The Kansas City Power and Light Building

Rising thirty-six stories above the crossroads of downtown Kansas City, the Power and Light Building went up in nineteen thirty-one during one of the strangest collisions of American history: the Great Depression, a construction boom, and the reign of political boss Tom Pendergast, all at once.

The firm of Hoit, Price and Barnes designed it in the Art Deco idiom then sweeping American cities. Indiana limestone sheathes the exterior. Inside the lobby, marble floors meet elaborate plaster moldings, sunburst patterns press into the elevator doors, and custom white metalwork catches the light. Every detail declared optimism as the Depression deepened.

The building served as the headquarters of Kansas City Power and Light, but the company understood that its most important function was symbolic. The tower had to announce the city's energy. Literally. At sunset, a twenty-one-foot lantern atop the highest floor lit up in red and orange, its prismatic glass panels making the crown glow like a torch against the prairie sky. Recessed setbacks along the shaft once held multicolored floodlights that shimmered and flickered in the dark. People could see the beacon for miles on a clear night.

From nineteen thirty-one until nineteen seventy-six, the Power and Light Building was the tallest habitable structure in Missouri. That record fell, but the lantern never stopped burning. Today the building has been converted to residential lofts and anchors the entertainment district that borrowed its name, still glowing after nightfall the way it has for nearly a century, an Art Deco flame that the Depression could not extinguish.