Mill Creek Park is an 11-acre greenspace at the northeast edge of the Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, Missouri, running along Mill Creek Parkway near West 47th Street. Created as part of the George Kessler parks-and-boulevards plan — the parkway opened in 1913 — it is best known as the home of the J.C. Nichols Memorial Fountain, one of Kansas City’s most famous fountains, and the nearby Seville Light. In June 2020 the Kansas City Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners voted to remove developer J.C. Nichols’s name from both the fountain and the surrounding parkway in light of his role in racially restrictive housing covenants; the parkway reverted to its original name, Mill Creek Parkway.

Summary

Mill Creek Park is a small linear/triangular park, about 11.43 acres, acquired as right-of-way beginning in 1908, at the northeast corner of the Country Club Plaza, organized around Mill Creek Parkway.¹ The current KC Parks listing gives its address as Emanuel Cleaver II Boulevard and Mill Creek Parkway, though the fountain and Seville Light have historically been described as sitting at West 47th Street and Mill Creek Parkway.²¹³ The park:

Sits at the northern/northeastern edge of the Plaza, just south of Brush Creek and within easy walking distance of the Plaza shopping district
Lies along Mill Creek Parkway, a corridor first opened in 1913 as part of the Kessler parks-and-boulevards system¹
Is the setting for the J.C. Nichols Memorial Fountain (1960), among the most photographed fountains in a city that calls itself the “City of Fountains”⁴⁵
Includes the Seville Light (dedicated 1967), a marble-and-iron fountain honoring Kansas City’s sister-city tie to Seville, Spain³
Has been maintained in part through the Nichols family and the Miller Nichols Charitable Foundation⁶

The parkway running through the park carried three successive names: Mill Creek Parkway (from 1913), J.C. Nichols Parkway (renamed in 1952 after Nichols’s death), and Mill Creek Parkway again after the 2020 renaming.¹⁶

Background and history

Kessler-plan origins (1893–1913)

The park belongs to the City Beautiful–era parks-and-boulevards system that landscape architect George Kessler laid out in the first Report of the Park and Boulevard Commissioners of Kansas City, Mo. in 1893.¹ Beginning in 1908, the Board of Park Commissioners began acquiring and condemning land in the Mill Creek valley for a public parkway, selling buildings on the condemned property before roadwork began. In 1913 the new Mill Creek Parkway opened, then running from Westport Avenue south to 48th Street.¹ What is today Mill Creek Park was itself acquired as parkway right-of-way; tennis courts were built at the park’s north end near 43rd Street around 1914, with additional courts added later farther south near Main Street (today the site of the Plaza Tennis Center).¹ Mill Creek — the natural watercourse that gives the park its name — drains north toward Brush Creek at the edge of the future Plaza. The park thus predates the Country Club Plaza, which J.C. Nichols opened in 1922.¹

A memorial to “the women of the Old South” was installed in the park at the northeast corner of 47th Street and Mill Creek Parkway in 1934; it was relocated in 1958 to make room for the J.C. Nichols Memorial Fountain.¹ on the memorial’s subsequent fate, sponsor, and present-day disposition — its 1934 placement fits the broader pattern of Lost Cause memorialization in early-20th-century Missouri and merits its own research thread rather than a passing mention here.

Plaza-era integration and the 1952 renaming

As the Country Club Plaza grew into the commercial and cultural anchor of the surrounding Country Club District, the parkway and its adjacent greenspace became a green northern gateway to the shopping district. In 1952, following Nichols’s death, Mill Creek Parkway was renamed J.C. Nichols Parkway in his honor.¹ In the early 1980s, Miller Nichols worked with cardiologist Dr. Ben McAllister and KC Parks to add a walking/jogging path, an exercise area, benches, lighting, and landscaping to the park, and to clear overgrowth and debris from its north and east sections; an eco-pond fountain was added in the northeastern part of the park during this period, and exercise stations were installed along the walking trail in 2011.¹

