The Plaza-Area Fountain Renaming Saga (2020)

[CORRECTION, 2026-08-05] This page previously stated the vote occurred June 15, 2020 and that the fountain was renamed “the Country Club Plaza Fountain.” Contemporaneous reporting (KCUR, FOX4, the Lawrence Journal-World) establishes the vote was June 30, 2020, and that no permanent replacement name was chosen for the fountain itself — only the adjacent parkway received an immediate new name. Both errors are corrected below and throughout this page.¹²

On June 30, 2020, in the wake of the nationwide protests following the May 25 police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the Kansas City Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners voted unanimously to remove the J.C. Nichols name from both the Country Club Plaza-area fountain in Mill Creek Park and from the adjacent thoroughfare formerly known as J.C. Nichols Parkway.¹ The parkway was immediately renamed Mill Creek Parkway; the fountain itself was left formally unnamed pending further public input, and as of this remediation is identified by the City simply as the “Fountain in Mill Creek Park.”³² The renaming recognized that J.C. Nichols, the developer of the Plaza and the surrounding Country Club District, had been one of the most influential national pioneers of racially restrictive real estate covenants in early-20th-century American suburban development.¹ The decision was one of the most consequential public-naming changes in modern Kansas City history and a defining act of KC’s broader 2020 racial-justice reckoning.

Summary

The 2020 Plaza-area fountain and parkway renaming removed the name J.C. Nichols from two prominent Plaza-area civic landmarks:

The J.C. Nichols Memorial Fountain → name removed; left formally unnamed, commonly identified today as the Fountain in Mill Creek Park / Mill Creek Park Fountain³⁴ (the large sculptural fountain at the 47th Street entrance to the Plaza / south end of Mill Creek Park featuring four bronze equestrian figures by Henri-Léon Gréber, cast in Paris in 1910 for the Long Island estate of financier Clarence Mackay, salvaged in 1951 after fire and vandalism damage, purchased by the Nichols family, and dedicated in Kansas City in 1960 as a memorial to J.C. Nichols who died in 1950)⁵¹
J.C. Nichols Parkway → Mill Creek Parkway (the Plaza-area thoroughfare running south from the Plaza along Brush Creek)¹

The decision was made on June 30, 2020 by the Kansas City Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners in a unanimous vote following:¹

Sustained public-comment campaigning organized by KC racial-justice advocates and community organizations through May and early June 2020
The national context of post-George-Floyd-killing protests that had begun May 25, 2020 and were continuing nationwide
Extensive public testimony at Parks Board hearings on the proposed renaming — at the first public hearing on June 18, 2020, roughly 40 people spoke, with only a small handful opposed⁶
A body of published critical writing about Nichols’s restrictive-covenants legacy that had been developing through the late 2010s
Various smaller-scale renamings and recognitions that had occurred at KC institutions previously, including the Urban Land Institute’s July 2020 renaming of its J.C. Nichols Prize⁷

At the June 18 hearing, Parks Commissioner Chris Goode proposed renaming the parkway for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the fountain the “Dream Fountain”; other speakers proposed honoring Levi Harrington or Ryan Stokes, or a neutral name such as “Mill Creek Fountain.”⁶ The small number of opposing speakers argued the renaming would erase an important part of Plaza history, or pointed to the contemporaneous reversal of the Paseo/MLK Boulevard renaming (see paseo-mlk-renaming-saga) as a caution that name changes could prove divisive; Student Government President Brandon Henderson responded, “I learned about history from books, not fountains and street names.”⁶ A KC Confidential op-ed separately argued against renaming the fountain without a public vote, invoking the Paseo precedent.⁸

The decision was contested by a minority of public commenters but strongly supported by the overall balance of Parks Board public testimony, and drew no formal opposition at the June 30 vote itself.¹⁶ The parkway renaming took effect immediately and has been reflected in subsequent signage, mapping, and civic-document updates; the fountain, left formally unnamed, continued to be informally called by its old name in some travel and tourism material for years afterward.²³

The renaming is a central element of KC’s broader 2020 racial-justice reckoning and is frequently cited in subsequent national discussion of monumental-naming reform.

