-
Endangered Places
Historic Kansas City’s Endangered Places list highlights significant historic buildings, landscapes, neighborhoods, and sites facing imminent threats to their survival. These places—ranging from individual structures to broader corridors and cultural landscapes—represent irreplaceable pieces of Kansas City’s history. When they are lost, they are lost forever.
Published periodically, the Endangered Places list is intended to raise public awareness of preservation challenges such as demolition pressure, prolonged vacancy, deferred maintenance, incompatible development, and economic forces that place historic resources at risk. The list serves as a call to action, encouraging property owners, public officials, community members, and preservation partners to work together to identify viable paths forward that keep historic places active, relevant, and intact.
About the Endangered Places List
The Endangered Places list identifies historic properties and areas across Kansas City that face serious threats while still retaining architectural integrity and strong connections to their surrounding communities. These sites may include individual buildings, groups of related structures, historic corridors, or landscapes that help define the character and history of nearby neighborhoods.
The list is intended to draw attention to places in need of renewed investment and thoughtful stewardship, with the goal of encouraging repair, reuse, and long-term care. Some sites may attract new owners or developers, while others may benefit from community advocacy, public-sector involvement, or preservation planning efforts.
Collectively, the Endangered Places list underscores the breadth of Kansas City’s historic fabric—residential, commercial, institutional, and cultural—and highlights the importance of proactive preservation efforts to ensure these places remain part of the city’s future.
Nominations should describe a place’s historic or community significance and clearly identify the threats placing it at risk, supported by current and historic photographs, maps, and other materials that help illustrate existing conditions. Letters or statements of support from neighborhood groups, residents, elected officials, or other community stakeholders are encouraged to demonstrate local concern and the need for attention. To nominate a property to the 2026 Endangered Places List, refer to the instructions sheet at the following link: https://www.historickansascity.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Most-Endangered-Nom-Form-2026.pdf
-
2020-2021 MOST ENDANGERED PLACES LIST
Each year Historic Kansas City announces our Most Endangered Places list of buildings and other places around Kansas City at risk of being demolished or of crumbling into obscurity. We do this to draw attention to their plight, and in hopes of attracting new owners, developers, or community groups who will commit to restore, repurpose, and maintain their unique appeal. These historic places are irreplaceable community assets that tell the story of the city and its development.
The list recognizes the many significant properties that make up our neighborhoods, reflecting the lives of community leaders, important architects, and buildings and the families who made Kansas City their home. The list also highlights the value of the city’s architectural styles and building types of rapidly disappearing residential, commercial, and public architecture. They are places that are important to the diverse history of our city and are tied to the neighborhoods and communities where they are located.
