By Michael Bushnell
Northeast News
June 10, 2015

When Isaac “Ike” Katz was 13-years-old, he quit school and went to work for the Great Northern Railway to help support his family.

Katz walked the aisles of passenger trains bound for the Klondike, hawking everything from newspapers to chewing gum and cigarettes. According to later interviews, the experience helped the young Polish immigrant think fast on his feet as well as seize opportunity quickly.

Katz eventually settled in Kansas City, Mo., to open a fruit stand in 1898 along Union Avenue — not far from where his brother Michael operated a similar stand.

The two made a comfortable living peddling wares to railroad travelers coming through the Union Depot in the West Bottoms. The brothers expanded their operation by buying a storefront location in the Argyle building just prior to World War I.

From there, the Katz brothers expanded quickly, pioneering the mass-market drug store chain that stores like CVS and Walgreens are modeled after today. The chain of over 70 stores in five states was sold to Skaggs in 1970 and then to Osco in the late 1980s.

This week’s card shows the Katz drug store at Westport Road and Main Street, complete with its black Katz sign and signature clock tower. CVS closed the store in 2006 and it has remained vacant ever since.

Designed by prominent local architect Clarence Kivett, the building is a classic example of the Art Deco- or Art Moderne-style architecture popular throughout the country at the time it was built in 1934. Kivett, a nephew of the Katz brothers, designed hundreds of buildings in Kansas City over his 50-plus year career, including the Kansas City International Airport, the state office building at 13th Street and Holmes Road and Kaufman Stadium. Kivett founded the partnership known today as HNTB.