What's Your KCQ? What do you want to know about our community? The Library and The Kansas City Star combine resources to find answers to questions about regional topics.

A reader was intrigued by a handful of concrete structures resembling skateboard ramps on a grassy area off The Paseo, near 58th Street and Lydia Avenue — and reached out to What’s Your KCQ?, a collaboration between The Kansas City Public Library and The Kansas City Star, for an explanation.

From a distance, these curved concrete surfaces resemble ramps at a skatepark. But a closer look reveals gentle slopes interspersed with grassy patches, which would make skateboarding impractical.

Instead, this is the site of the 49/63 Neighborhood Fountain, owned and maintained by Kansas City Parks and Recreation. Unfortunately, the fountain is not currently operational.

In the early 1980s, the 49/63 Neighborhood Coalition sought to visually enhance this part of Kansas City, east and west of Troost — from Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard to 63rd Street, and from Oak Street to The Paseo.

The Coalition, a collective of residential associations, contacted Will Nettleship. The sculptor moved to Kansas City in 1971 and was known for creating a series of concrete boundary markers in his neighborhood of Hyde Park. Placed at 39th and Holmes and at Gillham Road and Locust, the markers were modeled after the historic Janssen Place entryway on 36th Street.

Members of the 49/63 Coalition wanted something similar.

Read the rest of the story at KCHistory.org.