Westwood Hills, Kansas
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Westwood Hills is a city in Johnson County, Kansas, United States. The population was 378 at the 2000 census.
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[edit] Geography
Westwood Hills is located at (39.039055, -94.610808)GR1.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 0.2 km² (0.1 mi²), all land.
[edit] Demographics
As of the censusGR2 of 2000, there were 378 people, 170 households, and 116 families residing in the city. The population density was 2,085.0/km² (5,512.0/mi²). There were 173 housing units at an average density of 954.2/km² (2,522.7/mi²). The racial makeup of the city was 93.92% White, 1.59% African American, 0.26% Native American, 3.17% Asian, and 1.06% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.06% of the population.
There were 170 households out of which 28.2% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 59.4% were married couples living together, 7.6% had a female householder with no husband present, and 31.2% were non-families. 25.9% of all households were made up of individuals and 4.1% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.22 and the average family size was 2.70.
In the city the population was spread out with 21.7% under the age of 18, 3.2% from 18 to 24, 33.1% from 25 to 44, 31.7% from 45 to 64, and 10.3% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 41 years. For every 100 females there were 98.9 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 93.5 males.
The median income for a household in the city was $81,812, and the median income for a family was $108,732. Males had a median income of $76,250 versus $52,188 for females. The per capita income for the city was $48,256. About 1.8% of families and 2.4% of the population were below the poverty line, including none of those under the age of eighteen or sixty-five or over.
[edit] History of Westwood Hills
HISTORY
Once upon a time what we now call Westwood Hills was but a tiny dot in the rolling wide-open spaces of the largely uncharted west. A mere 37.65 acres in what was to become, in 1861, the state of Kansas.
This hilly, brook-bisected fractional section lies in what is now the northeastern-most corner of Johnson County. Not to be confused with the earlier J.C. Nichols Company neighborhood of Westwood Park (on the Missouri side), nor with the larger and newer City of Westwood, Kansas (beyond Rainbow Boulevard), tiny Westwood Hills nestles snugly against the state line, midway north of today's Shawnee Mission Parkway and south of the Wyandotte-Johnson County line.
In legalese, this flyspeck is the Southwest quarter of the Northwest Fractional quarter of Section Two, Township Number 12, South of Range 25 East. That is Westwood Hills.
THE BEGINNINGS
Although the first European settlement in Kansas reportedly dates from the 1720s, the Spanish explorer Francisco Vasquez de Coronado beat that by almost 200 years, by venturing as far north as Lyons in 1541. Long before that, native Indians inhabited these far reaches --- largely the Kansa (for whom the state was named) and the Pawnee tribes. But it was not until the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and the subsequent Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1804 (when they camped in Wyandotte County at the mouth of the Kaw on their way up the Missouri) that any real thought was given to the worth of all this Kansas vastness.
In 1806 the explorer Zebulon Pike traversed the area, and maps based on his reports show one big desert extending from Missouri and Arkansas west to the Rockies. Thirteen years later, Major Stephen Long, conducting another scientific quest westward, labeled this open expanse on his survey maps ~the Great American Desert'." Small wonder, then, that emigrant Indian tribes, including the Shawnees who were removed from their land in Ohio, were settled here in 1825. On a newly created Indian Reservation; on land thought to be worthless at that time.
The government had set aside 1,600,000 acres for the 900 Shawnees, a strip of land 25 miles north and south and 120 miles east and west encompassing all of present-day Johnson County, and then some! As it turned out, this "worthless" land soon became a key piece of open frontier lying at the main gateway to the west. Twenty-nine years later the Treaty of 1854 officially establishing the Territory of Kansas rescinded that earlier treaty. And the Shawnees were once again removed. With the stroke of a pen President James Buchanan opened Kansas for white settlement. In the doing he made Westport and what became Kansas City the last major outfitting stop on the way west and the metropolis it became.
Under the new Treaty the Shawnees re-ceded to the United States all but 200,000 acres of their reservation. These the tribe members reserved for homes for themselves, conveying "head rights", i.e., 200 acres of their own selection per member, to be held in severalty. They surrendered all claim to the rest.
Out of this landmark settlement Joseph Parks, by then Head Chief of the Shawnees in Kansas, was awarded this share: 1290 acres straddling Wyandotte and Johnson Counties. A fraction of which was the almost 40 acre site now called Westwood Hills.
On the southeastern corner of his holdings Parks built a substantial brick home in about 1845. Until its demolition in 1905, Parks' house stood on the hilltop at the northwest corner of today's Shawnee Mission Parkway and State Line Road --- the approximate location of the Pem-Hill School tennis courts now.
