By LESLIE COLLINS
July 11, 2012

Historic Northeast is full of rich history and one organization is ready to preserve it.

Northeast Kansas City Historical Society (NEKCHS), a 501(c)3 non-profit, held its first public meeting June 28. The newly formed organization isn’t out to compete with existing neighborhood and community organizations. Instead, the goal is to unite all six neighborhoods within Historic Northeast, said NEKCHS President Kent Dicus.

The mission of NEKCHS is to promote Northeast, as well as collect, research and preserve Historic Northeast’s history.

“It (Northeast) has so many stories to be told,” said NEKCHS Archives and Research Executive Joy Brandon. “Historically, it is just amazing. It’s such a gem of an area.”

Homes built in the 1800s and 1900s still line Northeast, featuring original woodwork and fireplaces. There are undertones of the Kansas City Mafia and the fact that Jesse James Jr. settled in the Lykins neighborhood.

“A lot of movers and shakers of Kansas City built their homes in the Northeast area,” Dicus said.

One of the sisters who founded Children’s Mercy Hospital lived in the Scarritt Renaissance neighborhood and then there’s lumber baron Robert A. Long who built the first skyscraper in Kansas City and led a fundraising drive that built the Liberty Memorial.

“It’s just always a mystery when you research something. You never know what you might find,” Brandon said.

For nearly five years, Brandon has been researching the Historic Northeast area. Her fascination with Northeast began when she helped co-worker Su Collura, now NEKCHS treasurer, research her home for the Pendleton Heights Historic Homes Tour.

One research project led to another and the history buff couldn’t get enough.

“She’s been really great with coming up with all kinds of tidbits,” Dicus said of Brandon. “She’s like a dog with a bone. If you give her an address, she doesn’t stop until she finds something.”

One of those “tidbits” Brandon found involved Pendleton Heights’ notification process for city elections. Neighborhood residents would shoot off skyrockets from three different points: Pendleton Heights, 24th Street and Troost, and 12th Street and Bluff. The neighborhood notified residents on the progress of the election every half hour. A sequence of skyrockets would signify who was in the lead and later, who won the election.

One bedroom alone at Brandon’s house is dedicated to Northeast research, she said. Her research includes both hard copies and digital. Research resources have included old photos, newspaper clippings, water and building permits, passport applications, information from residents, among other sources. Brandon plans to cross-reference the information and is starting a file for each neighborhood, house and street. Each board member has been assigned a Northeast neighborhood to work with.

“We’d love to make the historical society a resource,” Dicus said.

Whether that’s a physical location, making the information available online, or both is still to be determined, he said.

Another component of the organization includes education outreach, he said. One educational outreach activity will include an historic homes tour of all six neighborhoods.

Northeast Kansas City Chamber of Commerce President Bobbi Baker-Hughes praised the organization.

“It’s a way and means of unifying our community because each one of our neighborhoods has a history,” Baker-Hughes said. “The Northeast Kansas City Historical Society has the ability to focus on those histories. As people start to realize how important our community has been in the history-making of the entire Kansas City area, our community will become even more proud of who we are, who we’ve been, as well as who we can become.”