Scarritt Renaissance is a residential neighborhood in Kansas City, Missouri’s Historic Northeast, sitting on the high bluffs about two miles east of downtown and overlooking the East Bottoms and the Missouri River. It takes its name from Reverend Nathan Scarritt, a Methodist minister and missionary who bought forty acres here in the spring of 1862 and built a log cabin with his own hands; the ground became known as Scarritt’s Point, later Scarritt Point. Scarritt platted the Melrose Addition in the fall of 1886, and the surrounding land was fully subdivided by late 1887; the arrival of North Terrace Park and Gladstone Boulevard in the 1890s drew affluent Kansas Citians to the bluffs, producing the mansions and Foursquares that still define the street. Two National Register historic districts — Scarritt Point North and Scarritt Point South, both listed December 1, 1997 — cover the neighborhood’s boulevard core. The present name comes from the Scarritt Renaissance Neighborhood Association, organized September 18, 1986.

Summary

Location: Historic Northeast Kansas City, MO, roughly two miles east of downtown, on the bluffs above the East Bottoms.¹²
Boundaries (per the neighborhood association): Chestnut Avenue on the west; Jackson Avenue on the east, with a jog via Sunrise Drive to Elmwood Avenue; Independence Avenue on the south; the Cliff Drive Scenic Byway on the north.³
NRHP: Scarritt Point North Historic District (ref. 97001484) and Scarritt Point South Historic District (ref. 97001483), both listed December 1, 1997.⁴⁵⁶
Local designation: the Scarritt Point Historic District has been on the Kansas City Register of Historic Places since November 10, 1983 (Landmarks Commission case no. 0068-D).¹
Neighborhood association: the Scarritt Renaissance Neighborhood Association (SRNA), established September 18, 1986 by Olympia Bivens, Ken Coit, and Rita Nell Patajdl; now a registered 501(c)(3).³²
Anchor institution: the Kansas City Museum at Corinthian Hall, 3218 Gladstone Boulevard — the R. A. Long house, listed on the National Register November 14, 1980 (ref. 80002366).⁶²

Name origin: Nathan Scarritt

The district takes its name from the Methodist minister Reverend Nathan Scarritt, who began evangelizing among Native nations in the fall of 1848 alongside Reverend Thomas Johnson in what is now Kansas, teaching and preaching in the Shawnee, Delaware, Wyandotte, and Kickapoo missions before being appointed to churches in Lexington and Westport, Missouri.¹

Scarritt’s own account, reprinted in the Kansas City Star of April 11, 1950 and quoted in the National Register nomination, describes the move that gave the neighborhood its name: by the close of 1861 “Kansas, and indeed the whole western border, had become so distracted by the troubles of the war” that he sought “a little house in some quiet place.” In the spring of 1862 he purchased forty acres, “built upon it a log cabin with my own hands,” and on May 6 moved his family in. After Order No. 11 was issued in the fall of 1863 — his household was not covered by the order — the family judged it unsafe to remain so far from military protection and moved into Kansas City, where Scarritt taught school for two years, returning to the farm in the fall of 1865.¹

The farm eventually grew to more than 140 acres. In 1885 the City of Kansas expanded south and east, annexing about half of Scarritt’s land but leaving his new twelve-room mansion on Cleveland Avenue outside the city limits. In the fall of 1886 Scarritt submitted the plat for the Melrose Addition, a large plat encompassing the site of his original log cabin; further plats followed until all of the current Scarritt Point district was subdivided by late 1887.¹

Nathan Scarritt died in 1890. The nomination records that the neighborhood adopted the form “Scarritt Point” rather than “Scarritt’s Point” soon after the turn of the century, more than a decade after his death, and that a stone monument marks the parcel where he built his cabin.¹ Scarritt’s own house at 4038 Central Street — elsewhere in Kansas City — was separately listed on the National Register on May 8, 1978.⁶

Development, 1885–1915

The area was vacant farmland before the Civil War, connected to the City of Kansas (about a mile west) and Independence (about six miles east) only by the Independence Road, now Independence Avenue and Boulevard, one block south of the district boundary.¹

