Michael Bushnell
Northeast News

“The Builders Society of the Ivanhoe Park Congregational Church earnestly requests your subscription or renewal to The Ladies Home Journal or The Saturday Evening Post – or both! A liberal part of the money will go to our society.

“We earnestly ask your assistance in building a new church and Sunday school, our present quarters, the building on this card, being entirely inadequate for our needs. What more desirable gift to a friend could be suggested than a subscription to The Journal or The Post?

“If intended for a holiday gift for a friend, kindly state this and a neat card will be forwarded by the publishers announcing who the gift is from. Please state also whether a new or renewal subscription. The subscription price of either magazine is $1.50. Make checks, drafts or money orders payable to: Frances Sheppard, 3514 Garfield Ave., Kansas City, Missouri. Will you kindly help us?”
That’s the message on the first card, which depicted Ivanhoe Park Congregational Church at 39th and Michigan. It was a modest, 1.5-story building, barely larger than a home of the day.

The photograph on the front of this postcard published by the Breeders Ptg. Company, 1505 E. 35th St., Kansas City, Mo., shows the “new” church, circa 1908, following the capital campaign. The stately stone building of Craftsman design sports a tiled roof, stained glass windows and a lot more space for the growing congregation. According to Kansas City directories, Rev. Roy Osborne Chaney of 3906 Michigan Ave. was the pastor of the church immediately following the christening of the new building.