Jesse Clyde Nichols

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Jesse Clyde Nichols (August 23, 1880 - February 16, 1950), better known as J. C. Nichols, was a prominent developer of commercial and residential real estate in Kansas City. He was born in Olathe, Kansas, attended the University of Kansas and Harvard University. His developments include the Country Club Plaza, the first suburban shopping center in the United States and the Country Club District, the largest contiguous master-planned community in the United States. He called his method "planning for permanence," for his objective was to "develop whole residential neighborhoods that would attract an element of people who desired a better way of life, a nicer place to live and would be willing to work in order to keep it better." Nichols invented the percentage lease, where rents are based tenants' gross receipts. The percentage lease is now a standard practice in commercial leasing across the United States. Nichols was prominent in Kansas City civic life, being involved in the creation of the Liberty Memorial, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the Midwest Research Institute, as well as the development of Kansas City University, now the University of Missouri-Kansas City. His philosophies about city planning greatly influenced other developments in the United States, including Beverly Hills and the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, as well as Shaker Heights, Ohio. Modern outdoor shopping centers, now common in the United States, share a common ancestor in the Country Club Plaza, which opened in Kansas City in 1923. The Urban Land Institute's J. C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development[1] is named for him. Moreover, the New Urbanists, developers who design to combat suburban sprawl, look to the Country Club District as a model for modern developments.

In 1970, members of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) were charged with pipe bombing the home of J.C. Nichols, among other places in Kansas City. Three SDS members were convicted. See United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri, Western Division (Kansas City), Criminal Case Files (1879- 1972), Case 23498.

He is mentioned briefly in Robert A. Heinlein's novel To Sail Beyond the Sunset.

[edit] Controversial restrictive covenants

J.C. Nichols relied on restrictive covenants to control the uses of the lands in the neighborhoods he developed. Most of the covenants restricted the lands to residential uses, and contained other features such as setback and free space requirements. However, homes in the Country Club District were restricted with covenants that prohibited African Americans and Jews from owning or occupying the homes, unless they were servants. Nichols was not the first to invent the practice, but he used it to effectively bar ethnic minorities from living in his properties during the first half of the century. The practice was commonplace in the real estate industry during Nichols' time; the rationale of restricting the land to whites was to preserve property values, which reflected the widespread racist attitudes of the time. It is important to note, however, the J.C. Nichols was the first of his contemporaries to stop the practice of barring Jews from home ownership. Ultimately, the 1948 Supreme Court decision Shelley v. Kraemer made such covenants unenforceable. Nevertheless, the covenants remain on the deeds to properties developed by J.C. Nichols because of the practical difficulty of changing them: the deed restrictions in most neighborhoods renew automatically every twenty to twenty five years unless a majority of the homeowners agree to change them with notarized votes. To this day, the Country Club District is predominantly white, and it is among the wealthiest, most sought-after neighborhoods in the United States.

[edit] Further reading

Schirmer, Sherry Lamb. A City Divided: The Racial Landscape of Kansas City, 1900-1960. Columbia, Missouri : University of Missouri Press, 2002.

McKenzie, Evan. Privatopia: Homeowner Associations and the Rise of Residential Private Government. Yale University Press, 1996.

Robert Pearson and Brad Pearson. The J. C. Nichols Chronicle: The Authorized Story of the Man and His Company, 1880–1994. Lawrence, Kansas: Country Club Plaza Press--distributed by the University Press of Kansas, 1994.

Worley, William S. J.C. Nichols and the shaping of Kansas City : innovation in planned residential communities. Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 1990.

[edit] External links