Kansas City Livestock Exchange Building: Headquarters of the Stockyards

What was the Kansas City Livestock Exchange Building?

The Livestock Exchange Building was the headquarters of the Kansas City Stock Yards, which the building's own history page calls one of the nation's most important livestock markets, second only to Chicago. The building's history page says more than 200 commission firms, banks, telegraph offices and rail agents worked inside, handling the buying, selling and shipping of livestock, and that prices set in Kansas City influenced markets nationwide.

How big was the Kansas City stockyards trade?

The scale was large. According to the same history page, 2.6 million cattle and 2.3 million hogs moved through the yards in 1923. The yards sat in the West Bottoms, about 500 feet east of the Kansas state line, according to the state preservation document.

Mid-century changes weakened the integrated model. The page cites flooding, the rise of trucking and the move of meatpacking to rural areas as the causes. The Exchange was largely vacant by the 1970s, and the Kansas City Stockyards closed in 1991 after more than a century of operation.

Who designed and built the Exchange Building?

The Kansas City architects Wilder and Wight designed the building in Renaissance Revival style. A Missouri State Historic Preservation Office document says Swenson Construction Company was the builder, and describes a nine-story, E-plan structure 117 feet tall, clad in maroon pressed brick with Bedford stone on the first two floors and a terracotta cornice.

Inside, the document lists quarter-sawed oak finishes, white tile floors with a green Grecian key border, Tennessee marble in the lobby, six hydraulic elevators and an original count of 475 offices. Sources differ on the completion date and the floor area. The state document says 1910 and about 213,751 square feet, while the building's site says 1910 with 225,000 square feet, and a historical note in the same state document refers to the nine-story building being completed in 1909.

The Exchange before the 1910 building

The building's own timeline gives the later story, and the state document traces earlier buildings. The Kansas Stock Yards Company was formed in 1871 and put up a first exchange, a 24-foot-square frame structure, on the site. The yards were renamed the Kansas City Stock Yards in 1876, and a third exchange costing $35,000 followed near Sixteenth Street and the state line.

By 1895, according to the state document linked earlier, the exchange held 380 offices, and a quarantine yard began operating as a subsidiary. A modernization effort in the 1910s cost about $2.5 million and was largely done by 1918, with a four-story concrete hog house built in 1916.

From stockyards office to preserved landmark

A nomination to the National Register of Historic Places was prepared in 1983, and Preston Kerr bought the building that year with plans to renovate it, according to the state document. The building's current site says it is listed on the Register.

Extensive restoration began in the 1990s and kept features such as the grand staircases, tile and wood floors and historic details while adapting rooms for modern tenants. The building is now fully occupied, with nearly 200 tenants, including professionals, artists and entrepreneurs.

Visit and learn more

The building sits at 1600 Genessee Street in the West Bottoms. For more on the livestock markets that shaped the Midwest, see the agribusiness section on farm.FM, which also has a story about the Kansas City stockyards.