Background

J.C. Nichols and restrictive covenants

Jesse Clyde “J.C.” Nichols (1880-1950) — the developer of the Country Club Plaza (opened 1922) and of the broader Country Club District residential subdivisions — is widely described by historians as one of the most influential national pioneers of racially restrictive real estate covenants in early-20th-century American suburban development.⁹¹⁰

Restrictive covenants are legally binding deed restrictions that limit how a property can be used or who can purchase or occupy it. Racially restrictive covenants — typically restricting sale or rental of property to white buyers only and forbidding occupancy by Black, Jewish, Asian, and Mexican residents — were:

Pioneered systematically by Nichols in his Country Club District developments beginning in approximately 1908
Refined and standardized by Nichols through the 1910s-1930s as he expanded the Country Club District across south Kansas City
Exported nationally through Nichols’s leadership of the Urban Land Institute and the National Association of Real Estate Boards (the predecessor to the modern National Association of Realtors); Nichols served as president of the NAREB and used these positions to promote racial-restrictive-covenant practice across American suburban development
Imitated by suburban developers nationwide through the 1910s-1940s; the Nichols-template covenant language appeared in deed restrictions across broad swaths of American suburban development of the era

The legal effects of the Nichols covenants:

Systematically excluded Black residents from purchasing or occupying property in the Country Club District (and in similar developments nationwide)
Operated alongside federal redlining to compound the structural exclusion of Black residents from suburban housing markets
Were declared judicially unenforceable by the U.S. Supreme Court in Shelley v. Kraemer (1948)¹¹ — but their geographic effects on KC residential segregation persist today, decades after enforcement ended

Why the covenants persisted

Although legally unenforceable after 1948, the Nichols-template covenants produced lasting geographic-demographic effects that persist into contemporary KC:

The Country Club District residential areas remained overwhelmingly white well into the 21st century — partly through continued informal social barriers, partly through cumulative economic effects of decades of housing-market exclusion
Adjacent Black residential areas were locked into geographic concentration on the eastern side of the city — partly through the same set of cumulative effects
The KC metro’s contemporary residential-demographic patterns largely reflect the structural geography established by the Nichols covenants even though the legal mechanism ended in 1948

The “Troost Wall” — the informal description of Troost Avenue as the historical racial dividing line between the white western half and the Black eastern half of KCMO — reflects the residential-geographic patterns the Nichols covenants helped establish.

The fountain in Mill Creek Park

The fountain itself — separately from the J.C. Nichols name — is a major Beaux-Arts equestrian sculpture featuring four bronze figures of mounted horsemen representing four of the world’s major rivers (the Volga; the Mississippi; the Rhine; the Seine).⁵ The figures were:

Sculpted by Henri-Léon Gréber (1854-1941) of Paris, cast in 1910⁵
Originally installed at Harbor Hill, the Long Island estate of financier Clarence Mackay⁵
Damaged by a 1938 fire and subsequent vandalism at the Mackay estate, then sold as salvage in 1951 and purchased by the Nichols family, who brought the figures to Kansas City⁵
Refurbished by sculptor Herman Frederick Simon and dedicated in 1960 at the Plaza’s 47th Street entrance / south end of Mill Creek Park — ten years after J.C. Nichols’s death — as a memorial to J.C. Nichols⁵³
Funded by the Nichols family, the City, and private contributions, including a collection by area schoolchildren⁵

The fountain has genuine artistic merit independent of the Nichols name. The Gréber figures are accomplished Beaux-Arts equestrian sculpture that would be significant regardless of the KC installation context. The fountain has been continuously well-maintained by Plaza ownership across multiple ownership transitions.

The renaming did not affect the fountain’s physical character — the bronze figures, the basin, the water-feature programming all remain unchanged. Only the name changed.

Pre-2020 conversations

The conversation about removing the Nichols name from the fountain and parkway had developed gradually through the 2010s:

Various scholarly studies of Nichols’s restrictive-covenants legacy had been published or expanded — particularly William S. Worley’s J.C. Nichols and the Shaping of Kansas City (1990) and subsequent more-critical secondary literature⁹
KC racial-justice advocacy organizations had been calling for KC public-naming reform of the Nichols-named civic landmarks for several years
Various other smaller-scale renamings had occurred at KC institutions — including some street-name changes and various institutional commemorative-program revisions

[CORRECTION, 2026-08-05] This page previously stated the Urban Land Institute renamed its J.C. Nichols Prize in 2018. That is incorrect: ULI announced the renaming — to the ULI Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development — on July 8, 2020, shortly after the KC Parks Board vote, not before it; 2018 was instead the year Theaster Gates, the first Black American laureate, won the (still Nichols-named) prize.⁷ The Prize renaming is accordingly better understood as part of the same 2020 reckoning than as pre-2020 groundwork.

Pre-2020 these conversations had not produced a Parks Board renaming decision. The 2020 moment was the inflection point at which sustained advocacy met sufficient civic momentum to produce action.

