By Brian Burnes

On March 23, 2023, Jonathan Kemper will receive the Jackson County Historical Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award during the Society’s Annual Dinner.

A Jackson County native, Kemper earned an undergraduate degree from Harvard College in 1975 and an M.B.A. from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Business in 1979.

JONATHAN KEMPER
For more than 40 years Jonathan Kemper has helped lead many historical preservation or commemoration initiatives across the Kansas City area. (Photo courtesy of Jonathan Kemper)

After serving as an assistant bank examiner at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York and as an account officer for Citicorp in Chicago, Kemper returned to Kansas City in 1982, working as a loan officer for Commerce Bank.

Today he is chairman emeritus of Commerce Bank, Kansas City Region.

He also serves as a director on the Commerce Bancshares Inc. board and as Co-Trustee, with Commerce Bank, of the William T. Kemper Foundation.

He was appointed to the Kansas City Public Library’s Board of Trustees in 2001, and later served as board president. He helped raise funds for the approximately $50
million redevelopment of the former First National Bank at 14 W. Tenth Street into what is now the Central Library; in 2004 the project was one of 16 recognized across the country by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

That same year Kemper was named chair of the National Trust’s trustee board. He had served as a trustee beginning in 1999; he served as chair through 2007.

And, beginning in the 1980s, Kemper served for several years as a member of the Jackson County Historical Society Board of Directors.

NATIONAL TRUST FOR HISTORIC PRESERVATION

Q. Where did you get your interest in preservation?
A. I think it began with my personal interest in architecture and urban design, and grew as I learned more of how people come together to make and interact with the built environment.

My own experience grew with joining the National Trust 30 years ago, first as a member of their newly-formed National Trust Council, then as trustee and chair.
I should give a special shout-out here to Jane Flynn (former Jackson County Historical Society president) and Joan Dillon, (a Kansas City preservationist who had helped lead the effort to save Kansas City’s Folly Theater) who put my name up as a candidate, and introduced me and my wife Nancy Lee to the National Trust.

As I learned more about the National Trust, I became interested in its overall mission as the leader of the historic preservation movement in America.

I had a wonderful experience, and the Trust then asked me to join the actual board, on which I served for six years, the final two as chair.

PENN STATION, NEW YORK CITY

PENN STATION
The reaction to the early 1960s demolition of Penn Station in New York City contributed to the passage of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966. (Postcard courtesy of the New York Public Library)

Q. In 1966 President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the National Historic Preservation Act, championing the preservation ethic and establishing a federal government role in it.

Given your time with the National Trust, what is your perspective on preservation today?

A. First, a little background.

The National Preservation Act was the culmination of the reaction to the destruction of Penn Station in New York beginning in 1963. The building was the entry point of the transcontinental railroad system and had been built by one of the leading architects of its time. It took up two city blocks in arguably the most important city in the United States, and it connected the country’s overall transportation network.

But as the Pennsylvania Railroad declined, it no longer had its original purpose as the entry point for the national railroad system. Also, the railroad itself was in a financial pinch and management believed the value of the real estate for redevelopment exceeded the value of its purpose, and they tore the station down and replaced it with Madison Square Garden.

People at the time could not believe that such a landmark could be treated that way, and so the (National Historic Preservation Act) legislation was just a primal statement that “This will not happen again.”

There soon was a lot of landmarking legislation, both in New York and across the country, trying to ensure that there were buildings that should not be destroyed. That is the spirit behind the preservation act.

Today most preservation occurs at a local level. The federal government does not get involved in saying “You can’t do this” usually except when federal tax dollars are involved.

But what really has kept preservation viable dates to when the U.S Supreme Court basically said that preservation was an abiding public interest.

There was the famous case involving St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York City. The church’s leadership said it wanted to tear down a community center (which had been designated, along with the church, a historic structure by the New York Landmarks Preservation Commission. In 1990 the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of that decision).

So it represented a perfect case of a not-for-profit saying that it had a higher purpose than keeping its building - and the court said “No, preservation is important, demolitions are permanent, and they have an impact not only on today’s community but the future community.”

Preservationists know that solutions often appear when we think twice about reuse rather than destruction. When you change the character of a neighborhood, you can also unintentionally change the character of the people within it.

