New York Life Building

The New York Life Building at 20 West Ninth Street is a brownstone-and-brick Neo-Renaissance office block built between 1887 and 1890 for the New York Life Insurance Company to designs by the New York firm McKim, Mead & White — an H-plan structure of two ten-story arms flanking a twelve-story tower.¹ It was the largest and tallest office building in Kansas City on completion and is widely described as the city’s first skyscraper.¹²³ A two-ton bronze eagle protecting her young from a serpent has stood over the Ninth Street entrance since February 1891.¹ The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on July 8, 1970, and has housed the administrative offices of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph since 2010.²³

History

Eastern capital comes to Kansas City (1886-1890)

Kansas City boomed through the 1880s, and eastern money followed. The New York Life Insurance Company bought the construction site — a 160-by-120-foot plot at Ninth and what the National Register nomination calls “Amaretto” (Baltimore) Street — on December 13, 1886 for $373,000, described at the time as the largest real estate transfer ever made in Kansas City and the first New York capital invested in the city.¹ A contemporary Kansas City Star account framed the company’s motive as gaining an early stronghold in a city it believed “was to be the future center of western commerce.”¹

Construction began in early January 1887. The nomination states the work “was terminated in 1890” at a cost of $1,000,000, at which point it was the largest and tallest office building in Kansas City.¹ Wikipedia instead gives completion as August 1889 at a cost of $1.7 million — see Open Questions.²

The eagle (1891)

Centered over the Ninth Street main entrance is a bronze sculptural group of an eagle with outstretched wings protecting her young from a large snake. It was cast in a single piece, weighs two tons, and measures twelve feet from wingtip to wingtip; the nomination cites the Kansas City Star of Wednesday, February 25, 1891 for the description and dimensions.¹ The nomination attributes the piece to the studio of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, citing G. C. Mitchell’s 1934 There Is No Limit.¹ Wikipedia credits Louis Saint-Gaudens, Augustus’s younger brother.² The disagreement is unresolved here; see Open Questions.

New York Life commissioned comparable eagles for its buildings in St. Paul and Omaha as well, which is why nearly identical birds survive in more than one city.⁴

Twentieth-century tenancy

The building passed out of New York Life’s hands in 1924, when it was sold to New York businessmen and substantially renovated; Granthurst Realty Company bought it in 1944. Trans World Airlines and Waddell & Reed occupied significant space from the 1950s into the 1970s.²

Abandonment, renovation, and the Catholic Center

The Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph records that the building was abandoned in 1987.³ The local utility UtiliCorp United (later Aquila) renovated it and moved its downtown headquarters in during 1996, a project honored with a 1997 National Trust for Historic Preservation award and the subject of a KCPT documentary, The 2nd Life of 20 West Ninth, narrated by William Shatner.²³ Wikipedia puts the renovation cost at $28-35 million.²

Aquila left in 2007. In 2010 the building was sold to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-Saint Joseph for a reported $11.7 million and renamed The Catholic Center; it houses the diocese’s administrative offices today.²³ The sale price is reported in secondary coverage rather than a primary record.

Architecture

Massing and plan

The building is an H-plan structure: two ten-story arms linked by a twelve-story square tower. A classical facade design is applied to the south (Ninth Street) and west (Baltimore Avenue) street elevations; the north and east inner-block sides are unadorned.¹

Facade

The nomination reads the south facade as a stack of horizontal sections:¹

Stories 1-2: ranged brownstone ashlar cut by five arches, each thirty-three feet high. The widest central arch is the main entrance, framed inside by two polished monolithic Doric granite columns on Worcester granite pedestals, carrying a brownstone transom beam inscribed “The New York Life Insurance Company”; the semicircular transom holds a wrought-iron grille.
Story 3: transitional, still brownstone, divided into five vertical areas; the brownstone facing terminates at the fourth floor in a stringcourse.
Stories 4-7: common-bond brick with brick-and-terracotta quoins, organized by five four-story arches aligned with those below; a band of terracotta ornament separates the sixth and seventh floors.
Stories 8-9: four two-story arches across each arm, each framing paired windows.
Termination: a row of small windows alternating with large circular terracotta ornaments, capped by a terracotta architrave-cornice topped with antefixae.

