I came across a copy of one of the first Kansas City specific federal redevelopment plans which explains the reason why Main/Delaware is configured the way it is today.
I decided that I would add a "KC Freeway History" sub-category on the right since I am going to start having more and more stuff to blog about freeways. I need to find the time to go back and re-tag posts like the 1985 Kansas City Downtown Loop Study and the 1947 Kansas City Master Plan Downtown Loop posts. It appears that the layout of Main/Delaware was all done for the sake of redevelopment for surface parking facilities. This was the land use in the 1940's.
You can download at the bott0m of the post and read the whole report but here are some interesting tidbits I noticed when skimming the report.
What is interesting is the report explains the reason for the weird U-turn ramps underneath the south side of the Main/I-70 bridge were designed for the street car to turn around. The project essentially severed the River Market from the street car system.
Was traffic really that bad or people in that big of a hurry after WWII that this was such a big concern?
I also found it interesting the freeway/trafficway map was slightly different from the 1947 KC master plan. The redevelopment master plan had the Paseo Bridge connection across the river while the 1947 plan, in color below, did not.
The difference in the two leads me to believe the radio myth that the 6th Street Freeway was located solely to break up the Italian voting block. There is no other reason for that highway to be planned in its location unless it was a political decision. Other cities (Buffalo, Seattle, New York City, etc) routed their freeways along rivers or other publicly owned areas and a freeway could have been built along the south side of the Missouri River a lot easier than putting it along the 6th Street corridor.
Aerial views of the riverfront are shown in the "Kansas City Before Freeways" and "1940's Hannibal Bridge Picture." If you look at those pictures, there was a lot of ground between the City and the River that would have been an easy freeway connection from the new river crossing bridge to the Intercity Viaduct. Putting the highway there would have made more sense for transportation versus and urban renewal project. It's too bad the engineers and planners in the 1940's didn't have the Talking Heads in their iPods™ to give them some inspiration...
Download Northside URP - 7-6-1953 (00174925xA7821)
Song credit to Talking Heads.
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