Everything's up to date in Kansas City
They gone about as fer as they can go
They went an' built a skyscraper seven stories high
About as high as a buildin' orta grow!
At least that's what Will Parker said about Kansas City in the musical Oklahoma.f
While in Kansas City for a conference, I wandered over (e.g. hiked 8 miles that night) from my hotel on the far north side of town to as far south as the World War I museum. Of course that included a stop by Union Station which was, for all intents and purposes, completely empty on that week night. It was far too kind for the operators there to empty the place for me and my camera to enjoy.
Wikipedia says that the height of activity (approx 670,000 passengers) at Union Station occurred in 1945 at the end of World War II. After that, it was a steady decline until closure in 1985. It was almost demolished several times until a public/private partnership found means to save the station in 1996.
Here are a few of my favorite images of my private, self-guided tour of the place.
One of the more interesting things about this curvy, wide-angle image is the lighting. Under most circumstances you'd never see such balanced lighting inside a structure with many windows except maybe at noon. In this case, the light on the left (east) wall was directly from the sun shining in the right (west) windows. The light on the right (west) wall was reflecting off a large glass building outside and to the east of Union Station. Confused yet?
Hey that's me. Or two of me, actually. All in a long, single exposure, too.
