Kansas City lost its lead proponent of the park and boulevard movement on December 2, 1905, with the death of August Meyer. 

Meyer was born in St. Louis in 1851 to German immigrant parents. As a young adult, he studied engineering in Europe and then entered the mining business in Leadville, Colorado, where he grew wealthy. 

When he moved to the Kansas City area in 1881, he purchased the Consolidated Kansas City Smelting and Refining Company in Argentine, Kansas. By 1889, Meyer helped the company expand to one of the largest refined gold, silver, lead, blue vitriol, and zinc producers in the nation, with over 1,000 employees and $15 million in revenue per year. Although well-known at the time for his smelting business, Meyer is now remembered primarily for his efforts to beautify Kansas City.

Meyer believed strongly in a concept that would later become known as the City Beautiful Movement. Proponents of City Beautiful believed that a growing population was not an adequate measure of a city’s health, because an accidental collection of people did not form a true community. Therefore, cities needed to actively plan for the physical and moral well-being of their citizens, who could, in return, contribute to the welfare of the city.

Beginning in 1892, the Board of Park Commissioners, with Meyer as its president, advocated the “park and boulevard movement,” as they called it in Kansas City. Other notable advocates of City Beautiful in Kansas City included George Kessler (the lead architect of park and boulevard planning in Kansas City), William Rockhill Nelson (whose paper, The Kansas City Star, publicly lobbied for the improvements), and Adriance Van Brunt (who designed several boulevards and the entrance to Swope Park).

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