J. C. Nichols and the Shaping of Kansas City: Innovation in Planned Residential Communities by William S. Worley

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 189 J. C. Nichols and the Shaping of Kansas City: Innovation in Planned Residential Communities. By William S. Worley. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1990. Pp. xxv + 324; illustrations, notes, bibliog­ raphy, index. $29.50. Jesse Clyde Nichols (1880—1950) occupies an almost legendary place in the history of American cities and architecture. Lauded by some historians for his farsighted vision and commitment to highquality design, he is faulted by other critics as a destroyer of the central city, a builder of neighborhoods that led to suburban sprawl. His name is intimately linked with Kansas City where in nearly fifty years he developed real estate and most notably built the Country Club district of houses and the Plaza, the first automobile-oriented regional shopping center. Nichols developed over 10,000 acres of land and was responsible for housing in excess of 50,000 people. The Country Club district is a high-status development for an elite; however, Nichols was also responsible for middle-class projects such as Prairie Village. William Worley’s book is based on his doctoral dissertation and is largely concerned with Nichols’s real estate and business practices. The book is in many ways a business history related to the develop­ ment of Kansas City. The origins of Nichols’s ideas with other planned communities like Roland Park, Baltimore, is traced and also Nichols’s innovations, such as homeowner’s associations, deed restrictions, and how mortgages were handled. There is a nitty-gritty aspect to much of this research that is extremely valuable. Nichols’s larger national role is treated solely with regard to the real estate profession; his influ­ ences in Washington, D.C., where he served for over twenty years, are scarcely mentioned. He served on the National Capital Park and Planning Commission, and was appointed because of his role in “the artistic side of city planning.” As for Nichols and technology, this is a very minor theme of the book. Some changes are noted, such as electricity in the home and how road paving changed along with transportation policy, but Nichols’s role within the actual construction of buildings is not developed. In all fairness to the author, his theme is Nichols, business, and Kansas City. But there are serious gaps. The major gap is a knowl­ edgeable consideration of physical and spatial form; there is no sense of road planning, of subdivision layout, and the relation to the larger whole. Only one map, impossibly vague and of limited use, is provided, and there are no plans. As noted, Nichols was known for high design quality, the artistic elements, but this is very much a subtheme. The few illustrations are important and have excellent captions; one wishes for many more. Nichols emerges from Worley’s account as somewhat of a hero, a man who knew what he was doing and accomplished it, and most criticisms of him are rebutted. This is certainly an appropriate stance for an author to take, but one wonders 190 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE whether too much of the story is told from the point of view of the J. C. Nichols Companies. It owns most of the research material used by the author. Unfortunately, many of Nichols’s personal papers are missing. Some sense of the values embodied in Nichols’s approach and the alternatives would be welcome. This is a book on an important figure and it treats a crucial subject, how American cities have grown in the 20th century and who controls them, but it certainly is not the last word on J. C. Nichols. Richard Guy Wilson Dr. Wilson teaches in the Department of Architecture at the University of Virginia. Suburbia Re-examined. Edited by Barbara M. Kelly. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1989. Pp. xvi + 240; notes, index. $37.95. Between 1955 and 1965, historians in large numbers discovered cities. By the early 1960s, social historians entered the city and produced first-rate scholarship focused on topics such as workers, gender, and immigrants. Yet by the late 1970s, neither publication of the prestigiousJournal of Urban History nor a remarkable outpouring of books and articles on the social, political, and technological...