The west facade repeats the south design in eight vertical sections.¹

Tower

Above the roofline the tower is pierced on all four sides by three arch-framed windows, above which a terracotta stringcourse forms the base of three rectangular openings per side, each filled with a single smooth Ionic column. The tower is capped by a hip roof and finial reaching a total height of 210 feet.¹ Wikipedia gives a roof height of 180 feet, presumably excluding the finial.²

Interior

A sidewalk-level entrance vestibule has floors of red Vermont marble and walls of pink Tennessee marble. Seven marble steps lead up to the main lobby in the central tower — mosaic tile floors, pink marble walls, a barrel-vaulted pressed-metal ceiling, and four elevators, two to a side. Woodwork throughout the building — doors, sashes, trim, cabinetry — is cherry.¹

Wikipedia adds that the building used cast-iron columns and steel I-beams, the first steel I-beams in Kansas City, and that it was the first building in Kansas City with elevators.² The “first with elevators” claim is not corroborated in the nomination.

Significance to Kansas City

The 1970 nomination argues the building is significant on three grounds: as a fine example of fashionable American architecture of the 1880s; as the work of McKim, Mead & White, one of the dominant forces in American architecture at the turn of the century; and as a manifestation of a specific moment in Kansas City’s growth — the boom in which the city’s clearing-house transactions rose from about $204 million in the year ending June 1885 to about $354 million in the year ending June 1887, passing New Orleans to rank tenth in the nation.¹ The nomination separately flags the eagle under the “Sculpture” area of significance.¹

Its urban role was singled out too. Standing at the foot of Baltimore Avenue slightly right of center, the building forms a visual terminus for the view up Baltimore while signalling that the street does not end at Ninth but jumps west; the tower dominates a vista of more than a mile and anchors Ninth Street from Main to Central.¹

For the wiki’s purposes it is the front end of the Kansas City tall-building story that runs through the Boley Building and Scarritt Building of the 1900s to the Art Deco Power and Light Building of 1931 — an office block built by outside capital, by an outside firm, at the moment the city first read as a national investment.

Notable dates

December 13, 1886 — New York Life buys the 160x120-foot site for $373,000¹
January 1887 — construction begins¹
1890 (1889 per Wikipedia) — completed; tallest and largest office building in Kansas City¹²
February 25, 1891 — Kansas City Star describes the newly placed bronze eagle¹
1924 — sold to New York businessmen; major renovation²
July 8, 1970 — listed on the National Register of Historic Places, ref. #70000336²⁵
November 7, 1976 — designated a contributing property of the West Ninth Street-Baltimore Avenue Historic District²
1987 — building abandoned³
1996 — UtiliCorp United moves in after renovation; 1997 National Trust award²³
2007 — Aquila departs²
2010 — sold to the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph; becomes The Catholic Center²³

Visiting

Address: 20 W 9th St, Kansas City, MO 64105 — northeast corner of Ninth Street and Baltimore Avenue¹²
Public access: Private diocesan office building; the eagle and facade are viewable from Ninth Street and Baltimore Avenue

Neighborhood context

Neighborhood: Downtown KC, in the Library District at Ninth and Baltimore
Nearby landmarks: Central Library, Boley Building, Coates House Hotel on Quality Hill two blocks west

