Ward Parkway is a

boulevard A boulevard is a type of broad avenue planted with rows of trees, or in parts of North America, any urban highway. Boulevards were originally circumferential roads following the line of former city walls. In American usage, boulevards may ...

Kansas City The Kansas City metropolitan area is a bi-state metropolitan area anchored by Kansas City, Missouri. Its 14 counties straddle the border between the U.S. states of Missouri (9 counties) and Kansas (5 counties). With and a population of more th ...

Missouri Missouri is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee ...

, United States, near the

Kansas Kansas () is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its capital is Topeka, and its largest city is Wichita. Kansas is a landlocked state bordered by Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to the w ...

state line. Ward Parkway begins at Brookside Boulevard on the eastern edge of the

Country Club Plaza The Country Club Plaza (often called The Plaza) is a privately-owned regional shopping center in the Country Club District of Kansas City, Missouri. Opened in 1923, it was the first planned suburban shopping center and the first regional shoppi ...

and continues westward along Brush Creek as

U.S. Route 56 U.S. Route 56 (US 56) is an east–west United States highway that runs for approximately in the Midwestern United States. US 56's western terminus is at Interstate 25 Business (I-25 Bus.), US 412 and New Mexico State Road 21 (NM 21) in Spring ...

until it turns southward across the creek just before the Kansas-Missouri state line. It then continues south for four miles, terminating at Wornall Road near West 95th Street. Ward Parkway has a wide,

landscape A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes the p ...

median In statistics and probability theory, the median is the value separating the higher half from the lower half of a data sample, a population, or a probability distribution. For a data set, it may be thought of as "the middle" value. The basic fea ...

, which is decorated with

fountain A fountain, from the Latin "fons" (genitive "fontis"), meaning source or spring, is a decorative reservoir used for discharging water. It is also a structure that jets water into the air for a decorative or dramatic effect. Fountains were or ...

s and

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. Many of Kansas City's finest large houses are along Ward Parkway in the Country Club District. The street name derives from the family of pioneer Seth E. Ward who owned property on both sides of the parkway and whose house at 1032 West 55th St. is on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

Location

*Northern terminus: Brookside Blvd./Volker Blvd. *Southern terminus: Wornall Road

History

Ward Parkway was created as part of developer J.C. Nichols's overall plans for the Country Club District. Desiring a boulevard that would exceed the aesthetic value of all other streets in Kansas City, Nichols hired landscape architect

George Kessler George Edward Kessler (July 16, 1862 – March 20, 1923) was an American pioneer city planner and landscape architect. Over the course of his forty-one year career, George E. Kessler completed over 200 projects and prepared plans for 26 comm ...

, who had designed several other boulevards throughout

Kansas City, Missouri Kansas City (abbreviated KC or KCMO) is the largest city in Missouri by population and area. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 508,090 in 2020, making it the 36th most-populous city in the United States. It is the central ...

. The street was named after a prominent Kansas City attorney Hugh Campbell Ward (1864-1909), who was a business partner of J.C. Nichols and donated his family property to the city. He died before the papers were signed, but his wife, Vassie James Ward, followed his will. As Nichols platted the district, beginning in 1906, he reserved space for Ward Parkway. The largest lots in the district were reserved for houses to be built along the boulevard. The Kansas City Parks Department added Ward Parkway into its formal boulevard system. Nichols traveled to Italy and England to buy statues and monuments to place in the boulevard's wide median. He also placed ponds and decorative urns throughout the parkway's length. To promote his development, Nichols periodically placed photographs of the large houses being built along Ward Parkway in Sunday editions of the ''

Kansas City Star ''The Kansas City Star'' is a newspaper based in Kansas City, Missouri. Published since 1880, the paper is the recipient of eight Pulitzer Prizes. ''The Star'' is most notable for its influence on the career of President Harry S. Truman and as ...

''. Nichols even moved into a house just off Ward Parkway, on West 55th Street. Some of the most prominent Kansas City families chose to build their homes on Ward Parkway (notable examples include Tom Pendergast House, Bernard Corrigan House, and Mack B. Nelson House). By the time Evan S. Connell wrote '' Mrs. Bridge'' in 1959, the proximity of a prominent Kansas Citian's house to Ward Parkway was seen as an indication of that person's place in Kansas City society. Around that time, a sociological research study undertaken by the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the be ...

determined that Ward Parkway and its vicinity was the most desirable neighborhood in all of Kansas City. In 2012, Ward Parkway was named a Great Street in the

American Planning Association The American Planning Association (APA) is a professional organization representing the field of urban planning in the United States. APA was formed in 1978, when two separate professional planning organizations, the American Institute of Pla ...

's annual list of Great Places in America, citing that the passion “by both citizens and city government to maintain the parkway has allowed it to remain one of the area's most coveted addresses with historic homes, neighborhood parks, picturesque fountains, ornamental monuments, and rolling landscapes.”

Improvement and Preservation

The Ward Parkway Center Community Improvement District, the area within West 85th Terrace, Ward Parkway, West 89th Street and State Line Road, was created in 2011 to allow the city to levy a one percent sales tax to help fund parkway projects and redevelop the area. One project that benefited from the District is the Ward Parkway Center, a large indoor shopping center near the southern end of the parkway. In addition, the city also allocated more than $9 million for the maintenance and improvements of park grounds, fountain and monuments, and recreational facilities along parkways. Several sites and buildings along Ward Parkway are designated as National Historic Sites and are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. These include the Park Manor Historic District at 910-920 Ward Parkway; the Serena Apartment Hotel, a nine-story Italian Renaissance Revival Villa, and the Alexander Majors Antebellum house at West 83rd. In 1996, design guidelines for building along the parkway were adopted, and new construction on the parkway requires a certificate from the Historic Preservation Committee.

Notable residents of houses along Ward Parkway

Tom Pendergast Thomas Joseph Pendergast (July 22, 1872 – January 26, 1945), also known as T. J. Pendergast, was an American political boss who controlled Kansas City and Jackson County, Missouri, from 1925 to 1939. Pendergast only briefly held elected o ...

, political boss * Keith A. Tucker, former CEO of Waddell & Reed mutual fund company
/ref> * Peter Brown, CEO and Co-founder of

AMC Theatres AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. ( d/b/a AMC Theatres, originally an abbreviation for American Multi-Cinema; often referred to simply as AMC and known in some countries as AMC Cinemas or AMC Multi-Cinemas) is an American movie theater chain fo ...

. *

Jason Kander Jason David Kander (born May 4, 1981) is an American attorney, author, veteran, and politician. A Democrat, he served as the 39th secretary of state of Missouri, from 2013 to 2017. He had previously served as a member of the Missouri House of ...

, politician. *

Richard Bloch Richard Adolf Bloch (February 15, 1926 – July 21, 2004) was an American entrepreneur, and philanthropist best known for starting the H&R Block tax preparation and personal finance company with his older brother Henry in 1955. His personal e ...

, co-founder of

H&R Block H&R Block, Inc., or H&R Block, is an American tax preparation company operating in Canada, the United States, and Australia. The company was founded in 1955 by brothers Henry W. Bloch and Richard Bloch. As of 2018, H&R Block operates approximat ...

References

External links