Two forces shaped what followed. The first was the mid-1880s land boom, in which Kansas City properties “often traded hands many times in one day”; the bottom fell out by late 1888, and confidence in land values remained shaky for nearly twenty years. The effect on Scarritt’s plats was severe: of the 152 lots in the Melrose and East Melrose Additions (platted 1886 and 1887), only 19 homes, one school, and one church had been built by 1900 — and of those, the school, the church, and five of the homes belonged to or were donated by the Scarritt family.¹

The second force was the park and boulevard system. The city acquired the first tract of what became North Terrace Park, along the neighborhood’s northern edge, in 1885. George E. Kessler submitted his plan for North Terrace Park to the Board of Park Commissioners in 1893, aiming to retain as much of the land’s natural character as possible; opponents derided the steep, rocky ground as “a squirrel pasture” that was “too rugged for a goat to climb,” but the plan carried. North Terrace Park was to be linked to other parks by broad boulevards, one of them Gladstone Boulevard, and work on both was well publicized by 1896. From 1899 to 1920 nine tracts were acquired.¹

The nomination states plainly that “the development of the Scarritt Point neighborhood was a direct result of the progress of the parks and boulevard system in the area, and the quest of affluent Kansas Citians to find new, more fashionable residences” — at a time when older elite neighborhoods were finding themselves at the edge of manufacturing, processing, and meat-packing districts.¹

Housing stock and the historic districts

Scarritt Point North Historic District — listed December 1, 1997, reference 97001484 — runs roughly along Gladstone Boulevard and Windsor, Bales, Indiana, and Norledge Avenues.⁴⁶ It covers about 26 acres and contains 63 contributing and 11 non-contributing buildings, with a period of significance of 1887 to ca. 1940 and significance under Criteria A (community planning and development) and C (architecture). Most are 2½-story houses, “many considered mansions in their day,” accompanied by carriage houses and other outbuildings. The predominant type is the American Foursquare; Queen Anne (eleven high-style examples), Colonial Revival, Italianate, Mission, Beaux Arts, and Craftsman Bungalow are also represented. Named architects include Nelle E. Peters, S. E. Edwards, R. A. Walker, and Shepard, Farrar & Wiser. Of the district’s 79 buildings, 55 are residences and 21 outbuildings; over 95 percent of the resources are domestic, the exceptions being one church, one museum, and its annex.¹

Scarritt Point South Historic District — listed the same day, reference 97001483 — runs roughly along Gladstone and Benton Boulevards and Thompson Avenue, with a period of significance of 1887 to ca. 1946 and the same Criteria A and C; named builders include Frederick Gunn, Frank Foster, and Murray Bean. Its northern boundary abuts Concourse Park (part of North Terrace Park) and takes in Eastminster Presbyterian Church.⁷⁵

Two buildings within the North district have particular weight. Melrose Methodist Church at 200 N. Bales was built in 1889 with a 1928 addition; Nathan Scarritt began a small Bible-study group in a tent on that corner in 1888, and construction began that year with money he donated.¹ Corinthian Hall, the R. A. Long mansion at 3218 N. Gladstone Boulevard, was listed on the National Register in 1980 and now houses the Kansas City Museum; the adjacent stone building at 3200 Norledge, originally built c. 1888, was moved in 1909 to make room for the Long mansion and remodeled by architect L. Grant Middaugh, and serves as the museum annex.¹⁶

The nomination notes that there has been very little new construction in the district since the late 1920s, and that the majority of non-contributing properties are post-1947 structures.¹

The neighborhood association and the “Renaissance” name

The Scarritt Renaissance Neighborhood Association (SRNA) was formally established on September 18, 1986 by residents Olympia Bivens, Ken Coit, and Rita Nell Patajdl.³ It is a registered 501(c)(3) whose stated purpose is “to bring neighborhood residents together to address goals and concerns for community improvement,” and it meets on the first Thursday of February, April, June, August, October, and December at the Kansas City Museum, with community socials in the alternating months.²

