Armour Hills

While researching a true crime story, I came upon a story in the KC Star Millenium series that mentioned the building of the subdivision in which I shared a house with my ex for 22 years, Armour Hills.

J.C. Nichols, developer of Mission Hills and the prestigious Sunset Hill near the Kansas City Country Club (today's Loose Park), also turned his attention to the expanding middle class.
In 1922 he filed a plat for a new subdivision south of 65th Street. Armour Hills, he called it.

There, on the former grazing land of Kirkland Armour's Hereford herd, Nichols built more moderately priced houses along streets with familiar names: Oak, Main, Brookside and the curving Edgevale Road, which lent to the bungalows and two-stories in Armour Hills "the same characteristics of beauty and distinction" that prevailed in the nearby but pricier Country Club District.

"In efficiency and livability, these houses take first rank," said the J.C. Nichols Co., which advertised bungalows for $8,500 and two-stories for as low as $9,500. "There are fine big yards for the little tots' sand pile or the grown-ups' croquet court and abundant space for flowers."

By summer 1924 more than 300 families had bought homesites.

That July, with construction starting every day on three or four houses, Nichols dedicated the 1.1-acre Arbor Villa Park at 66th Terrace and Main Street. The pergola was draped in American flags that evening as Judge John I. Williamson, a new Armour Hills homeowner, stood and praised the new park as "an innovation in residential development" and a "distinct asset to Kansas City." The judge called special attention to the beautiful Venetian vase of Carraran marble and the park's other statuary.

Though the judge did not mention it, Armour Hills, like its wealthier Nichols' neighbors, had deed restrictions that forbade ownership or occupancy by black people.

Such restrictions, historian William S. Worley writes, were not unique to Kansas City. Pricey developments elsewhere in the United States -- such as Roland Park in Baltimore and Forest Hills in Queens, New York -- barred Jews and Catholics as well as people of African descent. To Nichols, who had seen Quality Hill deteriorate as wealthy residents moved out, deed restrictions were a way to ensure that property retained its value.

In fact, company records indicate that Nichols developed Armour Hills -- and restricted its land use and ownership -- as a way to safeguard property values in the nearby and costlier properties along Ward Parkway and Sunset Drive. "Had this land fallen into the possession of disinterested owners or had it been developed without restrictions," the records say, the "stability and character" of the Country Club District -- and Kansas City -- would have "suffered."


The $8,500 bungalow appraised at over $180,000 when we split. By my calculations, the rate of price increase was only about 4% a year. I'm not sure what the inflation adjusted return is but it is probably only 1%. It's negative if you throw in taxes. Think of this the next time some realtor tells you that real estate is an "investment."

It is still a pretty house, though.