The R.A. Long Building at 928 Grand Boulevard — a 14-story Italian Renaissance Revival office tower completed in 1907 at the northwest corner of 10th Street and Grand Avenue — was built as corporate headquarters for the Long-Bell Lumber Company, commissioned by Kansas City lumber baron Robert A. Long. Designed by Henry F. Hoit of the firm Howe, Hoit & Cutler, it was the first steel-framed skyscraper in Kansas City and remains one of the defining Gilded Age monuments of downtown KC’s commercial district. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003.
History
By 1906, Robert A. Long’s Long-Bell Lumber Company had outgrown its offices in the Keith & Perry Building. Long commissioned a purpose-built headquarters at 928 Grand Boulevard — then the heart of Kansas City’s emerging commercial corridor — at a construction cost of approximately $1,250,000. The building was completed in 1907.
Long-Bell occupied the building as its principal headquarters through the early decades of the twentieth century. Long himself maintained an office on the eighth floor. The tower’s more than 600 individual offices made it one of the largest commercial buildings in the region at the time of its opening.
In 1914, the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City opened its first offices in the R.A. Long Building — a reflection of the building’s prestige and its address at the center of the city’s financial district. The Federal Reserve remained a tenant until 1921, when it relocated across the street to its newly constructed home at 925 Grand.
In 1934, City National Bank & Trust Company (later absorbed into UMB Financial Corporation) established its headquarters on the building’s first floor. UMB purchased the building outright in 1947 and has been its steward ever since. A major renovation in 2000 included historic restoration of the eighth and fourteenth floors to original specifications.
Architecture
Henry F. Hoit of Howe, Hoit & Cutler designed the building in the Italian Renaissance Revival style, then at the height of fashion for American corporate architecture. The 14-story tower rose on a steel frame — the first all-steel-framed skyscraper constructed in Kansas City — clad in terra cotta and brick, with the first two stories faced in polished Quincy granite. The composition followed the classical tripartite arrangement of base, shaft, and cornice typical of the Renaissance Revival mode, with the granite base lending civic weight to the street-level presence on Grand Avenue.
Hoit brought strong credentials to the commission: a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1898) and a veteran of the Boston office circuit, he had made his Kansas City reputation designing the Palace of Varied Industries for the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair while at Van Brunt & Howe before forming Howe, Hoit & Cutler. The R.A. Long Building was among the firm’s first landmark commissions in the city and established Hoit as Long’s architect of choice for subsequent projects.
R.A. Long’s legacy in Kansas City
Robert Alexander Long (December 17, 1850 – March 15, 1934) was born in Shelbyville, Kentucky and made Kansas City his primary residence from the late nineteenth century onward. He co-founded the Long-Bell Lumber Company with Victor B. Bell in Columbus, Kansas in 1887, relocating headquarters to Kansas City as the enterprise grew. By 1906, Long-Bell controlled 250,000 acres of pine timberland across Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana and operated 61 lumberyards — an operation that would eventually make it the largest lumber company in the world in the early twentieth century.
Long’s imprint on Kansas City extended well beyond the 928 Grand tower. In 1908, he commissioned Hoit to design Corinthian Hall — a 72-room French Renaissance mansion on Gladstone Boulevard that was billed at the time as Kansas City’s first million-dollar home. Corinthian Hall now houses the Kansas City Museum and has been on the National Register since 1980. Long also developed the vast Longview Farm estate (1913–1914) in eastern Jackson County — 2,000 acres with 42 buildings — portions of which are now occupied by Longview College and Longview Lake. The Longview Mansion survives as the estate’s centerpiece. In 1923, Long founded the planned city of Longview, Washington, personally funding its public library, high school, rail station, YMCA, and hotel.
Long was also president of the Liberty Memorial Association and led the 1919 fundraising campaign that raised $2.5 million in under a year to build the Liberty Memorial. Long-Bell Lumber filed for bankruptcy in 1934, the same year Long died at age 83.
Current use
UMB Financial Corporation continues to anchor the building. The 2000 restoration preserved significant historic fabric on the upper floors. The R.A. Long Building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 8, 2003, recognized for its architectural significance as Kansas City’s first steel-framed skyscraper and for its association with Robert A. Long’s far-reaching commercial and civic legacy.
See also
gilded-age-kc, robert-a-long, longview-mansion, kansas-city-museum, liberty-memorial, downtown-kc, henry-f-hoit, boley-building
Sources
See also
- Wiki
- downtown-kc
- gilded-age-kc
- robert-a-long
- longview-mansion
- kansas-city-museum
- henry-f-hoit
- liberty-memorial