The association’s activity in the years following its founding included historic home tours that drew more than 1,500 visitors during the 1990s and 2000s, and the annual Scare-It Halloween event, which at its peak drew up to 5,000 attendees. Cliff Drive, Missouri’s only urban scenic byway and the neighborhood’s northern boundary, received major improvements in 1987.³

The neighborhood name in ordinary use today — Scarritt Renaissance — follows the association’s name rather than the older Scarritt Point, which remains the designation used by the National Register districts and the Kansas City Register. The specific reasoning behind the choice of the word “Renaissance” is not documented in the sources fetched here.

Later 20th century and current conditions

Documentation of the neighborhood’s mid-20th-century trajectory is thinner than its founding record, and this section is deliberately limited to what is sourced. The 1997 nomination establishes that new construction effectively stopped after the late 1920s and that the district’s non-contributing buildings are largely post-1947 — a pattern consistent with a long period of little investment.¹

The Kansas City Design Center, which conducted a Scarritt Renaissance Vision Study in 2016–2017 on residential infill, described the neighborhood as “a well-established neighborhood” with strong assets — Kessler Park, the Kansas City Museum, and its historic homes — that is “simultaneously mottled with vacant lots and entire blocks in need of attention and care.” The study’s focus area ran east–west from Benton Boulevard to Myrtle Avenue and north–south from Independence Avenue to Garner Avenue, the stretch it identified as containing the most problematic vacant sites, and it catalogued three recurring vacancy types: ordinary “missing teeth” infill lots, illegally narrow lots that violate zoning requirements, and corner lots needing deliberate development to reconnect block edges. Its six stated goals covered historic preservation, accessibility, local economic development, vacant-lot reuse, safety and cleanliness, and cultural diversity.⁸

More recently the association has worked on the restoration of the Colonnade and the John F. Kennedy Memorial in Concourse Park, securing a Public Improvements Advisory Committee (PIAC) grant for Phase I after the Colonnade appeared on Historic Kansas City’s Most Endangered Places list; a maintenance trust established when the JFK monument and eternal flame were created funded cleaning of the monument and conversion of the flame from gas to LED.² The Kansas City Museum reopened in 2021 after a seven-year renovation of the 1910 Long mansion.⁹

Neighborhood setting

Scarritt Renaissance is one of the neighborhoods that make up the Historic Northeast, immediately east of Pendleton Heights.⁹² Its northern edge is Cliff Drive, the scenic byway within Kessler Park, closed to motorized vehicles and running through limestone bluffs and woodland.⁹² At the neighborhood’s heart is Concourse Park, with its Beaux-Arts Colonnade, the JFK Memorial, and the Concourse Fountain.²

The association’s own history page lists among notable past residents the Heim brothers of the Heim Brewery and Electric Park, founders of Children’s Mercy Hospital, the ragtime composer Edward Harry Kelly, and Beetle Bailey creator Addison (“Mort”) Walker.² ⚠ These attributions come from the neighborhood association and have not been independently verified.

Long-term significance

Scarritt Renaissance is a direct product of the Kansas City park-and-boulevard movement: a bluff-top farm subdivided just before a crash, then filled in over the following generation because a Kessler park and a new boulevard made it fashionable.¹ Its housing stock — an unusually intact run of Foursquares, Queen Annes, and boulevard mansions with almost no post-1920s intrusion — survives largely because the same disinvestment that damaged the neighborhood also spared it from redevelopment.¹ The neighborhood is also a case study in resident-led designation and repair: a Kansas City Register district in 1983, a neighborhood association in 1986, two National Register districts in 1997, and a continuing program of infill study and monument restoration since.¹³⁴⁸²

