Swift & Company operated a large meatpacking plant at the Kansas City Stockyards complex from 1887 until 1968 — a run of eighty years on Bergen (Berger) Street in Armourdale, Kansas. Built as a 13-acre facility “even larger” than Armour’s adjacent plant, Swift was one of the “Big Five” packers whose combined KC operations made the metro second only to Chicago in the U.S. livestock trade.

Founding

Swift’s Kansas City plant opened in 1887 on a 13-acre site in the Armourdale district of Kansas City, Kansas, alongside the already-established Armour operation. Contemporary accounts and later historical treatments describe the Swift plant as “even larger” than Armour’s — a sign of how quickly the KC packing district had grown into a serious rival to Chicago in the fifteen years since the stockyards opened in 1871.1

The plant sat on Bergen Street (spelled “Berger” in some later sources) in Armourdale, part of the concentrated packing corridor west of the Kansas River.2

Peak operations

Kansas City was a first-tier Swift operation for most of its history. Aerial photographs from 1927–1930 in the Missouri Valley Special Collections at the Kansas City Public Library show a sprawling multi-building complex spanning several blocks of Armourdale, with attached stockyards trackage, cooling houses, and rendering plants.3 Precise peak employment figures for the KC plant have not been recovered in this pass:.

Alongside Swift, the Big Five KC packers — Armour, Cudahy, Wilson, and Morris — collectively pushed KC’s WWII-era stockyards throughput past 2 million cattle, 500,000 hogs, and 2.2 million sheep by 1945.4

Labor

The KC Swift plant was drawn into every major industry-wide packinghouse action of the first half of the 20th century:

  • The 1904 Amalgamated Meat Cutters strike — more than 7,000 KC packing workers walked out across the Big Five plants.1
  • The 1921–1922 packinghouse strike — another industry-wide action, generally recorded as a defeat for the union.1
  • The eventual recognition of the United Packinghouse Workers of America in the 1940s, which brought durable union representation to Swift KC.1

KC-plant-specific labor incidents beyond the industry-wide strikes are thin in the accessible record and remain.

Decline and closure

The Great Flood of July 1951 inundated the Armourdale packing district, and Swift — like Armour — reopened after the flood but “chose not to reinvest heavily” in its KC operation. Throughput scaled back through the 1950s and 1960s.4 Swift ceased slaughter operations on Bergen Street in 1968, ending eighty years of packing on the site.2

The site today lies within the modern Armourdale industrial redevelopment corridor; specific parcel use is.

Legacy

The Morris & Swift Armourdale plants aerial photograph in the Missouri Valley Special Collections is one of the best surviving images of the Big Five packing district at its peak.5 Swift is one of the two national packers — with Armour — whose Kansas City chapter directly shaped the layout, employment base, and ethnic geography of the west-of-the-Kaw industrial district for most of a century.

Sources

Footnotes

  1. J. Herron / M. Cassity et al., “Making Meat: Race, Labor, and the Kansas City Stockyards,” Pendergast Kansas City Project — Confirms: Swift 1887 opening and 13-acre facility “even larger” than Armour’s; the 1904 Amalgamated Meat Cutters strike with 7,000+ KC workers; the 1921–22 strike; multi-ethnic KC packing workforce; UPWA recognition in the 1940s. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  2. KCRag Forum discussion summarizing a December 2012 Kansas City Star retrospective on the closing of the KC packing plants — Confirms: Swift ceased slaughter on Bergen Street in 1968, “80 years” on the site. “ — primary Star article URL not opened here; date corroborated by Livestock Exchange history. ↩ ↩2

  3. Pendergast Kansas City — “Swift & Company,” index of Missouri Valley Special Collections aerial photographs (1927–1930) — Confirms: multi-block Armourdale complex visible in the 1927–30 aerials. ↩

  4. Livestock Exchange Building — “Expanded History.” — Confirms: WWII peak throughput at the KC stockyards; the Big Four/Five packers’ post-1951-flood decision not to reinvest heavily. ↩ ↩2

  5. Missouri Valley Special Collections, Kansas City Public Library — aerial photograph, “Morris & Co. and Swift & Co. plants, Armourdale,” digitized on Pendergast KC ↩

See also

Categories
  • Concept
  • Industry
  • Company
  • Labor
  • Gilded Age
  • Postwar

On the record — ks.city/wiki/industrial-history/swift-and-company