The J.C. Nichols Memorial Fountain (1960)

The park’s centerpiece fountain was not built for the site. Its bronze figures — four heroic horsemen representing four of the world’s great rivers (the Mississippi, fending off an alligator; the Volga, with a bear; the Seine; and the Rhine), with smaller children riding fish around them — were cast in 1910 by the French sculptor Henri-Léon Gréber for the Long Island estate (“Harbor Hill”) of New York financier Clarence H. Mackay.⁴²⁵ Mackay lost his fortune in the 1929 crash; the bank foreclosed on Harbor Hill in 1940, and the mansion was demolished in 1947 after a period of vandalism — one of the fountain’s four fish figures was sold off separately before the demolition.⁵ Miller Nichols, son of J.C. Nichols, acquired the fountain and brought it to Kansas City in 1951, funded by the Nichols family, the city, and more than $50,000 in private donations including a schoolchildren’s fundraising drive.⁴²⁵ After refurbishment — artist Herman Frederick Simon recreated the missing fish figure as a stand-in replica — the fountain was installed at the head of the park and dedicated to J.C. Nichols in 1960.⁴²⁵ It became one of Kansas City’s signature landmarks, regularly appearing in televised footage of the city.⁴

The fountain was restored again in 2014 with support from the Miller Nichols Charitable Foundation; the sculptures and equipment were removed for cleaning and, in some cases, replacement.⁴⁵ The original “fourth fish” — separated from the Mackay estate in 1947 and long held, unrecognized, by a New York family (the Singers) — resurfaced in 2008 and was purchased by the City of Kansas City in 2010, then installed in place of Simon’s replica during the 2014 renovation; the replica now sits nearby on a concrete base with a plaque describing its history.⁴⁵

The Seville Light (1967)

Nearby, on a triangular traffic island at the Plaza’s east edge, across from the J.C. Nichols/Mill Creek fountain, stands the Seville Light, installed and dedicated in October 1967. Given to the city by Miller Nichols, it was created by sculptor Bernhard Zuckerman as an exact replica of the Plaza de los Reyes fountain in Seville, Spain, honoring the sister-city relationship between Kansas City and Seville and complementing the Plaza’s Spanish-inspired architecture.³ Its central shaft — carved from several kinds of marble and roughly 30 feet tall — is topped by an ornamental iron light feature, and water flows from a masked face on each side of the shaft; the fountain’s base is about 20 feet wide.³ The fixture had been out of service for years due to deteriorated piping and wiring; it was renovated alongside the 2014 J.C. Nichols fountain restoration, receiving new plumbing and electrical systems and repaired surrounding pavement, and returned to service in spring 2015.³

The 2020 renaming

On June 30, 2020, amid nationwide protests over racial injustice and renewed scrutiny of J.C. Nichols’s legacy, the Kansas City Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners voted unanimously to remove the Nichols name from both the fountain and the parkway.⁶² Historians had documented that Nichols used racially restrictive deed covenants to bar Black, Jewish, and other minority residents from his developments — a practice reinforced by 1920s city zoning that confined Black residents to neighborhoods east of Troost Avenue — helping to entrench Kansas City’s lasting patterns of residential segregation and a wealth gap that, by some measures, left houses west of Troost worth up to eight times as much as comparable houses to the east.⁷ Nichols had developed more than 6,000 homes and apartments over a nearly 50-year career, housing an estimated 35,000 Kansas Citians.⁷ The parkway reverted to its original name, Mill Creek Parkway; the board removed Nichols’s name from the fountain without immediately assigning a new official name.⁶ The Nichols family and the Miller Nichols Charitable Foundation publicly endorsed the change the same day — foundation president Kay Callison and Mark Callison (grandson of Miller Nichols) issued statements of support — and the Foundation committed a $100,000 gift to the City of Fountains Foundation for the fountain’s continued upkeep.⁶ The episode is treated in more detail at plaza-fountain-renaming-saga.

