A tourist in my own town

Don, Narrow Larry, and Erika Nelson

Sometimes it takes visitors to get you out into your own town. Luckily, Don, Erika and Larry aren't your typical visitors, and wandering aimlessly is AOK with them.

Downtown Kansas City Public Library

14 West 10th Street

Signs 'n stuff around town:

18th and Vine District

Crossroads District:

Kansas City Workhouse Castle

2001 Vine Street

Built 1897 by architects Wallace Love and James Oliver Hogg

Present Condition of the City’s New Bastile and Its Plan of Arrangement

From the July 14th, 1897 edition of the Kansas City Star, Pg. 2

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The new workhouse at Twenty-first and Vine streets is rapidly nearing completion, and from the present state of the building one may get an impression of what it will be like when finished.

The new workhouse is just across the street from the old one. It is built entirely of native stone taken by the prisoners from the quarry behind the building. The style of architecture is that of the sixteenth-century, an old castle, the front of which is adorned with parapet walls, or Scotch coping. This, together with the narrow, barred windows, heavy doors and a general appearance of security gives one the impression of an ancient baronial castle.

The front part of the building is two stories high, and the castle tower is to extend twenty foot above this. On the second story are placed the women’s, the girls’ and the boys’ cells, separate from one another. The rear of the building, only one story high, extends back 115 feet and is devoted to the men prisoners. The walls are two feet thick, put together with cement, while the iron bars on the windows are one and three quarters inches in diameter.

The cost of the building will be almost $30,000; it will hold about 160 prisoners. It is built with the idea of being transformed into a reform school or hospital should this ever be necessary.

(to read more about this castle, please see this excellent blog "The Kansas City Workhouse Castle"