Louis Curtiss: architect and man of mystery
The three-story building at 3240 Main has been the subject of a mystery for years: Was it designed by Kansas City architect Louis Curtiss (1865-1924), whom some have called the Frank Lloyd Wright of Kansas City? The building, completed in 1914, looks like a Curtiss design – compare the structure with the 1908 building that he designed as his studio and apartment, at 1118 McGee. (The bar Social is on the ground floor of that structure today.) Or compare it with his most famous structure in Kansas City, the former Boley Clothing, at 12th Street and Walnut (now occupied by Andrews McMeel Publishing), which was a landmark design when it was completed in 1908.
“The Boley Building was a major work for its time, constructed in a ‘curtain wall design’ – an exterior wall of glass that hangs on the building rather than being a supportive part of the structure,” says architectural historian Keith Eggener, professor of American art and architecture and director of graduate studies at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Eggener gives a lecture on the work of Louis Curtiss at 2 p.m. Sunday, December 2, at the Kansas City Central Library, 14 West 10th Street.
Eggener thinks the building at 3240 Main could be a Curtiss design: “It sure looks like it. If not, it’s someone channeling Louis Curtiss.”