Long-term significance

Mill Creek Park condenses several threads of Kansas City history into a few acres: the City Beautiful parks-and-boulevards vision of George Kessler, the Plaza-building ambition of J.C. Nichols and his son Miller, the city’s identity as the “City of Fountains,” a 1934–1958 Lost Cause memorial whose full story remains undocumented here, and the 21st-century reckoning with the human cost of Nichols’s housing practices. The fountain remains one of the most recognized images of Kansas City, regularly used in postcards, tourism imagery, and civic celebrations, while the park itself functions as the green front porch of the Country Club Plaza.

Distinct-subject note: Mill Creek Park, the J.C. Nichols Memorial/Mill Creek fountain, and the Seville Light are three related but separately documented subjects sharing one small footprint — the park is the KC Parks-managed greenspace (11.43 acres, acquired 1908), the fountain is one specific object within it (Gréber sculpture group, installed 1960), and the Seville Light is a second, separate fountain-and-lamp structure on a nearby traffic island (Zuckerman replica, dedicated 1967). This page is not a duplicate or conflation of other vault pages: city-of-fountains-identity documents the citywide “City of Fountains” branding/identity concept, not any single fountain, and the William Volker Memorial Fountain is a wholly separate work — Carl Milles’s St. Martin of Tours group, dedicated 1958 in Frank A. Theis Park at Volker Blvd. and Oak St., roughly two miles from the Plaza in the Volker neighborhood near UMKC and the Nelson-Atkins — with no shared sculptor, sponsor, or site with Mill Creek Park’s fountains. No other vault page was found covering Mill Creek Park, the J.C. Nichols/Mill Creek fountain, or the Seville Light specifically.

Sites and notable places

J.C. Nichols Memorial Fountain (1960; Gréber figures cast 1910) — the park’s centerpiece and one of KC’s most famous fountains; the Nichols name was removed by the Parks Board in 2020.⁴⁵⁶
Seville Light (1967) — marble-and-iron fountain, a replica of Seville’s Plaza de los Reyes fountain, on a traffic island near Mill Creek Parkway and W. 47th St, honoring the Kansas City–Seville sister-city tie.³
Mill Creek Parkway — the City Beautiful parkway (opened 1913; J.C. Nichols Parkway 1952–2020) that defines the park’s spine.¹
Memorial to “the women of the Old South” (installed 1934, relocated 1958) — undocumented beyond its placement and relocation; a research gap.
country-club-plaza — the adjacent Spanish-themed shopping district to the south.
See kansas-city-fountains for the broader fountain inventory.