Sources

National Register of Historic Places registration form — Scarritt Point North Historic District, Jackson County, MO, prepared by Bradley C. Finch, Kansas City Historical Research, October 24, 1997 (fetched 2026-08-01; located via the Missouri SHPO Jackson County listing index, mostateparks.com) — Confirms: district along sections of Gladstone Blvd., Windsor, Bales, Indiana and Norledge Aves., zip 64123/64124; 26 acres; 63 contributing and 11 non-contributing buildings; Criteria A and C; areas of significance Architecture and Community Planning & Development; period of significance 1887–ca. 1940; architects Nelle E. Peters, S. E. Edwards, R. A. Walker, Shepard, Farrar & Wiser; residences constructed 1886–1915; five resources previously listed in the National Register; Melrose Methodist Church founded 1888 by Nathan Scarritt, built 1889 with a 1928 addition, Bible study begun in a tent on the corner in 1888 with Scarritt’s donated money; location on the high bluffs overlooking the East Bottoms and the Missouri River about two miles east of downtown; boundaries as a delineation of and addition to the Scarritt Point Historic District on the Kansas City Register of Historic Places (listed 11/10/83, Landmarks Commission case no. 0068-D); very little new construction since the late 1920s and most non-contributing resources post-1947; 79 buildings, 55 residences and 21 outbuildings, over 95% domestic with one church, one museum and its annex; predominant American Foursquare with Queen Anne (eleven high-style examples), Colonial Revival, Italianate, Mission and Craftsman Bungalow; 3200 Norledge (Kansas City Museum Annex) built c. 1888, moved 1909 for the R. A. Long Mansion and remodeled to a design by L. Grant Middaugh; Nathan Scarritt’s mission work from fall 1848 with Rev. Thomas Johnson among the Shawnee, Delaware, Wyandotte and Kickapoo, and appointments at Lexington and Westport; his autobiography as reprinted in the Kansas City Star, April 11, 1950, on the spring 1862 purchase of forty acres, the self-built log cabin occupied May 6, the move into Kansas City after Order No. 11 in fall 1863, two years teaching school, and return to the farm in fall 1865; growth of the farm to over 140 acres; the 1885 annexation of about half his land leaving his twelve-room Cleveland Avenue mansion outside the limits; the fall 1886 Melrose Addition plat and full subdivision by late 1887; Scarritt’s death in 1890 and the later shift from “Scarritt’s Point” to “Scarritt Point”; the stone monument marking the cabin parcel; the mid-1880s land boom and late-1888 collapse; only 19 homes, one school and one church built on the 152 lots of the Melrose and East Melrose Additions by 1900, of which the school, church and five homes were Scarritt family property or gifts; first tract of North Terrace Park acquired 1885; Kessler’s 1893 plan and the “squirrel pasture” / “too rugged for a goat to climb” criticism; Gladstone Boulevard as a linking boulevard; nine tracts acquired 1899–1920; Independence Road (now Independence Avenue) one block south of the district. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸
Scarritt Renaissance Neighborhood Association — “History & Initiatives.” http://www.scarrittkc.org/history—initiatives.html (fetched 2026-08-01 via Firecrawl) — Confirms: SRNA is a registered 501(c)(3); stated purpose and meeting schedule (first Thursday of February, April, June, August, October, December, at the Museum of Kansas City, 3218 Gladstone Blvd.) with socials in March, May, July, September, November; membership dues $20/$10; the neighborhood is one of seven forming the Historic Northeast collective, about two miles east of downtown; the association’s account of notable past residents (Heim brothers of Heim Brewery and Electric Park, Children’s Mercy Hospital founders, ragtime composer Edward Harry Kelly, Beetle Bailey creator Addison Walker); Concourse Park with the Beaux-Arts Colonnade, JFK Memorial, and Concourse Fountain with fifteen water jets; Kessler Park and Cliff Drive on the northern border; the PIAC grant for Phase I of the Colonnade restoration, the Historic Kansas City Most Endangered Places listing, and the maintenance trust funding monument cleaning and conversion of the eternal flame from gas to LED. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰
