The Country Club Plaza

The Country Club Plaza. . , Like Cinderella, Kansas City’s famous Country Club Plaza wasn’t always a glittering princess. In the late 1890s, the area, known as Brush Creek Valley, was still a marshland populated by beavers and foxes, and tread only by fur trappers, Native Americans and hardy settlers., It’s amazing that anyone could ever see it as anything more than a swamp, but one man did. His name was J.C. Nichols. Born in Olathe, Kansas, in 1880, Nichols was blessed with the soul of an entrepreneur. He worked from the age of eight, and while still in college, he and a friend earned enough money to travel to Europe., It was there that his vision of the Country Club Plaza began to take shape. Nichols’ bicycle tours took him through bustling marketplaces and towns filled with Old World charm, and he was especially entranced with the colorful tiled plazas of Spain. It was an inspiration that would one day lead to Nichols’ developing his famed Country Club Plaza., When Plaza development finally began in 1922, the design included buildings with Spanish-style tiled roofs, ornate towers and courtyards. Nichols handpicked works of art to adorn the Plaza’s streets and sidewalks, including sculptures, fountains, wrought iron, and breathtaking tiled murals brought over from Europe., The Plaza became known, and remains known, as the place for setting styles and trends. In fact, the permanent wave was introduced in a Plaza beauty salon. The Plaza holiday lights tradition began, in 1925, when a single strand of lights was first hung to adorn the buildings. Today’s celebration features more than 200,000 lights. At holiday time and throughout the year, the Plaza remains one of Kansas City’s most cherished destinations.