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What does it mean to be a “great city”? Since 2018, the Library has hosted public presentations by urban planners and round-table conversations with c...

In a discussion drawing from his new book The Bars Are Ours: Histories and Cultures of Gay Bars in America, 1960 and After, Lucas Hilderbrand of the U...

Tapping new resources and research tools, local historian Michael Sweeney has produced the first new historical assessment in 20 year...

West Bottoms Whiskey Co. founder Alex Lindsey examines...

There was no greater boon to Kansas City’s early development than the opening of the Hannibal Bridge in 1869. Designed by civil engineer Octave Chanut...

The infamous Missouri Executive Order 44 – known as the Extermination Ord...

Before the Lewis and Clark Expedition arrived at the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers in 1804 and a young St. Louis couple, Francois and B...

Carmaletta Williams, chief executive officer of the Black Archives of Mid-America, discusses her work with the Equal Justice Initiati...

The lower Missouri River was a veritable steamboat graveyard in the 19th century as more than 300 vessels ended up at the bottom of the Big Muddy....

It was inevitable that the bawdy, alcohol-infused culture of 19th-century Kansas City would draw the ire of social reformers and prohibi...