The renaming decision

The May-June 2020 context

The May 25, 2020 police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis produced immediate nationwide protests that continued through the summer of 2020. The protests reshaped public conversation about:

Police use of force and police accountability
Public monumental commemoration of historically-contested figures
Institutional commitments to racial justice at corporations, universities, governments, and civic organizations
Naming and renaming of streets, schools, parks, buildings, and other publicly-named entities

In KC the protests included notable activity in the Country Club Plaza area — partly because the Plaza is a high-visibility commercial destination, partly because the J.C. Nichols Memorial Fountain had become an active subject of renewed racial-justice advocacy in the days after Floyd’s killing.¹²

The advocacy campaign

Through late May and early June 2020, KC racial-justice advocates organized:

Public-comment campaigns directed at the Kansas City Parks Board
Letter-writing campaigns to Parks Board members and to KCMO mayoral and council members
Social-media advocacy highlighting the Nichols covenants legacy
Physical-presence events at the fountain itself
Coordination with national racial-justice organizations for amplified attention

By early-to-mid June 2020 the Parks Board had held its first public hearing (June 18) with a second virtual hearing on June 24, and had indicated a decision would follow within about 30 days.⁶

The Parks Board vote

The Kansas City Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners held its decisive meeting on June 30, 2020.¹² Per contemporaneous reporting, no organized opposition appeared and no one spoke against the motion at that final meeting — the earlier public hearings had already surfaced the (minority) opposition views.²

The Board voted unanimously to:

Remove the J.C. Nichols name from the fountain, without adopting a permanent replacement name — the Board indicated it would keep taking name suggestions²
Rename J.C. Nichols Parkway to Mill Creek Parkway (after the historic Mill Creek that the parkway largely follows; Mill Creek is a small tributary that flows into Brush Creek near the Plaza)¹

The Board’s stated rationale explicitly cited Nichols’s restrictive-covenants legacy as the basis for the action; Commissioner Chris Goode, who had proposed the removal, called it “not a moment for celebration but a moment to open dialogue,” linking the decision to Floyd’s killing and to the local police shooting of a 4-year-old Black child that spring.²

Immediate implementation

The renaming was implemented immediately for the parkway, and more gradually for the fountain given the lack of a permanent replacement name:

Physical signage removing the Nichols name at the fountain and along the parkway was updated within weeks
Online mapping services (Google Maps, Apple Maps, etc.) were updated within months
KC civic documents and tourism materials were updated through subsequent normal revision cycles, though the fountain continued to appear under its old name in some travel and tourism sources for years afterward³
The Plaza’s ownership at the time of the vote, Macerich, accepted and reflected the renaming in marketing and signage
Most KC residents adopted the new parkway name within months, though some older residents continued informally using the prior names for some period

Reactions and continuing context

Supportive reception

The renaming was widely supported by:

KC’s Black community and Black political leadership
KC’s broader civil-rights advocacy community
Most academic and historical-society voices who had been engaging with the Nichols legacy
Portions of the KC business community that had been participating in broader racial-justice institutional change
National racial-justice organizations who treated the KC renaming as a model

Critical reception

[CORRECTION, 2026-08-05] This page previously stated that “some elements of the Nichols family” issued statements of disappointment opposing the renaming. That claim could not be verified during this remediation and appears to be incorrect: contemporaneous reporting is unanimous that the Nichols family and the Miller Nichols Charitable Foundation publicly supported the renaming, releasing a joint statement the day of the vote and pledging $100,000 toward fountain maintenance through the City of Fountains Foundation.¹¹³ The claim of family opposition is removed pending a source.

The renaming was nonetheless opposed by a minority of public commenters and some outside commentary, including:

A small number of speakers at the June 18 public hearing who argued the renaming amounted to historical erasure of Nichols’s Plaza contributions⁶
At least one local op-ed (KC Confidential) arguing against renaming without a citywide public vote, citing the Paseo/MLK precedent⁸
Commentary invoking the 2019-2020 Paseo Boulevard/MLK renaming reversal (see paseo-mlk-renaming-saga) as a caution about renaming without broad buy-in⁶

The opposition was smaller and less organized than the support, and — unlike the Paseo/MLK case — produced no counter-petition and no ballot challenge; the fountain and parkway renaming was not reversed.

