Original Kansas City Architecture
Kansas City's most profound influence on national architecture is the Kansas City-style of stadium that first originated with the Kivett & Myers 1967 design for the Truman Sports Complex for the Kansas City Chiefs and Kansas City Royals. In an era when new stadiums were huge multiuse arenas, Kivett & Myers proposed baseball and football have their own arenas with dimensions most favorable to their sports and then covered with a rolling roof. Virtually all major league ballparks and stadiums since then have followed that model and most have been designed by one of two Kansas City architect firms that trace their stadium business roots to Kivett -- Populous and HNTB. The firms' headquarters are a few blocks apart in downtown Kansas City.
The most distinctive feature of any modern Kansas City building is its use of fountains. Kansas City calls itself the City of Fountains and has more than 200 fountains (with the claim that only Rome, Italy has more fountains). Probably the most famous is the J.C. Nichols Fountain on the Country Club Plaza. It's also the most photographed. Sculpted by France's Henri Greber in 1910, the fountain's mounted figures were originally planned for a Long Island estate. Each of the equestrian figures represents one of four great rivers of the world: Mississippi, Volga, Rhine and Seine.
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