Giralda Tower (Country Club Plaza)

The Giralda Tower on the Country Club Plaza is a 138-foot, half-scale replica of the Giralda — the famous bell tower of the Seville Cathedral in Spain. Built by the J.C. Nichols Company in 1967 at 47th Street and Mill Creek Parkway, it is the tallest structure on the Plaza and the crowning expression of the district’s Seville-inspired identity. Its dedication coincided with Kansas City and Seville becoming sister cities — Kansas City’s first. Its carillon, silent for two decades, was restored to ringing at Easter 2026.

[!info] Cornerstone-adjacent entry Created out of the deep-dive on the Country Club Plaza. Citation-first; sourced to named references with links.

The tower

The Giralda Tower is a half-scale replica of the Giralda, the twelfth-century minaret-turned-bell-tower of the Seville Cathedral in Seville, Spain — the monument that gave the entire Plaza its Spanish architectural theme. The Kansas City version stands 138 feet (42 meters) tall, making it the tallest building on the Plaza, at the corner of West 47th Street and Mill Creek Parkway (formerly Nichols Road), just southwest of the J.C. Nichols Memorial Fountain.¹²

Developer J.C. Nichols had wanted to build a Giralda replica ever since visiting Seville in the 1920s, but never found the right site. His son Miller Nichols finally located the spot and built the tower, which was dedicated in 1967.¹

The 1967 freestanding tower should not be confused with the general Seville-inspired tower motifs found on many Plaza buildings — decorative echoes of the same Giralda that recur throughout the district. The standalone replica at 47th and Mill Creek is the definitive, full one.

Kansas City and Seville — sister cities

The Giralda Tower is a physical monument to a civic relationship: 1967, the year the tower was dedicated, was also the year Kansas City and Seville became sister cities — the first of Kansas City’s sister-city relationships.³¹ At the dedication, Seville’s mayor, Félix Moreno de la Cova, officially christened the tower.¹

The carillon and its 2026 revival

The tower houses a carillon — a set of bells (reported as about 600 bells, manufactured by Schulmerich Carillons of Sellersville, Pennsylvania) installed with the tower in 1967.⁴ The bells fell silent in the early 2000s. After a restoration, the Giralda’s bells rang again for the first time in some two decades on Easter Sunday, April 5, 2026.⁴ “ for the exact “600 bells” count and Schulmerich attribution — reliable across multiple news reports of the KC Public Library’s research, but not confirmed from a single fully-retrieved primary page.

Sources

Footnotes

1. Wikipedia — “Giralda (Kansas City).” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giralda_(Kansas_City) — Confirms: half-scale replica of the Seville Giralda; 138 feet (42 m); corner of West 47th Street and Mill Creek Parkway; J.C. Nichols wanted it after visiting Seville in the 1920s; built by son Miller Nichols; dedicated 1967, christened by Seville mayor Félix Moreno de la Cova; dedication the same year KC and Seville became sister cities. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

2. Wikipedia — “Country Club Plaza.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_Club_Plaza — Confirms: “a half-sized Giralda Tower of Seville (the tallest building in the Plaza).” ↩

3. KC Sister Cities — “Seville.” https://www.kcsistercities.org/seville-kc-sister-cities/ — Confirms: the Kansas City Sister Cities program dates to 1967 “with the establishment, this same year, of the first Kansas City Sister City, Seville.” ↩

4. KSHB 41 — “Carillon bells inside Giralda Tower on Country Club Plaza to ring again.” https://www.kshb.com/news/local-news/carillon-bells-inside-giralda-tower-on-country-club-plaza-to-ring-again — Confirms: bells installed 1967, stopped ringing in the early 2000s, and rang again Easter Sunday, April 5 [2026]. (The “~600 bells” count and Schulmerich Carillons attribution come from KC Public Library “KCQ” research reported by KSHB, Fox4, and KCTV5; the library’s own page returned 403, so the exact count is “.) ↩ ↩²