The Kansas City Garment District

The Kansas City Garment District was the cluster of apparel factories that made downtown Kansas City the nation’s second-largest center of women’s clothing manufacturing in the early-to-mid 20th century, ranking behind only New York City. Centered on Broadway between roughly 8th and 11th Streets, it housed 70 to 80 manufacturers at its 1950s peak and supplied a large share of the dresses and coats sold across America. Its best-known firm, the Donnelly Garment Company, sold its “Nelly Don” dresses nationwide and became the largest dress maker of the 20th century. The industry faded after mid-century as apparel production moved offshore, but its memory survives in loft conversions and in The Needle, a giant sculpture of a threaded needle and red button that marks the old district today.

Rise of the district

Garment work in Kansas City began modestly in the late 19th century with small tailor shops and dressmakers serving the growing city and the surrounding region. Several conditions let it grow into a concentrated industry through the early 1900s:

• The city’s position as a railroad junction, which made it a natural hub for distributing finished goods across the Midwest, Plains, and Southwest.
• A supply of immigrant and Black labor in a fast-growing downtown.
• Strong regional demand for ready-made women’s apparel.
• Multi-story loft buildings in the blocks west of Main Street, whose open floors suited cutting tables and rows of sewing machines.

By the 1920s these factors had pulled the trade into a dense, walkable district clustered along Broadway, and the industry entered its decades of national prominence. The commonly cited starting point for the modern district is 1922. ¹²

“Second to New York” — scale and major firms

At its height in the 1950s, Kansas City was the nation’s second-largest garment-manufacturing center after New York City, with an estimated 70 to 80 manufacturers operating in a strip only about five blocks long on Broadway. ² The district was also the second-largest employer of any single industry in Kansas City. ³

The scale of output was its most repeated boast. From the 1920s through the 1940s the district employed more than 4,000 workers, and contemporaries claimed that at any one time roughly one of every six or seven women’s garments sold in the United States had been made in Kansas City. ²³ Major manufacturers operated through the district’s prime decades, from the 1920s into the 1970s.

The blocks ran along Broadway and east toward Wyandotte and Washington Streets, on the eastern edge of the quality-hill neighborhood and within the broader fabric of downtown-kc.

Nelly Don and key manufacturers

The district’s signature company was the Donnelly Garment Company, founded by nell-donnelly-reed (1889–1991). Donnelly sold her first line of dresses in 1919 to Peck’s Dry Goods Store downtown; the order reportedly sold out by noon on its first day. ²

Marketed under the “Nelly Don” label, the company specialized in attractive but affordable house dresses for everyday women and grew into a national brand:

• It manufactured roughly 75 million dresses between 1916 and 1978, making it the largest dress maker of the 20th century. ²⁴
• By 1947 it employed more than 1,000 workers and was an early adopter of assembly-line techniques in clothing production. ⁴
• Donnelly Reed was among the most prominent women business leaders of her era; her 1931 kidnapping by local criminals became one of the most famous crime stories of Pendergast-era Kansas City. ⁵

Donnelly was the best-known but not the only major firm; dozens of manufacturers concentrated in coats, dresses, and suits operated in the district through its peak. ²

Workforce

The district drew a diverse industrial workforce. Immigrant communities — including Eastern European and Russian-Jewish families, consistent with the broader American garment trade — supplied many workers, alongside Black Kansas Citians and, in later decades, Mexican-American workers. ¹ Sewing-machine operations were largely staffed by women, while cutting, pressing, design, and supervisory roles skewed male. The International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) organized in the district through the mid-20th century, paralleling union activity in New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago. ⁶

Decline

The Kansas City garment trade declined along the same path as the rest of the American apparel industry. Beginning in the 1960s and accelerating through the 1970s and 1980s, clothing production shifted to lower-cost overseas factories, and the district’s manufacturers closed one after another. By the 1990s commercial garment manufacturing in downtown Kansas City had effectively ended, closing out roughly a century of the trade. The same forces hollowed out garment districts in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Los Angeles over the same period. ³

Legacy today

The district’s old loft buildings now anchor a residential and creative neighborhood, repurposed for apartments, offices, restaurants, and studios in a pattern that echoes the nearby crossroads-arts-district. The area is recognized as the Historic Garment District.

Its most visible monument is The Needle, a tall stainless-steel and aluminum sculpture of a threaded sewing needle stitching through a large red button, by artist Dave Stevens. It stands at the Garment District Place park near 8th Street and Broadway and was dedicated on October 4, 2002, honoring the neighborhood’s manufacturing past. ⁷

From 2002 to 2024 the Historic Garment District Museum, housed in the Poindexter Building at 801 Broadway, told the district’s story through a collection of roughly 350 garments. The museum closed on August 30, 2024, after 22 years; its collection moved into storage at Union Station, with portions expected to go on display through the Kansas City Museum. ²

Sources

Footnotes

1. Kansas City Public Library, Missouri Valley Special Collections — Kansas City Garment District archive. ↩ ↩²

2. “Museum dedicated to Kansas City’s influential garment district closing after 2 decades,” KCUR, August 23, 2024; and “The History of Kansas City’s Garment Industry: 1922–2022,” IN Kansas City Magazine. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

3. Historic Garment District materials and KCUR coverage on the district as Kansas City’s second-largest industrial employer and the nation’s second-largest garment center. ↩ ↩² ↩³

4. Donnelly Garment Company / “Nelly Don” company history; Missouri Historic Costume and Textile Collection, University of Missouri. ↩ ↩²

5. Terence O’Malley, Nelly Don: A Stitch in Time (Nell Donnelly Reed biography and Pendergast-era crime coverage). ↩

6. International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union archival materials — Kansas City local. ↩

7. “The Needle,” Kansas City Parks & Recreation; City of Fountains; The Clio entry on The Needle and the Kansas City Garment District (artist Dave Stevens, dedicated October 4, 2002). ↩