Sources

“Mill Creek Park” — Kansas City Parks & Recreation (fetched via Firecrawl 2026-08-05, site blocks plain WebFetch) — Confirms: year acquired 1908, 11.43 acres, Park District 2 (Central); 1908 land acquisition/condemnation for Mill Creek Parkway, 1913 opening (Westport Ave. to 48th St.), 1952 renaming to J.C. Nichols Parkway, June 30, 2020 renaming back to Mill Creek Parkway; tennis courts built near 43rd St. around 1914, more added later near Main St. (now the Plaza Tennis Center); memorial to “the women of the Old South” placed at the NE corner of 47th St. and Mill Creek Pkwy in 1934, relocated in 1958 to make way for the fountain; early-1980s improvements led by Miller Nichols and Dr. Ben McAllister with KC Parks (walking/jogging path, exercise area, lighting, landscaping, eco-pond fountain); exercise stations added 2011. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹²
“Fountain in Mill Creek Park” — Kansas City Parks & Recreation (fetched via Firecrawl 2026-08-05, site blocks plain WebFetch) — Confirms: address given as Emanuel Cleaver II Blvd and Mill Creek Pkwy; designer Henri-Léon Gréber, sculpted 1910, installed 1960; same core fountain history as ⁴ (Mackay estate, 1951 arrival, 1960 dedication as the J.C. Nichols Memorial Fountain, 2014 renovation); June 30, 2020 Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners vote to remove the J.C. Nichols name from the fountain and parkway; located within Mill Creek Park, Park District 2 (Central). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵
“Seville Light Fountain” — City of Fountains Foundation (COFF) (fetched via Firecrawl 2026-08-05, site blocks plain WebFetch) — Confirms: located on a triangular traffic island at the east edge of the Country Club Plaza, across from the Mill Creek Park fountain, at (per this page) W. 47th St. and J.C. Nichols Pkwy; sculptor Bernhard Zuckerman, commissioned to create an exact replica of the Plaza de los Reyes fountain in Seville, Spain; installed and dedicated 1967; ~30-ft marble central shaft topped with ornamental iron light details, water flowing from a masked face on each side, ~20-ft-wide base; 2014 renovation (new plumbing/electrical, pavement repair) after years out of service, returned to service spring 2015. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶
“Mill Creek Park Fountain” — City of Fountains Foundation (COFF) (fetched via Firecrawl 2026-08-05, site blocks plain WebFetch) — Confirms: fountain at W. 47th St and Mill Creek Parkway, south end of Mill Creek Park, east entrance to the Country Club Plaza; figures sculpted by Henri Gréber in 1910 for Clarence Mackay’s Long Island mansion; funded by the Nichols family, the city, and private contributions including a schoolchildren’s collection; brought to KC 1951; refurbished by Herman Frederick Simon; dedicated 1960; four river-horsemen and four fish/“dolphin” figures, one an original-era replica; 2014 renovation funded by the Miller Nichols Charitable Foundation, during which the missing dolphin was found and restored to the fountain (replica now displayed nearby with an interpretive plaque). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹
“Mill Creek Park Fountain” — The Clio (fetched via Firecrawl 2026-08-05, site blocks plain WebFetch) — Confirms: Gréber design/casting 1910 in France for Clarence H. Mackay’s Harbor Hill estate; Mackay’s 1929 Wall Street Crash losses, 1940 bank foreclosure on Harbor Hill, 1947 demolition of the mansion (with one fish figure sold off beforehand); fountain purchased with Nichols family, city, and >$50,000 in private donations; brought to KC 1951 by Miller Nichols; refurbished and a replica fish added by Herman Frederick Simon; dedicated to J.C. Nichols 1960; 2014 renovation funded by the Miller Nichols Charitable Foundation; the original “fourth fish” (held unknowingly by the Singer family since 1947) resurfaced in 2008, was purchased by the City of Kansas City in 2010, and replaced the Simon replica during the 2014 renovation; June 30, 2020 unanimous Board of Parks and Recreation vote to rename the fountain and parkway to Mill Creek. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸
“Kansas City, Missouri, Parks Board Votes To Remove J.C. Nichols’ Name From Iconic Fountain And Parkway” — KCUR 89.3, June 30, 2020 (fetched 2026-08-05) — Confirms: unanimous June 30, 2020 Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners vote; J.C. Nichols name removed from the fountain, parkway restored to Mill Creek Parkway; Nichols family and Miller Nichols Charitable Foundation publicly supportive (statements from foundation president Kay Callison and Mark Callison, grandson of Miller Nichols); Foundation pledge of a $100,000 gift to the City of Fountains Foundation for fountain maintenance. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶
“Who Was J.C. Nichols? The Mixed Legacy Of The Man Whose Name Could Be Taken Off Kansas City’s Most Famous Fountain” — KCUR 89.3, June 12, 2020 (fetched 2026-08-05) — Confirms: Nichols’s use of deed restrictions to exclude Black, Jewish, and other minority residents from his developments; 1920s city zoning restricting Black residents to neighborhoods east of Troost Avenue; Nichols developed 6,000+ homes/apartments over ~50 years, housing an estimated 35,000 Kansas Citians; present-day housing-value disparities across Troost tied to this history. ↩ ↩²