Kansas City, Missouri

By kennyg5577
updated 5 months ago

The Sesquicentennial -
In 2000, as the nation saw the dawn of the 21st century, Kansas City, Missouri celebrated a milestone of its own - 150 years! There were dozens of community based events and commemorations throughout the year, but the most exciting was the opening of the the Time Capsule. Sealed on New Year's Eve in 1900 with instructions that it was not to be opened until New Year's Day, 2001, the capsule was secured in the concrete wall of Old Convention Hall in downtown KCMO. A fire in 1904 destroyed that building, but the capsule remained safe inside the wall. In the 1930's it was moved to the art deco lobby of the shining new Municipal Auditorium where it remained undistrubed until late 2000. A committee was formed to remove the capsule and prepare it for its 'grand' opening at the newly renovated Union Station at Pershing and Grand. The committee decided that the capsule deserved a grand parade from its home at Municipal Auditorium to Union Station, so vintage automobiles were escorted by the Kansas City Police department in a spectacle of celebration and expectation. The box rested, unopened, in a glass case at Union Station, holding its secrets until the ushering in of 2001.

Kay Barnes, Kansas City's first female mayor, along with committee members Jan Burmeister and Eben Fowler, KCCEC staffers Kathleen Lee and Ken Gies and a group of corporate and private investors, oversaw the opening of the box under the big clock on New Year's morning. The box and its contents were in excellent condition after their 100 year nap. The first item Mayor Barnes pulled from the box was a letter addressed in the flowing script of Mayor James A. Reed to, "The MAN who is mayor of Kansas City in 2001". The huge crowd got a good laugh as she opened the letter and read its contents. Next came trinkets and artifacts of the day, along with notes from dozens of 1901 Kansas Citians to their counterparts in 2001. Builders wrote to builders, painters to painters, dressmakers t

Kansas City, MO

Kansas City is a city covering parts of Jackson, Clay, Cass, and Platte counties in Missouri, USA. Although it is the...

Kansas City is a city covering parts of Jackson, Clay, Cass, and Platte counties in Missouri, USA. Although it is the largest city in Jackson County, the suburb of Independence is the county seat. Situated at the junction of the Missouri and Kansas rivers, it lies along the boundary between Missouri and Kansas, and is directly opposite of Kansas City, Kansas.Often abbreviated as "KC" (to refer to the entire metropolitan area), or "KCMO" (to refer to only Kansas City, Missouri), Kansas City, Missouri is the largest city in Missouri and the center of the 26th largest metropolitan statistical area in the United States. In the Midwest, Kansas City is the 7th largest city (between Cleveland, Ohio and Omaha, Nebraska). As of the 2000 census, the city has a population of 441,545. Combined with Kansas City, Kansas, the population is 588,411, but the entire metropolitan area (in both Missouri and Kansas) is approximately 1,836,038. (Census estimated 1,947,694 in 2005)The Globalization and World Cities Study Group and Network, a project of the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, recently designated Kansas City as having potential of attaining world city status.The current mayor of Kansas City, Missouri is Kay Barnes, the city's first female mayor. Elected in March 1999 and again in March 2003, her second of two terms will expire in April 2007.