The Boley Building at 1130 Walnut St. in Kansas City, Missouri is a mid-rise commercial building that was built in 1909. It was designed by local architect, Louis Curtiss, for the Boley Clothing Company and is a very early example of metal-and-glass curtain-wall construction. Curtiss provided the interior showrooms of the structure with previously unseen levels of natural light by relying on an internal structure of robust steel columns to support the building’s walls and roof. The Boley Building was added the National Register of Historic Places in 1971.
The Boley Building is located near the center of Kansas City’s central business district. The surrounding blocks feature a variety of mid-rise and high-rise structures that accommodate both residential and commercial activity. The figure-ground views above show how the Boley Building contributes to a dense urban environment comprised of consecutive blocks built right to the sidewalk.
Prior to mid-20th century, the Boley Building was one of many historic, mid-rise structures on its block. However, a high-rise construction boom in the 1970’s & 1980’s dramatically changed the scale of the building’s neighborhood. The nearly 600′ Town Pavilion building was built in 1986, immediately to the north of the Boley Building. It’s pedestal-level is nearly as tall as the Boley Building and its scale at street-level robs the sidewalk of an inviting pedestrian-centered environment.
The Boley Building is an excellent example of early 20th-Century, mid-rise construction. The kind that was essential to accommodate the density necessary to support a city in which most people walked or relied on public transportation. Its innovate design has greatly contributed to its continued relevance in our contemporary city, however, more recent, out-of-scale structures often overshadow their more modest ancestor.