So I think having one actor decide what is right should be subject to some oversight and discussion, and not be precipitous.

EMERY, BIRD, THAYER

Q. In 1972 workers began demolishing the Emery, Bird, Thayer building at 11th Street and Grand Avenue. City National Bank (later United Missouri Bancshares, Inc.) then led by your father’s cousin, R. Crosby Kemper, Jr., had acquired the building shortly after the store closed in 1968; its former location is today the site of UMB headquarters.

The demolition of the store, built in 1890, often is cited as the catalyst for the subsequent historic preservation movement in Kansas City and Jackson County. In 1974 champions of the Folly Theater prevented its pending demolition and strove to have the building placed on the National Register of Historic Places; the restored theater ultimately reopened in 1981.

What is your perspective of those events?

A. I remember Emery, Bird, Thayer being the grandest of the downtown department stores; it covered nearly entire entire block. My memory of the building and its presence is that it was not as evocative as Penn Station as great architecture.

It essentially was a merchandise house. Today there are still a few large department stores in New York, but department stores have had a hard life even in the grandest of cities, and Emery, Bird, Thayer was not going to be retained as a department store.

At the time Emery, Bird, Thayer had been merged into another company and the downtown building has been sold to UMB. When the store was demolished, a number of architectural pieces were salvaged and installed in a restaurant at the UMB Bank at Interstate 435 and State Line Road.

Downtown Kansas City had been neglected for a long time. And so (the store’s demolition) was not just a loss of architecture and tradition - it was also a moment when the city was staring at the reality that there was no unified vision for downtown, which had been the heart of the community for a long time.

We had some great buildings downtown, like the Folly Theater. There was a plan to tear the Folly down and they had actually issued a demolition permit before Joan Dillon was able to pull together enough people to raise money to save it.

It wasn’t until the Folly that there was a strong feeling in Kansas City of “Let’s not tear everything down.”

THE BALCONY BUILDING BATTLE

Q. In 2014, in anticipation of a “Meet the Past” program at the Kansas City Public Library Plaza Branch featuring J.C. Nichols, as portrayed by Nichols’ biographer William Worley, you described for the Kansas City Star the early financial support Nichols had received from Commerce Trust, your family’s bank, in the years before, during and after World War I.

These were the years when Nichols was beginning to develop his various real estate initiatives, which included the Country Club Plaza, which will celebrate its centennial this year.

The Kemper family eventually became shareholders in the Nichols Company, while the Nichols Company owned shares in Commerce Trust.

BALCONY BUILDING
A 2010 plan to tear down the Balcony Building, built in 1925 on the Country Club Plaza, and replace it with an eight-story office tower, outraged many admirers of the Plaza. Developers later rescinded the proposal.

The Plaza, meanwhile, in recent years has been the site of occasional preservation battles. In 2010 Highwoods Properties, then-owner of the Plaza, purposed an eight-story office tower for the northeast corner of the 47th Street and Broadway, which would have been the new home of a Kansas City law firm.

The development would have included the demolition of the Balcony Building, built in 1925, as well as the more contemporary 96-unit Neptune Apartments immediately to the north, constructed in 1987. An uproar ensued, with many preservationists - among them a group called Save The Plaza, which included some 9,000 members - opposing the plan. Although Highwoods later backed off the Balcony Building demolition, opposition continued by those who said the proposed tower ran counter to the spirit of what Nichols had built.

Highwoods dropped the entire plan in 2011, and the law firm eventually chose to locate its headquarters near the Plaza’s western edge.

How do you feel about that preservation battle today?

A. It was very helpful and had a substantial positive outcome.

It helps to remember the insensitive quality of the design Highwoods initially had proposed. They were going to tear those buildings down, in the very heart of the Plaza, and they had come up with the most banal and least sensitive design. It impacted people viscerally.

(Longtime Kansas City preservation organization) Historic Kansas City pulled people together and said “Really? We cannot do that. Just think twice.”

And it was a compelling message because (the proposed new building’s design) was just so awful.

Highwoods later sold the apartment building to Price Brothers, and it was Highwoods - which originally had wanted to tear the apartments down - that added the stipulation that the Neptune building had to remain largely unchanged. So even the people who were thinking about doing something so monumentally destructive recognized in the end that it would have been hurtful to both the character of the Plaza, and also to the investor and operator.