INDIAN FOREFATHER
Joseph Parks, Westwood Hills' Indian forefather, was colorful, and quaint by today's standards. His biography reads like an Horatio Alger character's. He was born in 1794, probably in Michigan, Shawnee territory, and lived with the family of General Lewis Cass, United States Army. The General claimed that Parks was "a pure white man who had been captured by the Indians when very young." Among the Shawnees, however, Parks claimed to be a full-blooded Shawnee. On other occasions in other places he appeared less definite. Perhaps even he was not sure.
Whatever his origins, Parks appears to have enjoyed advantages and responsibilities in both camps --- Indian and white. He served as an interpreter both to General Cass and for the Shawnee Chiefs' delegation to Washington, D.C. in 1831. Two years later he acted as a guide, aiding in the removal of the Shawnees from Ohio to their newly opened Kansas reservation. Parks was ultimately awarded the rank of Captain, leading a company of Shawnees during the Seminole War in Florida. Thereafter he became principal chief of the Shawnees in Kansas.
Parks was a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South and actively involved in the nearby Shawnee Indian Mission of the brothers Johnson (in today's Fairway, Kansas.) He is, in fact, reported to have owned a number of slaves, being the only slave-holder in Kansas Territory besides the Reverend Thomas Johnson himself. Parks was a Mason --- a member of the Westport ------- and dabbled in real estate of the burgeoning city of Westport.
According to one account, in 1836, he purchased from J.C. McCoy the property in Westport on which the Albert G. Boone Store (now Kelly's Tavern) stands today. One biographer lists Captain Joseph Parks among "the.business and professional men in the bustling frontier town of Westport" along with Seth Ward, John and Sam Wornall, William H. Chick, Frederick Chouteau, Jim Bridger, John J. and Thomas Mastin and such local luminaries.
A much-published photo of Parks, taken shortly before his death in 1859 portrays a distinguished-looking countenance. A prosperous appearing gentleman perhaps in his sixties, dressed in a fashionable style, even down to weskit, flowing bow tie, and what looks to be a ruffled-bosomed shirt beneath his dark frock coat.
When Joseph Parks died on April 3, 1859, his final services were conducted in the old log meeting house in the Methodist Indian Cemetery in Shawnee. He rests in that all but forgotten burying ground, on dead-end 59th Terrace and Nieman Road, beneath an imposing white granite obelisk replete with Masonic emblem. Next to him lie his wife Catherine and his small daughter, Nancy.
Parks died leaving no legal will. There ensued the usual fuss between nextof-kin and pretenders. Two granddaughters and their heirs, together with Parks' common-law wife, Sally Rogers, figured prominently in the next 50 years' wrangling. In time, Parks' entire tract passed to his heirs; was divided among them, parts sold, much mortgaged, with the bulk of it stoutly clung to.
Ultimately one granddaughter, Catherine Swatzel, was awarded Parks' Johnson County holdings. And for the next 63 years, it remained in Swatzel family hands. Then in 1922 the entire parcel was reassembled, purchased by the J.C. Nichols Investment Company, and formally dedicated as their new Kansas subdivision of Westwood Hills.
NICHOLS COMPANY ROLE
The previous year over on the Missouri side in Kansas City, a canny and innovative business entrepreneur lately of Olathe was dreaming big dreams for the development of Kansas lands adjacent to the state line. Jesse Clyde Nichols had methodically set about forming a corporation which was to become one of the most impressive real estate undertakings in America.
The formation of his J.C. Nichols Investment Company had come into being in 1908. It was the Nichols' concept of neighborhood development--subdivisions with strict governing convenants built-in --- which made, and continues to make, Nichols areas so singularly desirable. Although the company's earliest efforts began in 1905 with ten acres on the Missouri side, by 1912 the lure of Kansas residential development loomed large.
In that year, A.C. Jobes, a director and officer of the Santa Fe Railroad, made known to Nichols his desire to have a home constructed in one of the fashionable new Nichols neighborhoods. But the fly in the ointment was location. Jobes, in his various corporate positions, was required by law to live in Kansas. Nichols' ready solution was a piece of Kansas land he owned on the northwest corner of 59th Street and State Line Road. With construction of the Jobes' house on this site in 1912, Mission Hills was born. As was the Nichols Company's entry into Kansas residential development..
Ten years later the company, in the name of Miss Isla Derr, a Nichols Company employee, began assembling land to the north --- north of old Highway 50. The development of the newer subdivision began in the summer of 1922. It was called Westwood Hills.
