Kansas City's Old Square

Kansas City's Old Square. The Chouteau Society. , Like New Orleans' "Vieux Carre," Kansas City's old market square and its surrounding Old Town streets in River Quay are oriented on the bias to the river in the Old World fashion, rather than on the strict east-west Yankee survey. That is because when Francois Chouteau, the French-speaking founder of what is now Kansas City, first laid out his trading post and adjoining trails in 1821, the Missouri river was his superhighway, to St. Louis and to the Northwest hinterland. The scattered French settlers who first permanently occupied Kansas City, around 1799, together with those who came with the Chouteaus in the early 1800s, maintained fields extending from the west (on Quality Hill) and up the hill from their cabins located eastward down along the Missouri. These tracts backed up to this open area, which formed a sort of "common fields." Unlike St. Louis, it was not fenced, and was not formally maintained. All this open area and adjacent land (114 acres) was claimed by an enterprising French grocer, farmer and tavern owner, Gabriel Prudhomme (from whom a number of Kansas Citians are descended), and he was given a patent to the land. Prudhomme, who showed much promise, was not destined to develop Kansas City, however. In 1831 he was "shot in a free fight by some fellow Canadians. It was a fierce brawl. When the fight was over there were many wounds and much blood spilt, and Prudhomme lay on the ground, still and dead." Thus it was that on the widow Prudhomme's land the "Town of Kansas" was platted in 1846 and, since the old residents, both French and American, probably had some informal community claim to the general area where the Market Square now stands, it is not surprising that it was dedicated as the square or village green of the new town.