New York Life Building

20 W. 9th Street
McKim, Meade and White (1887-1890)
Gastinger Walker Harden (1996)

Designed by the highly influential New York firm of McKim, Meade and White, the Renaissance Revival style New York Life Building was commissioned by the New York Life Insurance Company as one of their main business locations. Assisted locally by Van Brunt and Howe and Frederick E. Hill, the New York Life Building was recognized as a divergence from the ubiquitous Richardsonian Romanesque style of architecture that had defined much of the area’s commercial streetscape toward the last years of the preceding century.

It was considered Kansas City’s first skyscraper. Marking the south façade of this ranged brownstone ashlar, terra cotta and brick building is a bronze eagle designed in the studio of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts trained Louis Saint- Gaudens, one of the leading American sculptors of heroic, “new movement” realism. In 1996 UtiliCorp United rehabilitated the building. Gastinger Walker Harden, architects of the 1996 rehabilitation, received an award from the American Institute of Architects for their design.