Sources

National Park Service / Missouri State Parks — “New York Life Building,” National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination Form (prepared May 18, 1970 by Sheila M. Hannon, Missouri State Park Board) — asserts: large stone and brick building of Neo-Renaissance design built between 1887 and 1890; H-plan with two ten-story arms linked by a twelve-story square tower; classical facade on south and west elevations, north and east unadorned; first two stories faced with ranged brownstone ashlar cut by five arches each thirty-three feet high, central arch the main entrance with two polished monolithic Doric granite columns on Worcester granite pedestals and a brownstone transom beam inscribed “The New York Life Insurance Company,” semicircular transom with wrought-iron grille; third story transitional; brownstone terminates at the fourth floor in a stringcourse, above which common-bond brick with brick and terracotta quoins; fourth to seventh floors organized by five four-story arches, terracotta ornament band between sixth and seventh floors; eighth and ninth floors with four two-story arches per arm; termination in small windows alternating with large circular terracotta ornaments and a terracotta architrave-cornice topped with antefixae; west facade repeats the south in eight vertical sections; tower above the roofline pierced by three arch-framed windows per side, terracotta stringcourse, three rectangular openings per side each filled with a single smooth Ionic column, capped with a hip roof and finial reaching a total height of 210 feet; sculpture over the Ninth Street entrance of an eagle with outstretched wings protecting her young from a large snake, cast of one piece of bronze, weighing two tons, wings twelve feet tip to tip, citing The Kansas City Star, Wednesday, February 25, 1891; entrance vestibule with red Vermont marble floors and pink Tennessee marble walls; seven marble steps to the main lobby in the central tower with mosaic tile floors, pink marble walls, barrel-vaulted pressed-metal ceiling and four elevators; cherry woodwork throughout; specific dates 1887-1899 [sic] in the significance field; designed by McKim, Mead & White; the bronze eagle “produced in the studio of the popular American sculptor, Augustus Saint-Gaudens,” citing G. C. Mitchell, There Is No Limit (Kansas City: Brown-White Company, 1934); site a 160 x 120 foot plot at Ninth and then-”Amaretto” Street purchased Tuesday, December 13, 1886 for $373,000, the largest real estate transfer in Kansas City to that date and the first New York capital invested in the city; construction began early January 1887 and “was terminated in 1890,” cost $1,000,000, largest and tallest office building in Kansas City on completion; Kansas City clearing-house transactions rose from $204,333,144 (year ending June 30, 1885) to $353,895,458 (year ending June 30, 1887), passing New Orleans to rank tenth in the nation in 1887; the building forms a visual terminus for Baltimore Avenue and its tower dominates a vista of more than a mile; recommended level of significance: Local. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸ ↩¹⁹ ↩²⁰ ↩²¹
Wikipedia — “New York Life Building (Kansas City, Missouri).” — asserts: 20 West Ninth Street, northeast corner of Ninth and Baltimore Avenue; construction started 1887, completed August 1889; cost $1.7 million; McKim, Mead & White, with Frederick Elmer Hill the designer most heavily involved; Italian Renaissance style; 180 ft roof height; 12 floors in the central tower, 10 in the wings; brick and brownstone exterior, cast-iron columns and steel I-beams — the first in Kansas City; ~200,000 sq ft originally, 175,186 sq ft listed; five elevators (originally four plus a freight elevator); first building in Kansas City with elevators; Kansas City’s tallest building on completion; eagle sculpture by Louis Saint-Gaudens erected February 25, 1891, 4,000 pounds, 12-15 feet across, above the main entrance; NRHP listed July 8, 1970, reference #70000336; contributing property of the West Ninth Street-Baltimore Avenue Historic District from November 7, 1976; sold to New York businessmen in 1924 with a major renovation; purchased by Granthurst Realty Company 1944; TWA and Waddell & Reed tenants 1950s-1970s; UtiliCorp/Aquila headquarters 1996-2007 with a renovation cost of $28-35 million; Roman Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-Saint Joseph administrative offices from 2010. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸
Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph — “The 2nd Life of 20 West Ninth.” — asserts: the building was “the first skyscraper in Kansas City,” originally named the New York Life Building; abandoned in 1987; renovated to serve as the home office of UtiliCorp United, combining energy-efficiency technology with retention of the original opulence; winner of the 1997 National Trust for Historic Preservation Award; now houses The Catholic Center for the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph at 20 West Ninth Street, Kansas City, MO 64105; KCPT documentary “The 2nd Life of 20 West Ninth” narrated by William Shatner. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸
Historic Twin Cities — “New York Life Eagle.” — asserts: three eagles were commissioned, one each for the New York Life Buildings in St. Paul, Omaha and Kansas City; the group was cast in a single piece by the Henry-Bonnard Bronze Company; attribution divided between Augustus Saint-Gaudens (design) and his brother Louis Saint-Gaudens (modeling/carving and casting). ↩
Missouri State Parks — “Jackson County National Register Listings.” — asserts: New York Life Building, 20 W. Ninth St., Kansas City, listed 7/08/70; built 1887-90; Neo-Renaissance style; architects McKim, Mead and White; the bronze eagle “was cast in the studio of Augustus Saint Gaudens”; barrel-vaulted, skylighted lobby with mosaic floors and lavish use of marble and cherry-wood. ↩