The plat was drawn showing the boundaries extending from the north side of 50th Terrace on the south, to the south side of Swatzel Road (48th Terrace) on the north; from the west side of State Line Road, to the east side of Hudson Road (Rainbow Boulevard.) These property lines held until the City of Westwood Hills incorporated in 1949, when the northern boundary was extended to include the north side of 48th Terrace.
Then as now, lot buying and home building in a new housing development took an abundance of faith, courage and imagination. An old rock quarry chugged full-tilt at the northeast corner of 50th Street and State Line Road. Shanties and open ditches proliferated on the Swatzel tract at 49th Street and today's Rainbow Boulevard. Abruptly truncated streets within the new subdivision were dirt, dragged more or less smooth by mule-drawn rakes. It would be some years before all the east-west streets cut through from State Line Road to Rainbow Boulevard
Services to the fledgling development were created as the need arose. With Westwood Hills lying in an unincorporated corner of the county, police protection came from the Johnson County Sheriff's office; fire protection, the same. Since there were no Kansas utilities nearer than Kansas City, Kansas, the Nichols Company provided water service to its Kansas developments from Kansas City, Missouri sources, and laid its own sewer lines as well.
Postal service was particularly quaint in the new and sparsely populated areas on the Kansas side. Incoming mail was addressed to "Kansas City, Missouri", and, in the early years, was collected by residents from rural mailboxes located on the Missouri side of State Line Road. In fact, it was not until the formation of the big Shawnee Mission Post Office in 1960 that residents of Westwood Hills ceased using the Kansas City mailing address, and officially became Kansans to the U.S. Postal Service.
WESTWOOD HILLS IS BORN
On August 16, 1922 the first lot was sold in Westwood Hills. The late Loyd Neff, an original resident and editor of the HERALD reported, "Miss Ida Carter climbed through a barbed wire fence on the west side of State Line at Fiftieth Street, shooed the cows out of her way, accompanied by a salesman for the J.C.Nichols Company, and a blueprint of what was to be known as Westwood Hills."
The pioneering Miss Carter selected as her home site 4904 Westwood Lane, later to be renamed Glendale Road. A second (at 4945), third a(at 4925) and a fourth lot (at 4929) sold on the same short street. The first house begun in Westwood Hills was C.L. Ward's still quaint and charming two-story Hansel and-Gretel cottage at 4910 Glendale Road. However, the first house completed and occupied in the new neighborhood was that of the late Loyd Neff -~- a modest white clapboard bungalow at 2000 West 50th Street.
The Nichols Company's Country Club District BULLETIN of 1923 glowingly described their most recently platted area. "Westwood Hills comprises a high, wooded, slightly rolling ground, con~commanding a view of the beautiful Brush Creek valley and distant fairways of neighboring golf courses." Today the "high, wooded, slightly rolling ground" is home to 175 distinctive houses.
The amenities came next in Westwood Hills. In August 1923 a picnic oven (which still stands!) was built for the residents by the Country Club District on a woodsy slope just west of the brook on the south side of 50th Street. By December 1924 the noisy quarry was shut down. The paving of dusty 50th Street was completed from State Line Road to Rainbow Boulevard. And a rustic stone bridge was soon to be built over the stream on 49th Terrace. The big news in November 1925 was construction of the shops at the corner of 50th Street and State Line Road. "Designed (by Nichols Company architect Edward Tanner) in the mode common to English farm buildings, with a touch of Normandy in its main round tower" this commercial area was to house six shops.
First to open was the beauty shop on December 15, 1925. By the following summer the Piggly Wiggly Market was in operation (In 1992, interestingly enough, this grocery chain announced its re-entry into the Kansas City area.) A notions store followed in March 1927. Then came the drugstore, which remained a neighborhood lifeline into the 1970s.
In October 1926, The Country Club District BULLETIN featured the attractive new white brick home of Miss Elizabeth Evans (Mrs. Melvin Rivard) at 1805 West 49th Terrace (now 2101). Young Miss Evans was one of Kansas City's five lady architects making a mark in those years. Among the dozens of homes she designed in the Kansas City area, eight were built in Westwood Hills, all between 1925-1929. Another of her award-winners is the snug stone cottage east of the creek at 2024 West 49th Terrace which Miss Evans designed for the widow of Kansas City lumberman Frank Paxton. It was during this four-year building boom that 56 new homes were built in the original Nichols plat of Westwood Mills.
In the spring of 1926, a Westwood Hills residence designed by yet another of Kansas City's lady architects, Miss Alice Walton, was featured in the prestigious national LIBERTY magazine. This cozy one-story stucco and timber charmer was built at what was then 1817 West 50th Street (now 2113). It was commissioned by the same visionary C.L. Ward who, three years earlier, had built that very first house on Glendale Road.