Northeast News — “Scarritt Renaissance.” (fetched 2026-08-01) — Confirms: the neighborhood is named for Rev. Nathan Scarritt, Methodist missionary and educator; SRNA formally established September 18, 1986 by Olympia Bivens, Ken Coit, and Rita Nell Patajdl; boundaries from Chestnut Avenue on the west to Jackson Avenue on the east (with a jog via Sunrise Drive to Elmwood Avenue), Independence Avenue on the south and the Cliff Drive Scenic Byway on the north; two National Register districts with roughly 150 historic properties along the Gladstone and Benton Boulevard corridors; the Kansas City Museum in Corinthian Hall and its $22 million restoration; Cliff Drive as Missouri’s only urban scenic byway, with major improvements in 1987; the annual Scare-It Halloween event (up to 5,000 attendees) and historic home tours drawing more than 1,500 visitors in the 1990s and 2000s. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵
National Park Service, NPGallery asset record NRIS 97001484 — Scarritt Point North Historic District (fetched 2026-08-01) — Confirms: property name, reference number 97001484, listed date December 1, 1997, Jackson County, Missouri; location roughly along Gladstone Blvd., Windsor, Bales, Indiana and Norledge Aves. ↩ ↩² ↩³
National Park Service, NPGallery asset record NRIS 97001483 — Scarritt Point South Historic District (fetched 2026-08-01) — Confirms: property name, reference number 97001483, listed date December 1, 1997, Jackson County, Missouri; location roughly along Gladstone and Benton Boulevards and Thompson Avenue. ↩ ↩²
Wikipedia — “National Register of Historic Places listings in Jackson County, Missouri: Kansas City other.” (fetched 2026-08-01; a tertiary compilation of NPS weekly lists, used here only for listing dates and reference numbers cross-checked against NPGallery) — Confirms: Scarritt Point North HD, December 1, 1997, #97001484, approx. 39.115 N / −94.541667 W; Scarritt Point South HD, December 1, 1997, #97001483, approx. 39.110556 N / −94.544444 W; R.A. Long House (Kansas City Museum), November 14, 1980, #80002366, 3218 Gladstone Boulevard; Rev. Nathan Scarritt House, May 8, 1978, #78001660, 4038 Central St.; Edward Lucky Scarritt House, May 23, 1977, #77000809, 3500 Gladstone Boulevard; William Chick Scarritt House, March 21, 1978, #78001661, 3240 Norledge Ave., severely damaged by fire September 19, 2016. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵
National Register of Historic Places registration form — Scarritt Point South Historic District, Jackson County, MO (fetched 2026-08-01) — Confirms: Criteria A and C; areas of significance Architecture and Community Planning & Development; period of significance 1887–ca. 1946; architects/builders Frederick Gunn, Frank Foster, Murray Bean; boundary drawn around buildings on and near boulevards planned in conjunction with North Terrace Park and Benton and Gladstone Boulevards, abutting Concourse Park on the north and including Eastminster Presbyterian Church. ↩
Kansas City Design Center — “Scarritt Renaissance Vision Study.” (fetched 2026-08-01) — Confirms: the study ran 2016–2017 and addressed residential infill prototypes; the neighborhood described as “a well-established neighborhood” whose area “is simultaneously mottled with vacant lots and entire blocks in need of attention and care”; focus area from Benton Boulevard to Myrtle Avenue east–west and Independence Avenue to Garner Avenue north–south; three vacancy typologies (standard “missing teeth” infill lots, illegally narrow lots violating zoning, and corner lots); six goals covering historic preservation, accessibility, local economic development, vacant-lot reuse, safety/cleanliness, and cultural diversity. ↩ ↩²
KCUR — “Want to explore Kansas City’s Historic Northeast? Start with this beginner’s guide,” November 5, 2022 (fetched 2026-08-01) — Confirms: Scarritt Renaissance sits just east of Pendleton Heights in the Historic Northeast; the Kansas City Museum, a Beaux-Arts mansion built by lumber baron Robert A. Long in 1910, reopened in 2021 after a seven-year renovation; Cliff Drive Scenic Byway lies within George E. Kessler Park and is closed to motorized vehicles. ↩ ↩² ↩³