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.

Readers who have walked the Riverfront Heritage Trail sometimes write in to ask about some of Kansas City’s more obscure public art pieces, such as West Pennway’s miniature Mayan pyramid or the I-670 pedestrian bridge’s iron birds. One piece, however, stands above the rest as an object of reader intrigue: the Hereford Bull atop a pillar in Mulkey Square Park.

For over 20 years this massive bull has stood guard by the old FBI Kansas City Field Office at 14th and Summit. But the statue has a longer history. It was an iconic feature of Kansas City’s skyline long before ground was broken on the FBI building and, indeed, even before I-670 and I-35 carved Mulkey Square into the island it is today.

The mighty Hereford first adorned the horizon in 1954, fewer than 800 feet to the northeast of his present position. He was conceived as the capstone to the new headquarters of the American Hereford Association (AHA), a million-dollar project announced in early 1951, four blocks west and three times larger than its previous headquarters at 300 W. 11th Street.

The expansion was long overdue.

Between 1920 and 1950, annual registrations of Herefords had more than quadrupled, totaling 5.5 million new cattle over 30 years. Tasked with maintaining these pedigrees, the AHA had likewise exploded from 15 to 135 employees.

A site for the new headquarters was selected atop a high bluff at 11th and Jefferson streets with a commanding view of the West Bottoms. The building’s design was taken on by renowned Kansas architect Joseph Radotinsky, himself a Hereford farmer, who envisioned the statue as integral to the building.

Read the rest of the story at KCHistory.org.