It was a great example of the mission of historic preservation, with many people saying “Wait a minute, what are we really trying to do here?”

THE REMOVAL OF J. C. NICHOLS’ NAME FROM THE PLAZA FOUNTAIN AND PARKWAY

J.C. NICHOLS
J.C. Nichols began developing the Country Club District of Kansas City in the early 1900s. (Photo: Jackson County Historical Society)

Q. In June of 2020, members of the Kansas City Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners unanimously voted to remove J.C. Nichols’ name from the fountain and parkway within and adjacent to Mill Creek Park, just east of the Plaza. The move followed continuing debate referencing the covenants and deed restrictions Nichols had instituted while developing his residential real estate properties. The board’s vote also occurred in context of the protests following the police killing of George Floyd of Minneapolis; several subsequent protests and demonstrations occurred in or near the Plaza.

What was your perspective on the board’s vote?

A. I think they made the appropriate decision.

When Nichols was planning his housing developments, there were laws and practices that were exclusionary to Blacks and other minorities, and which today are rightfully recognized as repugnant. Sadly, that was how much business was conducted back then, and Nichols was at the center of it.

I think (removing Nichols’ name) was the right thing to do at this time. It is a statement that we don’t want to commemorate an individual who practiced what we now find repugnant, and actually shaped or misshaped the development of our community in a way that was inequitable. That’s the bottom line.

There is an alternative to canceling history. We should not erase our history but rather learn from it. What is Nichols today, the man who shaped a good portion of our community? How should we understand him? It cannot be taken as just a single message that “This man was evil and we should shun him,” because we actually enjoy the fruits of his efforts in building the community we have enjoyed. He built good buildings, carefully designed and placed to constitute desirable neighborhoods; some have lasted more than a century.

I think there is work to be done there. I think it is a rich topic for future discussion and debate.

THE CENTRAL LIBRARY

CENTRAL LIBRARY
Jonathan Kemper helped lead the fundraising for the renovation of Kansas City’s First National Bank building, completed in the early 1900s and seen here in a 1909 postcard, into what is now the Central Library. (Postcard courtesy of Missouri Valley Special Collections.)

Q. You were named to the Kansas City Public Library Board of Trustees in 2001 and later became its president. In the early 2000s you helped raise funds for the approximately $50 million redevelopment of the former First National Bank building at 14 W. Tenth St. into what is now the Central Library.

Construction began in 2002. The project received backing from the Hall Family Foundation, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, and the William T. Kemper Foundation. It also received close to $10 million in state and federal tax credits, and also some $24 million in private support, as well as approximately $11 million from the library.

The building, which reopened in 2004, is today the anchor of a revitalized section of downtown known as the Library District.

“The library,” you said in 2019, “is not just a source of books or materials or even information. It is, in many ways, a reflection of who we are and who we want to be.”

A. It was gratifying to me that the building project worked out, but even more than that, it formed part of a base to increase the prominence of the library as an important community asset.

The project wasn’t by any means a slam dunk. A number of factors came together:

The original building was first class architecture; it was just a beautiful building. It had been on the market before the library became involved, but there had been no immediate takers, even though the price was less than $3 million for the building and the parking lot across the street. After a few months, a group of us approached the library. I had asked people at the Hall Family and Kauffman foundations if they would join us - the Kemper Foundation - in making a pledge, which turned out to be $3 million each, which would create enough substance that we could talk about buying and rehabilitating the building.

Historic preservation became part of the story in a number of ways. First was financial: because of the Missouri Historic Preservation Tax Credit program, we could use historic tax credits. This was a historic building in a historic district, so the project was able to qualify for tax credits, which was hugely important. It also meant that the state historic preservation office played a key role in preserving the look and the feel of the building.

Secondly, the state historic preservation officer had the final say on how the exterior of the building could be modified. And one of those things was “We don’t want to see the modern building from the street.” What happened, after a lot of redesign, is that the auditorium and the Missouri Valley Room were “pushed” back from the edge of the building and created a rooftop terrace which - incidentally - turned out to be one of the building’s most popular features.

