Thomas Hart Benton Home and Studio State Historic Site

The Thomas Hart Benton Home and Studio State Historic Site at 3616 Belleview Avenue in Kansas City’s Roanoke neighborhood is the house and carriage-house studio where the Regionalist painter Thomas Hart Benton lived and worked for nearly four decades, and where he died in his studio in 1975. The studio is preserved essentially as he left it — coffee cans of brushes, paints, a stretched canvas — making the site an unusually intimate public record of a major American artist at work.¹

The house and studio

The Bentons made their home in a 1903 limestone-and-shingle house at 3616 Belleview in the Roanoke neighborhood, where the painter lived for nearly forty years until his death.¹² Benton converted half of the property’s carriage house into his art studio. Missouri State Parks describes the studio as remaining as he left it: visitors can still see coffee cans full of paintbrushes, numerous paints, and a stretched canvas.¹

The Pendergast Years confirms the nearly-forty-year Belleview tenure; the exact year of purchase is often given as 1939 on the vault’s Benton person page but is not confirmed by the MSP or PKY sources used here — treat 1939 as “ until a deed or Benton estate source is attached.²

As a historic site

The property is preserved as the Thomas Hart Benton Home and Studio State Historic Site, managed by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources / Missouri State Parks, and furnished with the Bentons’ original belongings — one of Kansas City’s notable cultural landmarks and a rare in-situ artist’s studio open to the public by tour.¹

Field	Value	Status
Address	3616 Belleview Ave, Kansas City, MO 64111	✓ MSP
Office phone	(816) 931-5722	✓ MSP
Tours	Historic site tours via Missouri State Parks reservation system	✓ MSP
Hours	Published on MSP park-hours page for site 931	✓ MSP link

For Benton’s life, mural commissions, and major Kansas City works, see Thomas Hart Benton. Nearby cultural context includes the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

Sources

Footnotes

1. Missouri State Parks — “Thomas Hart Benton Home and Studio State Historic Site.” (accessed 2026-08-11). Confirms: address 3616 Belleview; carriage-house studio converted by Benton and preserved as left (brushes, paints, stretched canvas); Benton’s death in the studio in 1975; office phone 816-931-5722; tour and park-hours links. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

2. The Pendergast Years (Kansas City Public Library) — “Thomas Hart Benton.” — Confirms: Benton lived at 3616 Belleview for nearly 40 years until his death. (Purchase year 1939 not confirmed by this source.) ↩ ↩²