; Wight and Wight; Graham, Probst and White; Hoit, Price & Barnes; Frank Lloyd Wright; the Office of Mies van der Rohe; Barry Byrne; Edward Larrabee Barnes; Harry Weese; Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; and others. The core of the downtown area developed in an early 20th-century building boom that continued into the Great Depression. The city has several buildings that place it among cities with the ten best examples of art deco architecture in the United States. See also about Kansas City Parks and Boulevard.

Municipal Auditorium, the Kansas City Power and Light Building, and Jackson County Courthouse have been called "three of the nation's Art Deco treasures.r J.C. Nichols, a prominent developer of commercial and residential real estate developed the Country Club Plaza (by Edward Buehler Delk and Edward Tanner) and was active in the promotion of lasting architectural landmarks such as Liberty Memorial (Harold Van Buren Magonigle), and Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.