Broader 2020 KC reckonings

The Plaza Fountain renaming was one element of broader 2020 KC institutional reckonings:

The Paseo Boulevard renaming controversy — the KC City Council voted 8–4 in January 2019 to rename The Paseo to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard; a citizen referendum reversed that renaming in the November 2019 election (not 2020, correcting this page’s earlier uncertainty), 31,274–13,909; a further Parks Board renaming of the Blue Parkway/Swope Parkway/Volker Boulevard corridor to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard followed in April 2021 — see paseo-mlk-renaming-saga for full detail¹⁴
Various school renamings at KCMSD and other regional school districts
Corporate institutional commitments to racial-justice programming at major KC employers
Police-department reform conversations at KCPD
Various other municipal-naming reviews that continue into the 2020s

Continuing limits

The renaming is limited in scope:

The Country Club District residential geography that the Nichols covenants helped establish has not been restructured by the renaming
The broader contemporary KC residential segregation continues
Various other Nichols-named civic and institutional landmarks remain — including the J.C. Nichols Company itself which continued as a private real-estate operation, the Nichols Hills, Oklahoma development (Nichols-developed and Nichols-named), and various smaller commemorations
The renaming was a symbolic act, not an economic or geographic restructuring

The honest contemporary assessment is that the renaming was necessary and meaningful but insufficient for the broader work of addressing the Nichols-era structural legacy.

Long-term significance

KC racial-justice institutional precedent. The 2020 renaming established a clear KC precedent for public-naming reform addressing historically problematic commemorations. Subsequent KC discussions of various other public-naming reforms (street names, school names, building names) draw on the Plaza Fountain renaming as reference.
National public-naming-reform discussion. The KC renaming has been frequently cited in national discussion of similar reforms at other cities — particularly cities with comparable early-20th-century suburban-developer civic naming.
Nichols legacy reconsideration. The renaming has accelerated scholarly and popular reconsideration of J.C. Nichols’s broader legacy — including his real-estate business practices, his civic philanthropy (active through the early 20th century), and his role in shaping modern KC’s residential geography.
Country Club Plaza identity evolution. The renaming reflects the broader evolution of the Country Club Plaza’s institutional identity under modern ownership and management — moving from the Nichols Company family legacy toward a more broadly civic and racially inclusive commercial identity.

The fountain today

The fountain, officially listed by Kansas City Parks & Recreation simply as the Fountain in Mill Creek Park and commonly called the Mill Creek Park Fountain,³⁴ continues to operate as one of the most-visible civic landmarks in Kansas City. As of this remediation (2026-08-05), no evidence was found that the City has since adopted a different permanent name; the fountain remains without a name honoring an individual. The fountain:

Remains in continuous operation, restored in a major 2014 renovation funded by the Miller Nichols Charitable Foundation³
Continues to host various civic gatherings and events
Is illuminated during the annual Plaza Lighting Ceremony
Continues to be referred to by its pre-2020 name (“J.C. Nichols Fountain” / “J.C. Nichols Memorial Fountain”) in many travel guides and casual references, even years after the renaming³
Continues to function as a symbolic landmark of the Country Club Plaza / Mill Creek Park area

Visitors to the fountain in 2026 see the physical sculpture unchanged from its 1960 dedication but without the J.C. Nichols name, and with a different civic context than before 2020.

Sites associated with the renaming

The Fountain in Mill Creek Park itself — 47th Street and (now) Mill Creek Parkway
Mill Creek Parkway — the renamed thoroughfare
The Country Club District residential areas — the broader geographic context
Various Nichols-related KC civic landmarks — varying treatment after 2020
The Kansas City Parks Board — institutional decision-maker
Plaza ownership offices — Macerich (at time of renaming); subsequent ownership transitions
Various KC racial-justice advocacy organizations — institutional record-keepers of the renaming process

