By request, we return once again to the dusty, shallow confines of the Daytripper archives. The following column demonstrates that you can indeed spend four-plus hours poking around aimlessly in the library's local history collection and still have something to show for it. Photo at right: Petticoat Lane circa 1990 (by LI)._____
It's all in a name (or was)
Kansas City View - November 1990
A breeze of controversy buffeted Kansas City in 1966 when the City Council announced its intention to officially rename the section of 11th Street between Main and Grand Petticoat Lane. All the change amounted to was making a customary title legal. Nevertheless, Hartzfeld's, a local clothier who operated on the street in question, objected. Hartzfeld's made a line of clothing called Petticoat Lane and claimed that its trademark rights would be diluted.
The name change went through, but as years passed and shoppers went elsewhere, the two blocks eventually went back to plain old 11th Street. These days, Petticoat lane, like Hartzfeld's, exists only in Kansas City's memory. Not a comforting thought since Kansas City has the collective memory of a flea.
Memory, though, is an odd thing. Take for example the 1988 controversy over naming a section of Maple Street in Independence Higashimurayama Avenue. Higashimurayama, a suburb of Tokyo, is Independence's sister city in Japan. The good folks of Higashimurayama had already renamed a major street in their town Truman Boulevard as part of the tenth anniversary of the sisterhood and the good folks in Independence were trying to do their part.
A group of about 50 veterans showed up at a council meeting to protest the change and, to read the Times account of it (May 3, 1988), the debate centered on whether Harry Truman was rolling over in his grave for or against the change.
"I believe Harry Truman would turn over in his grave if he knew something like this was going on behind his back," said former VFW Post 1000 Commander Buck Stodtman, mixing a sweet metaphor against the change.
The Times apparently couldn't reach the former president for comment. Suffice it to say, the forces of love and world harmony won out over xenophobia, and Higashimurayama is still in the family.
Most of the street name changes in Kansas City's history have been for the benefit of mail carriers and street car conductors. East-west streets were changed to numbers in 1869, which resulted in the loss of many feminine street names: Emily (6th street), Gertrude (17th), Catherine (18th), Amelia (l9th) and Adeline (20th), among others, were banished in one fell bureaucratic swoop, their long hair whipping in the wind.
In 1910, the Post Office, in a fit of excessive practicality, asked that all street names in Kansas City be changed to numbers. City Hall ignored the Post Office until the issue went away.
As the city continued to grow through annexation and other kinds of expansion, street names had to be changed. Many streets in town have had several names. 11th Street, for instance, was first called Chestnut east of Main. West of Main, it was Chouteau. Main Street used to be Eleanore. Grand used to be Market Street. Walnut Street, named for a walnut grove which stood at its north end, has always been Walnut.
A re-survey in 1931 eliminated many duplications in Street names, but was only a warm-up for the nomenclatural lalapolooza the city pulled of in 1947. As part of the Ten Year plan, 149 street names were changed overnight. City Hall explained that this was being done to avoid confusion.
Many streets which had names before became numbered terraces. Hence such names as Loma Linda Road, Bel Airy Place, Reservoir Place and Steptoe Street were gone, taking their music and rhythm with them.
The City Planning Department's escapades continued north of the river in the 1950s, but not without incident. The same system was adopted as south of the river: east-west streets numbered, with eight streets to a mile. A problem cropped up in 1951 when a two-block stretch of pavement was named Crane street because it fell between 45th Terrace and 46th Street. L.D. Klein, who lived at 608 Crane, took exception. The name didn't mean a thing to him. As it turns out, it didn't mean much to anyone else.
As an unnamed Kansas City Star reporter explained (Feb. 18, l95l): "Crane is a small town in Stone County down on the Arkansas line. The city employee that chose the name never lived there, has no friends or relatives there and no love for the place. It was just a short name so he put it on the city map."
So what's in a name? Plenty, if it's where you live.
___
Postscript: A companion to this column dealt with Petticoat Lane more extensively and elicited my only written response. I quoted from local history writer Mrs. Sam Ray, who wrote for the Star for many years, and a week or so later got a letter from some Poindexter there asking me not to quote from the late Mrs. Ray in the future, as her heirs found some of the advertising in the View unseemly. Massage parlor ads positively give some folks the vapors.
Concerted efforts on my part to find something else of Mrs. R's to incorporate ended in sad defeat.
No comments:
Post a Comment