So it’s a great example of what preservation can achieve when it actively ends up pushing the creative juices, which created a public amenity. Which was great. We got over $10 million in tax credits, and we got strong direction from the state historic preservation office, and got an amenity that is one of the most popular features in the whole building.

THE LEWIS AND CLARK BICENTENNIAL

Q. In 2003 Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan appointed you as state co-chair for the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Commission.

During a Kansas City planning meeting that year you described the upcoming commemoration and framed it as unique opportunity to showcase the entire Kansas City area during what would be one of 15 nationally sanctioned commemoration events.

REPRESENTATIVES, INDIGENOUS NATIONS
Members of several indigenous nations participated in the April, 2000 commemoration of Kansas City’s Lewis and Clark sculpture, as well as during the Kansas City ceremonies observing the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition four years later. (Photo: Jackson County Historical Society).

“There were no state lines when Lewis and Clark came here,” you said.

Ultimately, the commemoration over the Independence Day weekend of 2004 included events at Kaw Point in Kansas and Berkley Riverfront Park in Missouri, the latter featuring a flag processional including representatives of eight American Indian tribes, chief among them the Osage. An estimated 20,000 Osage lived in Jackson County when Lewis and Clark arrived in 1804.

A. The Lewis and Clark story, which is the beginning of the western expansion of the United States into the lands of the Louisiana Purchase, has a lot of Missouri ties, especially related to the St. Louis area where the expedition began and concluded. The potentials of the western expansion, and the building of the Hannibal Bridge in Kansas City 65 years later, are milestones which defined the city’s origins as a regional and national center.

It was eye-opening to me that Lewis and Clark was such a bedrock part of our origin story, especially regarding the Osage and the other American Indian tribes. Their perspective of the commemoration was mixed - they were looking at the Lewis and Clark expedition as the end of a way of life for them, and the beginning of a time that was challenging and destructive. I learned that many stories from Native Americans were not documented, but rather handed down in oral traditions.

It was helpful to me to have gone through that commemoration, in helping to pull people together at that moment, which had coincided with the 150th anniversary of Kansas City, which had been observed a few years earlier.

THE “CORPS OF DISCOVERY” SCULPTURE

Q. There’s also a physical legacy of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial - the “Corps of Discovery” bronze sculpture at West Terrace Park, near Quality Hill.

The sculpture, funded by the William T. Kemper Foundation and the City of Fountains Foundation, had been planned for the dramatic overlook of the confluence of the Missouri and Kansas rivers at 8th and Jefferson streets.

The sculpture was to be placed in a small area originally developed by the Work Projects Administration in 1943, and which recently had undergone renovation. You had made funds available from the William T. Kemper Foundation to match city funds and create a plaza that bore a geometric design patterned after Michelangelo’s Campidoglio, a public square in Rome featuring an elliptical courtyard and a central sculpture.

The privately-funded sculpture concept for Kansas City, planned for the center of the plaza, called for a larger-than-life representation of explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark as well as Sacagawea, their Shosone guide and interpreter, and York, an African American then considered Clark’s “body slave,” or personal valet.

The completed bronze sculpture by Eugene Daub was dedicated in 2000, as part of KC150, the 150th anniversary of Kansas City then being celebrated.

A. I love that sculpture, especially how it depicts York, who had a prominent role in the sculpture that I thought might be more provocative than it turned out to be. I take that now as a huge success, that it has become part of our community.

The site itself is a marvelous place on the top of a bluff where you can see the transportation modes which created our community; the confluence of the Missouri and Kansas rivers, the airport and the railroads.

UNION STATION

Q. In 1996 voters in four Kansas City area counties approved a 1/8th bi-state sales tax - considered the first such tax in the country - to finance the renovation of Union Station. The building, which had been closed, re-opened in 1999 and since has served the community in several ways. The building is today the location of Science City, as well as the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce. Amtrak, which had left the building in 1985, moved its operations back in.

In more recent years the station’s north plaza has served as a “front porch” for many community events, such as annual Memorial Day weekend concerts by the Kansas City Symphony. In 2015 and in 2020, parades following the championships won by the Kansas City Royals and Kansas City Chiefs, respectively, ended there. This coming April the station is scheduled to host the annual National Football League draft.