HOMES ASSOCIATION CREATED
In late 1926, the Westwood Hills Homes Association was formed, with Dr. Frank F. Brown serving as first president from 1927-1928. The concept of a home-owners association was one which J.C. Nichols perpetuated with an eye toward preserving the quality and character of his residential districts.
In order to maintain property values, each home owner automatically became a "member" of his district's Homes Association, with all its benefits, rights and responsibilities. It proved a far-sighted tool which has kept even the older Nichols areas viable. Beginning with the first Association founded in Mission Hills in 1914, Nichols Country Club District grew to encompass 8,000 acres and dozens of individual Homes Associations.
By the mid-1940s, one central overall "umbrella" organization was formed to handle the similar needs of each of the individual Associations in the District. In late 1926, Westwood Hills became one of those members, and continued so until 1965. In 1965 the growing consensus in the neighborhood was that its needs could best be met by a self-directed Association. Thus the decision to "go independent".
At that time the Westwood Hills Homes Association expanded its boundaries to conform with those of the City of Westwood Hills, including the north side of 48th Terrace in its membership. It continues to operate as a not-for profit fit corporation, governed by elected officers and a board of residents who are directors. Its functions are internal, dealing largely with upkeep and the welfare of the neighborhood and its residents beautification, trash removal, social activities and "neighborliness" in general.
CONTINUED GROWTH
By late 1927 the Nichols Company was planning construction of the swank new Villa Serena apartments (now the Raphael Hotel) south of the Country Club Plaza. Already occupying this site was a greenhouse and an eight-year-old floral shop --- a smart two-story hipped-roofed, homey looking structure. Rather than demolish it, the Nichols Company had it moved to a vacant lot in Westwood Hills, where, somewhat modified, it now stands-a handsome wood shingled Colonial at 4901 Glendale Road.
Between 1936-1940, in a second burst of building, 31 more new homes were constructed in Westwood Hills. But with the outbreak of World War II, the neighborhood's growth slowed considerably. And with fewer building lots remaining, only 23 new constructions were yet to come in the original Nichols plat of Westwood Hills. A period of 65 years separates the first home built there in 1922, from the most recent. CITY INCORPORATION
After World War II, the creation of small new municipalities swept the country like a pox. The rash of incorporations that broke out in Johnson County carved nine new towns out of the approximately 23 square miles of land in its extreme northeastern reaches. All this in less than four years time, from November 1948 until July 1951. Westwood Hills was one of those, neither the first nor the last, nor even the smallest. (Mission Woods claimed that distinction.) But with an area of less than one-sixteenth of a square mile and a population of 447, Westwood Hills became the next-to-smallest with a penchant for doing for itself.
In early 1949 a handful of foresighted citizens began mulling the desirability of incorporating Westwood Hills as a city. Although the neighborhood had been a Homes Association since 1927, that loose alliance offered no legal protection. In its unincorporated state, the entity was vulnerable. Either it would be gobbled up by one of the larger incorporating neighborhoods, or the residents would have to incorporate themselves into a third class city.
Wise heads counseled, discussed the pros and cons, and decided to proceed. In April 1949 their petition was made to the Board of County Commissioners in Olathe. A hearing followed, a census conducted, signatures verified, and electors qualified. On July 1, 1949 the new City of Westwood Hills was born.
Present at the creation were ten citizens who helped organize the effort: L.E. Pope, Francis Guy, Charles A. Fordyce, Mack L. Littrell, Lawrence M. Long, C. Chauncey Cox (presiding), Ora M. Atnberg (appointed City Clerk), Clarence L. GunckeJ (appointed City Treasurer), Donald Fincke (appointed City Marshal), and Robert L. Hecker (appointed City Attorney.)
That first official meeting of the City Council of the brand-spanking new city convened at the home of Chauncey Cox at 2120 West 50th Terrace. And there, fittingly enough, his widow Mayme still resides in 1995. Minutes of that initial gathering were recorded by the fledgling City Clerk Ora Amberg, who served lovingly and long --- for more than 20 years --- until her name and that of the City became almost synonymous.
The new city's boundaries were expanded from the original Nichols Company plat to include the 21 homes on the north side of 48th Terrace. Ten ordinances were introduced at that first Council meeting, and Robert L. Hecker was duly appointed City Attorney. It was a position he fielded with endless patience and calm well into the 1960s.
Without the vision, expertise, and willingness of these citizens, Westwood Hills would undoubtedly have become part of a far larger metropolis in Johnson County. Thanks to them and their far-sightedness, and to the subsequent willing hands, the City of Westwood Hills remains independent, with all the privileges and responsibilities independence entails.
