Chicago architect George Washington Maher was a giant of the Prairie School movement, whose buildings are treasured by communities lucky enough to have them. How did Kansas City forget that at the turn of the last century, Maher designed a significant home — possibly the city’s first Prairie School structure — for the prominent Velie family (an offshoot of the John Deere clan) in the then-fashionable Warwick neighborhood?

Kicking off the Library’s 2014 Kansas City Architecture Series, architecture enthusiast Ross Freese describes this landmark building (razed in the early ’50s to make way for All Souls Unitarian Church) and the old postcard that piqued his interest in it.

Freese is a system support analyst for the UMKC Central Ticket Office.