Michael Bushnell
Northeast News

Over the Memorial Day holiday of 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt visited Kansas City as a guest of the Commercial Club. He spoke to a large audience inside of the newly rebuilt Convention Hall, then toured the city. He rode in a parade downtown over to the grandest boulevard anyone had seen to that date. That grand boulevard was none other than The Paseo. The route of the parade went right past these wonderful sunken gardens located at the corner of 12th Street and The Paseo. This card shows those colorful gardens in all their summer finery, much as they may have looked when Roosevelt’s carriage rolled by 115 years ago. Directly to the right of this photo stood the New York Flats, a stately, upscale building designed for Kansas City’s crème de la crème of society and sporting the finest of accoutrements in all of its luxury units. The building stood until the mid-1960s when it was razed for safety reasons. This card shows no publisher information and was never mailed.