Southmoreland, William Rockhill Nelson’s neighborhood
Developing the Georgian Court apartment hotel was a personal success for Harry Sophian. It was credited with transforming Armour Boulevard, and ushering in a new era of high-rise apartment living on the Boulevard, so much so that it is now its own historic district, Armour/Gillham Apartment Hotel Historic District (local district, designated May 27, 1982).
Harry was ready for the next project, The Sophian Plaza, on Warwick Boulevard, flanking Southmoreland Park. The site held an array of benefits.
First, it was very close to very wealthy people. William Rockhill Nelson’s baronial manse, Oak Hall, was on the opposing side of the park, and two blocks up Warwick Boulevard was August Meyer’s palatial home, Marburg. Nelson was the Kansas City Star publisher and a real estate developer. Meyer was a mining and smelting magnate. [Nearness to the wealthy families along Armour Boulevard had been critical to the Georgian Court’s fame.]
William Rockhill Nelson’s
Oak Hall
August Meyer’s
Marburg
Second, the site was reminiscent of the parks of New York City. Harry and his wife, Jane, brother Abe and his wife, Estelle, all spent their early adulthood years in New York, around Central Park, Morningside Heights Park, and Riverside Park—each was designed by venerated landscape architecture team of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. Olmsted and Vaux designed parks to heighten the enjoyment and aesthetics of the turf, water, and rock of the landscape and its natural contours, using gentle, sprawling lawns, winding pathways, natural woodlands, and rock outcroppings. Southmoreland had that look and feel.
Third, Meyer and Nelson were intent to craft the Rockhill and Southmoreland neighborhoods with very specific design elements in mind. They were natural admirers of Olmsted and Vaux’s work, and approached building their neighborhood to fit with that aesthetic. Their vision for the neighborhood was an extension of the City Beautiful Movement--naturalistic landscaping, open parkland, native stone for fences, and curved roadways lined with elm trees.
Southmoreland Park is a natural ravine, through which a small brook runs in the rainy times. The cliffside of the ravine is protected by a limestone retaining wall. [We have yet to learn when the park was designed and embankment built.] The plot of land was first platted by W.B. Clark as South Moreland Addition. It was eventually acquired by Nelson, and given to the City for street and park purposes.
The City Accepts
gift of
South Moreland park
Kansas City Journal, October 21, 1898
Nelson turned his attention to the roadways through the neighborhood. He orchestrated the renaming of Grand Avenue and McGee Streets, to more bucolic names, Warwick Boulevard and Oak Street to flank Southmoreland Park (September 1898). Per Harry Haskell, in Boss-Busters and Sin Hounds: Kansas City and Its Star (2007), Nelson doted over and groomed Warwick Boulevard. He badgered the city of Westport to pave the dirt roadway; ultimately paid the asphalt company owned by the Police Commissioner to pave it; and made sure to plant rows of elm trees along the sweep of its borders.
Indeed when there had been an attempt to change the character of the neighborhood by widening Walnut Street, everyone “knew” it would not be tolerated by Nelson and Meyer. The proposal prompted the mayor to make a personal inspection of the area. And he summarily vetoed the proposal, declaring that a street widening would do vandalism to the area. “The addition of South Morelands is one of the few in Kansas City where streets have been laid out to suit the contour of the ground, and where an attempt has been made to preserve the park-like character of the property and remove from it the ordinary characteristics of city lots.” (KC Journal 7-19-1899).
Rockhill Boulevard
Circa 1920’s
Nelson’s Oak Hall in the Background
Nelson and Meyer’s design sensibilities drew admirers. Soon the neighborhood was dotted with mansions of some of the City’s most prosperous families. By 1919, when Harry purchased the lot for The Sophian Plaza, the immediate neighbors included Mrs. Simeon Armour, widow of the meatpacking tycoon; Stephen Veile, grandson of John Deere; Gardner Lathrop, one of the most widely known lawyers in Missouri; W. B. Thayer, owner of Emery, Bird & Thayer dry goods company, among other luminaries. [Link to section on the Homes of Note in the Southmoreland neighborhood, as of 1919]
In a neighborhood that evoked the venerated parks of New York City, and in the company of some of the wealthiest citizens of the City, Harry was ready to design and build the eponymous apartment house, Sophian Plaza. When he announced the building plans, specifically noted, “We will face Southmoreland Park and overlook Warwick Boulevard as it curves along the edge of that secluded park space. When I was fortunate enough to obtain this site a few years ago, I appreciated the suburban atmosphere.”
““We will face Southmoreland Park and overlook Warwick Boulevard as it curves along the edge of that secluded park space.” ”