This account was prepared by the Public Relations Department of the J.C. Nichols Company in the late 1960s. It has been edited for length and clarity. To learn more about J.C. Nichols impact on the Kansas City metro area, see Johnson County Library’s Dividing Lines tour and Johnson County Museum’s Digital Redlined exhibit, opening May 2024.
The community of Prairie Village is the result of residential and shopping center developments by J.C. Nichols Company, pioneer Realtor and Developer. The Nichols Company has been nationally recognized for its Country Club District residential developments which began in Missouri in 1908 and which expanded across the state line into Johnson County, Kansas, as early as 1912. This marked the start of Mission Hills and the beginning of a vast residential expansion in Johnson County.
The major area of Prairie Village is in eight residential subdivisions and two business districts developed by J.C. Nichols Company over a 20 year span. The name “Prairie Village” was selected by the Nichols Company for the first grouping of homes and over the years, this name has become the identification for the whole. The eight residential areas are listed below along with the year development began:
Prairie Village, 1941
Prairie Hills, 1950
Indian Fields, 1951
Prairie Ridge, 1952
Prairie Fields, 1953
Prairie Fields-South, 1955
Corinth Hills, 1955
Kenilworth, 1961
The major business center developments are the Prairie Village Shopping Center, started in 1947, and Corinth Square Shopping Center, which began in 1955. Later, in 1963, the Kenilworth Shops, northwest corner 95th and Mission Road, were built. These residential and business center developments within the city limits of Prairie Village have been augmented by four large apartment projects totaling 426 apartments and townhouses.
Prairie Village began in 1941. The Nichols Company had acquired considerable acreage along both sides of Mission Road and Tomahawk Road. The property was to provide expansion for the Country Club District areas of Indian Hills and Sagamore Hills, which were extending west from State Line and along Tomahawk Road.
The Indian Hills Country Club was already in operation. Years earlier, the property (a former flying field), had been purchased by the Nichols Company and an 18-hole golf course and the original club house constructed by the firm. It was intended for the Community Golf Club, an organization formed by the Nichols Company as a recreational facility for Country Club District residents. When the club moved from an earlier location to this property, the name was changed to Indian Hills Golf and Country Club. For many years, the Nichols Company continued the ownership and upkeep of the club. It was leased to the membership until such time as the members were able to take it over themselves in the late 1930s.
Mission Road was a narrow black-top roadway and the main north-south artery. 67th Street extended west as a dirt and gravel road. The Prairie School was at the northwest corner of 67th Street and Mission Road. The Prairie School District #44 had been in existence for many years and this inspired the Nichols Company to name the new subdivision “Prairie Village.”
The Prairie School District #44 was created in 1865 with the first school house at 63rd Street and Mission Road. This one room building, because of structural deficiencies, leaned towards the north and was nicknamed, “The little crooked schoolhouse.” In 1874, one acre of ground was obtained at the northwest corner of 67th and Mission Road and a new one room building was built at that location.
All of the property west of Mission Road was farmland. It was spotted here and there with the usual farm improvements and a hog lot covered a large area west of today’s intersection of 71st Street and Tomahawk Road.
The first home development in Prairie Village was on an 80-acre tract purchased from Annie and Maggie Lewis and their brother, William T. Lewis. Their father was the grandson of Meriwether Lewis of the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1803-6. The ground extended from Mission Road west to Roe Boulevard and between 67th and just south of 69th Streets. The Lewis family obtained the property by patent from the State of Kansas in February 1881.
The first platting of Prairie Village extended between 67th and 69th Streets from Mission Road to Delmar and the first 10 homes were constructed on 69th Street just west of Mission Road. The first Prairie Village home owner was Charles B. Briggs, who purchased the home located at 3913 West 69th Street in September 1941.
89 homes were completed in the area between Mission Road and Delmar and from 69th Street north to 67th Street. All construction work was stopped in 1942 because of World War II and the development of Prairie Village was dormant for four years.
The next 80 acres immediately adjacent south of the Lewis property had previously been purchased from four members of the Porter family; 16 acres from Elizabeth, 28 acres from Edgar, 26 acres from Harold, and 10 acres from Thomas Porter.
The 16 acres purchased from Elizabeth Porter is the area occupied today by the Prairie Village Shopping Center. This was the site of the Porter family home which was then occupied by Elizabeth and her brother, Edgar. This was her birthplace and a condition of the sale was that she retain occupancy of the home as long as she desired.
In 1946 after World War II, work was resumed in Prairie Village. Tomahawk Road was extended southwest from Mission Road. A service station was built at the southwest corner of Mission Road and Tomahawk Road but further development of the business center remained dormant because of the Porter home.
One year later, in 1947, Elizabeth and her brother, Edgar, elected to move to a new, modern home which the Nichols Company built and presented to them on the northern edge of the family property. this was on Prairie Lane, a few blocks west of Mission Road.
Construction on the shopping center began and the first building was completed and occupied in May 1948, by John Watkins and Sons Drugs. Today, this is the Prairie Village Drugs and this building is on the former site of the Porter family home.
Elizabeth Porter was residing in her Prairie Lane home at the time of her death in 1951. She lived to see the family’s vast farmlands criss-crossed with paved streets and sidewalks and change to a thriving and active residential and business community.
During the next decade after development was resumed, the community making up today’s City of Prairie Village expanded in almost every direction and mushroomed so rapidly that for several years it was the fastest growing area in Johnson County. There were few professional homebuilders following World War II and the Nichols Company maintained a large construction staff to meet the big demand for Prairie Village homes. For nearly five years in the early 1950s, the Company’s home construction department was delivering an average of one completed home per day. In later years, as more professional homebuilders became active, this department was discontinued. The Nichols Company no longer builds home for the market older than an occasional custom-designed residence.
In 1949, when more than 1,000 homes were finished and occupied in Prairie Village and the main business district had become established, the National Association of Home Builders honored the Nichols Company by designating Prairie Village as “the best-planned community in America.”
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