Plaza Time Building

The Plaza Time Building is a commercial office and retail building on the Country Club Plaza — on Broadway Boulevard between Nichols Road and Ward Parkway — distinguished by its saffron-topped clock tower.¹²³ Developed by the J.C. Nichols Company, constructed in 1946 and opened in 1947, the building extended the Plaza’s post-war commercial expansion while maintaining the Spanish-inflected architectural language that J.C. Nichols established at the Plaza’s 1922 opening.¹⁴

History

The Plaza Time Building was constructed in 1946 and opened in 1947, part of a post-war construction wave that added office and retail capacity to the growing Country Club Plaza district.¹² The J.C. Nichols Company developed the building as the Plaza matured from its early 1920s origins into a regional commercial anchor. Edward W. Tanner is credited as the building’s architect.¹ Tanner had been the Nichols Company’s principal designer since the Plaza’s earliest construction phase in the early 1920s; he later formed his own practice, Edward W. Tanner and Associates, but remained a close collaborator of the company and served on its board.¹⁴

Sources differ on the building’s street address: Clio records it as 416 Ward Parkway, while the address carried in this page’s frontmatter is 411 Nichols Road. The Kansas City Landmarks Commission photographic record places the building on Broadway Boulevard between Nichols Road and Ward Parkway, a corner site with frontage on more than one street.¹²

The building is sometimes confused with the Giralda Tower, a separate Plaza landmark dedicated in 1967 at the corner of West 47th Street and Mill Creek Parkway.⁵ The Giralda is a 138-foot half-scale replica of the 12th-century Moorish bell tower in Seville, Spain, and has no structural connection to the Plaza Time Building.

Architecture

The Plaza Time Building’s most prominent feature is its clock tower, described by KCUR as “saffron-topped.”³ Architectural details include arched openings, terra cotta cornices, a decorative tile facade, and a rounded dome capped with blue and yellow tile and a decorative finial; the building also carries a terracotta roof, red brick accents, and colorful tile around the windows.¹ The tower’s height (reported at more than 100 feet) and the claim that it was modeled on the Palacio de la Equitativa in Madrid could not be confirmed in any source consulted — Clio, KCUR, and the Kansas City Landmarks Commission record make no Madrid reference. The overall composition is consistent with the Mediterranean and Moorish Revival vocabulary that Edward Buehler Delk codified in the Plaza’s early buildings and that the Nichols Company maintained as a design standard across subsequent development.⁶

Current use

The Plaza Time Building houses office and retail tenants. It remains a functioning commercial building within the Country Club Plaza district.¹ Ground-floor retail tenants documented in the early 1980s included Williams-Sonoma and Jack Henry’s Club Shop.²

See also

country-club-plaza-opening-1922, the-nichols-company, jc-nichols, edward-buehler-delk

Sources

Footnotes

1. Clio — “Plaza Time Building,” entry 144104 (Nichole Stahly, 2021): 1947 opening, Edward W. Tanner as architect, clock-tower and facade description, address given as 416 Ward Parkway. Note: this entry contains no Madrid or Palacio de la Equitativa reference ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

2. Kansas City Public Library, Missouri Valley Special Collections — Plaza Time Building photographic records (Kansas City (MO) Landmarks Commission; item 10025190, “constructed in 1946,” Broadway Boulevard between Nichols Road and Ward Parkway) — additional views: kchistory.org and kchistory.org ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

3. KCUR — “Take time to explore Kansas City’s iconic clocks, from Woodhenge to Union Station” (March 26, 2022) — saffron-topped clock tower reference ↩ ↩²

4. William S. Worley, J.C. Nichols and the Shaping of Kansas City: Innovation in Planned Residential Communities (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1990), ISBN 978-0-8262-0744-9 — Nichols Company Plaza development and Tanner’s role ↩ ↩²

5. Wikipedia — “Giralda (Kansas City)” — Giralda Tower as a separate 1967 structure at W. 47th Street & Mill Creek Parkway ↩

6. KCUR — “Country Club Plaza’s architecture is unique in Kansas City. Here’s a guide to historic buildings” (May 28, 2022) — Plaza architectural vocabulary ↩