The William T. Kemper Foundation was one of many foundations that contributed to the station’s approximately $250 million renovation cost.

A. There was an art critic for the Kansas City Star who had written a column calling for the destruction of Union Station. It was probably meant as a slap in the face, perhaps to wake us up, or to say it should be torn down, because we didn’t deserve it. He said that this was a building built by another generation who thought of Kansas City as the capital of an inland empire and that is not what we are now - so tear it down.

Unfortunately, he did not put anything in there as an asterisk, saying “But should you want to build a greater regional community…” He left it with this very cynical message that we were not good enough for this building. I thought this was terrible.

The station had been part of a national system. When the Flood of 1903 occurred in the West Bottoms and basically shut down everything in Kansas City, the Kansas City Terminal Railway was organized and it spent $14 million, an unbelievable sum at the time, re-routing the tracks and raising the capital to build the new station.

It’s a great building - still the second-largest railway terminal in the United States. It is inspiring just as an architectural expression of the community. I, and many others, love the fact that it is still here, that we have something that was truly part of a continental system, that is grand and visionary, and has a great history.

THE WORLD WAR II LOSS OF DAVID WOODS KEMPER

KEMPER FAMILY
Several members of the Kemper Family gathered for this photograph, taken during the mid-1930s. From left: R. Crosby Kemper, Jr.; James M. Kemper, Jr,; David Woods Kemper, William T. Kemper, Jr.; James M. Kemper, Sr.; R. Crosby Kemper, Sr. and William T. Kemper, Sr. (Photo courtesy of Jonathan Kemper).

Q. Members of the extended Kemper family have supported historical scholarship and commemoration in several ways.

In 1999 you - with your brother David - established the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professorship in American History at Harvard University, in memory of your uncle, the older brother of your father, James M. Kemper, Jr.

Today the scholar serving in that role is Jill Lepore, the author of “These Truths: A History of the United States,” (published in 2018) and “A Is For American: Characters in the Newly United States,” (published in 2002), among other books.

David had graduated from Harvard College in 1941 and had completed one year of study at Stanford University before enlisting in the U.S. Army.

On April 25, 1945, Lt. Kemper, serving as a platoon leader in the First Armored Division of the 81st Cavalry, died after being shot in the Po Valley of Italy. Hostilities on the Italian Front ceased on May 2.

In 1963 your family dedicated the David Woods Kemper Memorial Fountain, also known as the “Muse of the Missouri,” on Main Street between 8th and 9th streets.

What was the effect of David Woods Kemper’s death on the Kemper family?

A. David was the eldest of my grandfather’s (James M. Kemper, Sr.) three children. He had volunteered to go into the Army after he had graduated from Harvard and had gone on to Stanford Business School, where he had been one year in when he had volunteered in 1942. Both David and his younger brother James, Jr. - my father - went into the service.

The war affected my father in several ways. He had reported to the Pacific while my Uncle David was in Italy. David was on his way to accept a surrender from a group in the Po Valley and some idiot shot him dead in his vehicle as he was crossing a plain.

It ended a life that would have been promising to anyone who had been young and who had all the advantages. He was also expected, because of his character and achievements, to lead the family in the next generation.

So my father - who people have told me had always been a person who would have been perhaps more interested in intellectual pursuits - became a banker when he returned from the service.

I think in many ways he would have preferred another life, but he was quite a competitor and an intellectual. He was thoughtful about where the bank needed to be, not drawing on its history but looking into the future. So he figured out what the bank needed to do to compete in the 1950s and 1960s. He restructured everything, building an enterprise that was statewide, then regional. Probably his biggest innovation was embracing retail banking while his grandfather, W.T. Kemper (vice president of the group that established Commerce Bank in 1906), had been running a business bank, a banker’s bank.

At the time Commerce Trust had been one of the 20 largest banks in the United States by deposits. So I would say he had been thrust into a position of leadership - but he did embrace it and that made a huge difference to both the bank and our family,

THE WILLIAM T. KEMPER FOUNDATION

Q. You are the co-trustee, along with Commerce Bank, of the William T. Kemper Foundation, established after the 1989 death of William T. Kemper, Jr., your great uncle. In the years since the foundation has supported many cultural and educational initiatives in Kansas City, as well as the publication of several books related to Kansas City area history.

