Racing Against A Bulldozer

By Mike Hendricks
Reprinted by permission of The Kansas City Star

Eyed warily by barking dogs, small children and other members of the neighborhood-watch committee, Joel Rhodes trudged block after block, taking notes and snapping pictures of houses, businesses and public buildings. “People were very suspicious, and some were downright hostile,” he said. “Not that they thought I was a prowler, but that I was with the appraiser’s office.” Neither crook nor tax-man functionary, the researcher’s mission was to record Johnson County’s architectural history before it was flattened by progress.

Now the job is done. Ten years after the project started, Johnson County has a record of what remains of its past and a tool for preserving that legacy into the future. Dozens of amateur and professional historians such as Rhodes did the legwork. They documented 9,000 Johnson County buildings erected before 1950. Within a year, the public will have access to the record. “There are only 13 properties on the National Register (of Historic Places) in the county right now,” Rhodes said, “which is really unfortunate because we identified hundreds that are probably eligible.”

Nine thousand pre-1950 buildings might not seem all that impressive to Kansas Citians, who have at least that many older homes within a few blocks of the County Club Plaza. But because the Kansas suburbs developed late, Johnson County’s early architecture is precious. Queen Anne, craftsman, prairie, American four-square. Pockets of those century-old architectural styles are rare among the battle-gray, board-and batten chalets that many of the county’s 440,000 residents now live in.

But they typify pre-World War II Johnson County. Then, almost all 33,000 citizens resided in a few affluent subdivisions – Mission Hills and Lake Quivira, among them – on farms or in 19^th century railroad/farming towns such as Olathe, Lenexa and Shawnee.

Change came quickly in the years after V-J Day. So fast that Johnson County was in danger of forgetting its history by the time Janet Bruce Campbell became head of the county museum in 1987. She addressed that by first highlighting the story of suburban growth in a million-dollar museum revamp that opened in 1998. But as important was the former museum director’s desire to catalogue the county’s architectural artifacts.

So began the county’s Historic Preservation Survey. Early on, the emphasis was on documenting older buildings within the path of development, such as south of Interstate 435. Later, researchers moved north, where the threat wasn’t imminent. Yet even then, it was a race against the bulldozer and wrecking ball.

Last week I turned to the 1994-95 annual report, which noted “three large four-square type houses” near one street corner in Lenexa. Actually, four big, two – story homes, all dating from around 1910, were clustered there at that time, but no more. All but one were torn down to make way for a parking lot.

“I think there’s a belief in Johnson County that there’s no history there,” said Cheryl Musch, who’s now writing a final report that she hopes will prove otherwise. Perhaps, also, that historic record will cause suburbanites to think twice before knocking down more of their heritage. After all, history is found not only in books. Sometimes, it’s just down the block and one street over.

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