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The Skywalk Memorial Plaza in Hospital Hill Park honors the 114 people killed and 216 injured in the 1981 Hyatt Regency walkway collapse — the deadliest single disaster in Kansas City’s modern history. Dedicated in 2015, thirty-four years after the collapse, its centerpiece is a 24-foot bronze sculpture, “Sending Love,” by the Kansas City artist Rita Blitt. It stands across from the hotel where the disaster happened.
[!info] Cornerstone-adjacent entry Created out of the deep-dive on the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse. Citation-first; sourced to named references with links.
The memorial
The Skywalk Memorial Plaza sits in Hospital Hill Park at 22nd Street and Gillham Road — directly across from the building (then the Hyatt Regency, now the Sheraton Kansas City Hotel at Crown Center) where two suspended walkways fell into a crowded tea dance on July 17, 1981.12 It was dedicated on November 12, 2015.1
Its centerpiece is “Sending Love,” a 24-foot bronze sculpture by Kansas City native artist Rita Blitt, mounted on a cylindrical pedestal. The work is a contemporary portrayal of a dancing couple — an evocation of the tea dance that was underway when the walkways collapsed — rather than a literal depiction of the disaster.1 The names of the 114 people killed are inscribed on the memorial.1 Blitt had a personal connection to the tragedy: her fifth-grade teacher was among the injured.
Why it took 34 years
The long gap between the disaster and its memorial was itself a story. As board members later explained, the delay came from years of litigation, an institutional reluctance among the hotel, Crown Center, and Hallmark to fund a memorial that might read as an admission of wrongdoing, and then the 2008 recession, which stalled fundraising.2 The Skywalk Memorial Foundation, led by attorney Brent Wright — who was sixteen when his mother and stepfather were killed in the collapse — organized the effort beginning around 2006 and carried it through to the 2015 dedication.2
Sources
Footnotes
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KC Parks & Recreation — “Skywalk Memorial Plaza” (Hospital Hill Park). https://kcparks.org/places/skywalk-memorial-plaza/ — Confirms: location in Hospital Hill Park at 22nd & Gillham; dedicated November 12, 2015; Rita Blitt’s 24-ft “Sending Love,” a dancing couple on a cylinder pedestal; the 114 victims’ names on the memorial. (kcparks.org direct fetch 403’d; content via search extraction, corroborated by Wikipedia and Zahner’s dedication photo-essay, https://azahner.com/blog/photographs-from-the-hyatt-skywalk-memorial-dedication/.) ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4
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KCUR — “Why, 33 Years Later, We Still Don’t Have A Memorial For The Skywalk Disaster” (July 17, 2014). https://www.kcur.org/community/2014-07-17/why-33-years-later-we-still-dont-have-a-memorial-for-the-skywalk-disaster — Confirms: the proposed Hospital Hill Park site (22nd & Gillham); founder Brent Wright (lost his mother and stepfather in the collapse); delays from litigation, institutional reluctance, and the 2008 recession; foundation organizing from ~2006. ↩ ↩2 ↩3
See also
On the record — ks.city/wiki/monuments-and-public-art/skywalk-memorial