909 Walnut Apartments

The 909 Walnut Apartments is an Art-deco skyscraper designed by Hoit, Price & Barnes, and built between 1930 and 1931, for a reported $2.85 million dollars, in Kansas City, MO.

909 Walnut Apartments is not the only name you might know this building by though. It is common for companies to want to attach their names to iconic buildings when they move in, or for the general public to come up with nicknames, and this one is no exception. The building has changed names several times over the years, and is also known as:

• Fidelity National Bank & Trust Building between 1931 and 1933.
• Federal Office Building between 1946 and 1995.
• 911 Walnut between 1995 and 2001.
• 909 Walnut from 2001 until this day.

Its precise street address is 909 Walnut, Kansas City, MO. You can also find it on the map here.

The 909 Walnut Apartments is a structure of significant importance both for the city of Kansas City and the United States as a nation. The building embodies the distinctive characteristic features of the time in which it was built and the Art Deco style. Because of that, the 909 Walnut Apartments was officially included in the National Register of Historic Places on July 4^th 1997.

The building underwent a major restoration between 2000 and 2005.

Hoit, Price & Barnes was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design.

That being said, architecture is a complex discipline involving many professionals from different fields, without whom this building would have not been possible. We will surely be leaving out a lot of names here, but here is a list of the people we do know also played their part in making the 909 Walnut Apartments a reality:

• Swenson Construction Company as the Main Contractor
• Fidelity National Bank & Trust as the Main Developer

The 909 Walnut Apartments can be categorized as an Art-deco building.

The 909 Walnut Apartments was completed in 1931, right when the Art Deco movement was at its peak, so it kind of went with the trend at that time.

The 909 Walnut Apartments uses a frame structure made of steel columns and concrete slabs.

A frame structure uses a combination of beams and columns to sustain the building's weight. The walls in this case are non-load bearing, which allows for more flexibility when distributing the interior spaces.

The facade is a non-load bearing masonry facade. This type of facade became common during the period when buildings, especially taller ones, transitioned from load-bearing wall systems to frame structures.

Frame structures allowed facades to be independent from the building's frame, enabling the use of lighter materials and larger openings. However, it took some time for architects to incorporate these new posibilities into their designs, and so for a while they simply replicated the look and feel fo buildings people where used to seeing.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features a four-story limestone base with three feet of granite veneer and fluted pilasters. As we climb the building, on the 26th and 31st floors, a series of setbacks occur. The facade also features some terra cotta elements.

Metal sash windows create a vertical effect highlighted with terracotta trim..

Other materials found at the 909 Walnut Apartments include, cast metal , found in ornate grills flanking the stairs at the landing, and marble, used to cover the columns in public spaces and to create geometric patterns on floors. In the lobby, the walls are clad with a light-colored marble brought from Tennessee..