Power and Light Building

The Kan­sas City Power and Light Buil­ding was com­ple­ted at the end of the de­pres­sion as a way to create new jobs and pro­vide of­fice space in Down­town.

It stands at 476ft (34 floors) from it's main entrance to the top of the pil­lar (the dome is not in­clu­ded). The de­sign of the Power and Light Buil­ding is a mix of Art Deco and Neo Got­hic. Ma­te­ri­als used in­clude li­mes­tone, steel and con­crete. The buil­ding also holds over 230,000 square feet of of­fice space. It was ori­gi­nally plan­ned as a twin to ano­ther buil­ding that would have been pla­ced west of it. Howe­ver, that plan didn't fi­nish as the first did, and the Power and Light Buil­ding now stands with al­most it's ent­ire wes­tern wall lacking win­dows. Du­ring the rise of sub­urbs and the decay of the inner-cities, this was one of the few buil­dings in Down­town Kan­sas City that didn't lose their pri­mary ten­ants. This buil­ding reig­ned as Missouri's tal­lest ha­bi­ta­ble buil­ding for 45 years from 1931 to 1976 when One U.S. Bank Plaza was com­ple­ted in St. Louis (it would later lose the title to the Hyatt Re­gency in Kan­sas City). Howe­ver, in the 1990s, a 30 floor of­fice tower was con­struc­ted two blocks nor­theast of the his­to­ric tower, and the Kan­sas City Power and Light Com­pany moved there. This buil­ding now hou­ses va­rious of­fice ten­ants in­clu­ding BNIM Ar­chi­tec­ture.

Re­cent plans hope to re­no­vate it and keep it as an of­fice buil­ding, while also con­struc­ting an ad­ja­cent of­fice tower along with a re­si­den­tial tower.