A. Yes, the Kemper Foundation has sponsored research and writing about Kansas City’s history. There have been more than a dozen books that the foundation has had a role in, either by republishing them or assisting authors with their costs.

One of the first things the Kemper Foundation did was to underwrite two books for the centennial of the Kansas City Parks and Recreation Department. One was a book that the department itself published about its history, but there also was a wonderful book called “The City Beautiful Movement in Kansas City.”

Do you know the history of the Kansas City Research Project?

In the 1950s the predecessor to the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation received substantial grants to create a program at what was then the University of Kansas City to explore the history of Kansas City’s development, as part of the urban history of the United States.

So they developed at least five major books that were part of that, and one of them was “The City Beautiful Movement in Kansas City,” (By William H. Wilson, first published in 1964). The book had been really foundational to the parks system and the quality of the Kansas City built environment. It had gone out of print long ago.

Another was “Kansas City and the Railroads,” (by Charles N. Glaab, first published in 1963). So we worked with the University of Missouri Press and republished those two books.

The foundation provided a grant to Harry Haskell, author of “Boss-Busters & Sin Hounds: Kansas City and Its Star,” to help with his travel and research.

We worked with Cydney Millstein on her book “Houses of Missouri: 1870-1940.” The foundation also funded her recent book, “The Kansas City Art Institute: Architecture & Innovation 1885-2020,” which she did a wonderful job with.

The foundation also has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Truman Library and the National WWI Museum and Memorial to support the digitization of their collections. Today the Truman Library has the strongest digitization program of all the presidential libraries, and it was a huge asset during the COVID-19 pandemic.

I know we are not alone in this idea of trying to find your past and tell your stories. The foundation wants to maintain an awareness of the history of Kansas City, its industries and people, and the roles leaders have played in it.

KANSAS CITY’S HISTORIC PRESERVATION MOVEMENT TODAY

Q. How would you characterize the historic preservation movement in Kansas City today?

A. I believe the preservation movement in our community today is becoming both stronger and broader both in its scope and impact.

More and more, rather than land clearance, preservation has become the driver in the protection and revitalization of older neighborhoods threatened by disinvestment and blight.

Coupled with historic tax credits, preservation has been an essential element in fostering urban reinvestment through adaptive reuse of older buildings, especially in Kansas City’s downtown, as well as in its River Market and Crossroads districts.

Preservation also has been the lens through which we can appreciate and protect the quality of design and craftsmanship in our built environment. And, preservation has become broader and more inclusive, sensitive to the fact that, in our more diverse community, many more stories need to be told.

Q. What do you think a historical society in Jackson County should concern itself with in 2023? What kind of aspirations should it have, and what kind of challenges should it address?

A. The first thing a historical society can do is recognize the power shared stories have to define a community. As for challenges, here are three that immediately come to mind: thinking regionally, appreciating diversity and learning from history.

One challenge for a historical society in examining Kansas City’s history is to be more general and regional, not focusing on just one part of the area and instead seeing the city as a community that today comprises close to nine counties.

A historical society also should reflect the diverse community that Kansas City today represents. It should encourage the study and teaching of Black history. It should actively seek members of newer communities: Hispanic, Eastern European and Asian families that are coming to the area with their own stories and experiences. It should reach out to become part of those dynamic communities. Any group that focuses exclusively on a majority history is prone to distortion and omission; having other people at the table will serve to remind everyone that there are other stories, and a great many of those stories have to be heard in order to understand the overall community.

A historical society also needs to be actively involved in the debate over “canceling history.” Providing context and informed perspective facilitates better understanding, and helps to ensure that we use our history to learn from past mistakes. If we do not educate our young people as to what our community was in the days of segregation, for example, they cannot understand the experiences and perspectives of a diverse population which was -- and still is shaped -- by that experience.

History helps guide us in an informed discussion as to what it means to have a happy life and be a good citizen and neighbor.

Today a historical society should promote curiosity and conversations as to why Kansas City has become what it is today, and how we can become better in the future.

Jonathan Kemper: The E-Journal Interview.