Kansas City (Oklahoma!)

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"Kansas City" is a song from the musical Oklahoma!. In this 1943 show, the plot set-up for this tune is the return of cowboy Will Parker from an excursion to Kansas City. He describes his experiences in song. The song describes the wonders of this city and its entertainments (from the viewpoint of a country bumpkin), all reprising with the concept that the conditions (in 1906) represent the ultimate in progress, with little more expected.

[edit] Building

The song includes the lyrics:

Everything's up to date in Kansas City

They gone about as fer as they can go

They went an' built a skyscraper seven stories high

About as high as a buildin' orta grow.

The tallest buildings in Kansas City, Missouri in 1906 (the era when the musical is set) were the 12-story New York Life Insurance Building (Kansas City) building and the newly built 17-story Commerce Trust Tower.

A major seven-story building at the time was The Jones Store at 12th and Main which took up an entire block and was 500,000 square feet.