ARCHITECTURAL MIX
From its beginnings Westwood Hills' long suit has been its architectural mix. No look-alike, cookie-cut-out houses. The distinctive designs of the Misses Evans and Walton were complemented and enhanced by a cadre of others from unknown but sensitive builders to big-name architects.
In the original Nichols plat, Clarence Kivett's rare venture into residential architecture is represented in a compact and originally colorful square 1953 contemporary at 1926 West 50th Terrace. Edward Tanner, the Nichols Company favorite, designed several of the early Westwood Hills homes, including in 1923 a large Normandy style stucco-and-timber inlay at 4905 Glendale Road, and a smaller 1929 Dutch Colonial at 2113 West 49th Terrace. A stunning and innovative small cottage by the late-great Clarence E. Shepard, also of 1929 vintage, perches high on the terrace at 2017 West 50th Street. And Herbert Duncan's 1934 center hall plan, shingle-over-stone Colonial at 2105 West 49th Street is as viable now as then.
On the north side of 48th Terrace, however, the building story begins even earlier. It was platted as part of the Westport Annex in September 1909. The earliest extant residence there dates from 1917, thus that north half of the street predates development in the Nichols Westwood Hills plat by six years. But it was not until the Kansas City architect and builder, Benjamin F. Hart, became active on that northmost street that it began taking on its "face." Of the 22 houses now there, 13 were designed, built, and in some cases even owned by Hart. His distinctive imprint, despite the many remodelings, additions, changes, and in-fill construction, is still apparent there. It remains a truly remarkable street of distinctive but related bungalows sited on narrow lots.
One other Kansas City "name" architect who not only designed and built, but lived there, was John H. Martling (at 1914 West 48th Terrace.) He was a somewhat star-crossed young man who, apparently in self-defense, fended off an attack by his employer with a fatal brick to the man's head'.
NEIGHBORHOOD STABILITY
Stability, like variety, seems basic to Westwood Hills. Despite change, the tiny neighborhood-cum-city appears remarkably unchanged. Of the original "old settlers" who bought and built in the 1920s, only the timeless Winthrop Williams' remain. As newlyweds in 1927 they bought at 4917 Glendale Road. (Frances Williams was the creator of the fabled "Cuddles and Tuckie" cartoons of yore; Winthrop Williams is the wry wit who professes to having had only "onejob--- secretary of Paxton Lumber --- one house and one wife.") For 68 years, all on Glendale Road'
Gone now, but not forgotten by the older residents, are such familiar names as Francis A. Guy and George Tourtellot, Sr., both early day officers of the J.C. Nichols Company; and S.J. Ray, for many years the Kansas City STAR cartoonist. There was Loyd Neff, long-time editor and publisher of the Johnson County HERALD who, in the spring of 1923 moved his young family into Westwood Hills' first completed house --- where they remained lifelong loyalists. Architect Chester E. Dean, Dr. Lawrence Engel who was dean of Kansas City surgeons, E.M. "Barney" Barnard of the bygone Barnard's Camera and Record Shop on the Plaza, and the local fence-world's first family, the Boise Burges--- all were early and long residents.
Fondly remembered too are three independent women who came early to Westwood Hills and made a mark: Elizabeth Evans, the prolific architect who married after designing her home, and moved her new husband Melvin Rivard into it; Rose Montrose, whose husband died before their house was completed and who, in her widowhood, founded and ran an electric car dealership; and Marie Staples, the founding mother of what is today the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art's exemplary cafe -- - creating that first friendly self-serve buffet in a former upstairs lounge area.
Many came, stayed and left their mark. Some passed through leaving hardly a ripple. On the whole, most who selected Westwood Hills did so with reason, drawn by the appeal of a tight little city conveniently located five minutes from the Country Club Plaza and 15 from downtown. Attracted to a completely independent entity, smack against the state line, measuring one long block east and west and four, north and south. Lying between busy State Line Road and churning Rainbow Boulevard, in a microcosm of leafy green calm. An oasis replete with shade trees, a meandering brook, and at last count 175 distinctive homes set on slightly wackerjawed lots facing winding hilly streets. All this is what makes Westwood Hills so unique
[edit] Libraries
The award-winning Johnson County Library serves the residents of Westwood Hills by providing access to ideas, information, experiences and materials that support and enrich people's lives. The Library includes 13 locations throughout Johnson County.
[edit] External links
- Maps and aerial photos
- Street map from Google Maps, or Yahoo! Maps, or Windows Live Local
- Satellite image from Google Maps, Windows Live Local, WikiMapia
- Topographic map from TopoZone
- Aerial image or topographic map from TerraServer-USA
- City of Westwood Hills
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