Sources

KCUR — “Kansas City, Missouri, Parks Board Votes To Remove J.C. Nichols’ Name From Iconic Fountain And Parkway,” June 30, 2020 (fetched 2026-08-05) — Confirms: June 30, 2020 unanimous vote; parkway renamed Mill Creek Parkway; Nichols family and Miller Nichols Charitable Foundation publicly supported the renaming and pledged $100,000 to the City of Fountains Foundation; quotes from Foundation president Kay Callison and Mark Callison. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰
Lawrence Journal-World (AP) — “Kansas City Board Votes to Remove J.C. Nichols’ Name From Iconic Fountain,” June 30, 2020 (fetched 2026-08-05) — Confirms: unanimous June 30, 2020 vote; no organized opposition and no one spoke against the motion at that meeting; no permanent new name chosen for the fountain, with the Board continuing to take name suggestions through at least July 7, 2020; Commissioner Chris Goode’s remarks connecting the vote to George Floyd’s killing and a local police shooting of a 4-year-old Black child. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷
Kansas City Parks & Recreation — “Fountain in Mill Creek Park.” (2026-08-05: site returned HTTP 403 to automated fetch — a bot-mitigation response per this remediation’s toolchain notes, not confirmation of a dead link; page title and content confirmed via independent search indexing) — Confirms: the fountain’s current official City designation is simply “Fountain in Mill Creek Park,” with no individual’s name attached; sculpted by Henri-Léon Gréber, installed 1960; 2014 renovation funded by the Miller Nichols Charitable Foundation. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸
City of Fountains Foundation — “Mill Creek Park Fountain.” (fetched 2026-08-05) — Confirms: current common name “Mill Creek Park Fountain,” used consistently by this institutional fountain-preservation nonprofit without an individual’s name attached. ↩ ↩²
National Trust for Historic Preservation — “Transitions: Restored — J.C. Nichols Memorial Fountain.” (URL located via search indexing 2026-08-05) — Confirms: Gréber figures cast in Paris, 1910, for Clarence Mackay’s Harbor Hill estate on Long Island; damaged by a 1938 fire and later vandalism; sold as salvage in 1951; purchased by the Nichols family and brought to Kansas City; funded by the Nichols family, the City, and private contributions including a schoolchildren’s collection. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷
KCUR — “Kansas City Residents Voice Support For Renaming J.C. Nichols Parkway, Fountain at First Public Meeting,” June 18, 2020 (fetched 2026-08-05) — Confirms: ~40 speakers, only a small handful opposed; Commissioner Chris Goode’s MLK/“Dream Fountain” naming proposal; alternate names proposed honoring Levi Harrington and Ryan Stokes, or the neutral “Mill Creek Fountain”; opposition arguments (historical erasure; the Paseo precedent); Student Government President Brandon Henderson’s rebuttal quote; second hearing scheduled June 24; decision expected within 30 days. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷
Urban Land Institute — “ULI to Rename J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development,” announced July 8, 2020 (2026-08-05: site returned HTTP 403 to automated fetch — bot-mitigation, not confirmation of a dead link; also see kansascity.uli.org, same 403 pattern; date and renaming confirmed via independent search indexing) — Confirms: the Prize was renamed the ULI Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development on July 8, 2020, not 2018; 2018 was instead the year of Theaster Gates’s (Nichols-named) award. ↩ ↩²
KC Confidential — Sutherland, “Why Not to Rename J.C. Nichols Fountain (Especially Without a Public Vote),” June 11, 2020 (2026-08-05: site returned HTTP 406 to automated fetch/curl — a bot-mitigation response, not confirmation the page is dead; URL and headline verified via independent search indexing) — Confirms: a contemporaneous published argument against renaming without a citywide vote, citing the Paseo precedent. ↩ ↩²
William S. Worley — J.C. Nichols and the Shaping of Kansas City: Innovation in Planned Residential Communities (University of Missouri Press, 1990, ISBN 978-0-8262-0744-9) (fetched 2026-08-05, full text available) — Confirms: the standard scholarly account of Nichols’s development practices and restrictive-covenant legacy. ↩ ↩²
Kevin Fox Gotham — Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development: The Kansas City Experience, 1900-2000 (State University of New York Press, 2002, ISBN 978-0-7914-5378-0; 2nd ed. covering 1900-2010, ISBN 978-1-4384-4942-5) (title/ISBN verified 2026-08-05) — Confirms: scholarly documentation of the real estate industry’s and FHA’s role in racial residential segregation in Kansas City. ↩
Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948) — U.S. Supreme Court decision holding racially restrictive covenants judicially unenforceable (fetched 2026-08-05) — Confirms: the 1948 ruling and its holding. ↩
KCUR — “Protests At Country Club Plaza Reignite Push To Rename Kansas City’s J.C. Nichols Fountain,” June 10, 2020 (URL located and its topic confirmed via search indexing 2026-08-05; not independently re-fetched line-by-line this pass) — Confirms: renewed 2020 protest activity at the Plaza reigniting the renaming push. ↩
Kansas City Magazine — “J.C. Nichols’ Family Announced Support for Renaming Fountain, Street and Park.” (URL located via search indexing 2026-08-05; headline directly contradicts this page’s earlier uncorrected claim of family opposition) — Confirms: Nichols family public support for the renaming. ↩
KCUR — “Kansas City Parks Board Renames Iconic Connecting Route In Honor Of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,” April 13, 2021 (fetched 2026-08-05; see full sourcing in paseo-mlk-renaming-saga) — Confirms: April 13, 2021 unanimous Parks Board vote renaming Blue Parkway/Swope Parkway/Volker Boulevard to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, following the November 2019 Paseo referendum reversal. ↩