Hare & Hare: Early Planners of Johnson County
Current Johnson County residents deal with planning boards, urban planners, and landscape architects whenever they want to change the county landscape. It wasn’t always that way.
At the turn of the twentieth century, Johnson County was a very rural place. In fact, its image in both Kansas and Missouri — if residents outside the county thought of it at all — was as “a place where farmers lived.” Olathe had been a hotbed of Granger and Populist politics in the 1890s. The Grange store in downtown Olathe was reputed to be the largest cooperatively owned retail store in the United States.
Around 1908, this rural image began to change. William Strang plotted the route for his Missouri-Kansas interurban line and laid out building lots in what he called “Overland Park.” In the extreme northeast corner of the county, adjacent to areas about to be annexed into Kansas City, Missouri, J.C. Nichols bought land from the Kirk Armour estate. This later development came to be called “Mission Hills” by 1913 when lots were ready for sale.
The Nichols development, much more than Strang’s less successful efforts, changed the image of living in Johnson County, forever. When Mission Hills lots were offered to the public, they surrounded a country club golf course intended to convey affluence. Nichols decided that the only way to get away from the idea that Johnson County was a place for farmers was to attract precisely the opposite type of resident. He intended Mission Hills as an upscale residential enclave borrowing its exclusivity from adjacent sections Nichols developed in Kansas City, Missouri.
The Shaping of Mission Hills
The real story in all of this was the style of planning which shaped Mission Hills. In his earliest days, J.C. Nichols borrowed planning ideas from a colleague working for the Hugh Ward estate in Kansas City. George Kessler was much better known than J.C. Nichols at that time. His ideas for city planning had helped shape the Kansas City Park and Boulevard system since 1893. Working with Vassie James Ward, the deceased attorney’s widow, Kessler laid out Ward Parkway and the Sunset Hill section which joined Johnson County at the point where Brush Creek crossed the State Line.
It would have been natural for Kessler to be the landscape designer for Mission Hills. Doutbless, Nichols talked with him about it. However, Kessler moved to St. Louis in 1909 to look after a growing practice left leaderless by the departure of a key employee. Nichols looked for someone near at hand to guide the further development of Mission Hills.
J.C. Nichols Enlists Hare & Hare
In 1910, Herbert Hare returned to Kansas City after taking a year-and-a-half of coursework in the newly organized Landscape Architecture curriculum conducted by Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. at Harvard University. Hare grew up in Kansas City assisting his father Sid Hare in designing the Forest Hills Cemetery and in laying out the grounds of many private patrons in and around Kansas City. The younger Hare graduated from Manual High School, read widely under the direction of his hugely curious father, and took 18 months of graduate courses at Harvard. He never actually completed a college degree of any kind.
The connection forged with Olmsted at Harvard was key to his future work. All evidence in the Kessler, Hare, and Nichols papers points to Olmsted as the referral party that brought Nichols and Hare together in 1912. It is ironic that Kessler, who knew the elder Hare well from days when they worked on the Boulevard and Park effort, does not appear to have referred either Sid or Herbert Hare to Nichols as landscape designers. Rather, Nichols broadened his national contacts greatly in 1912, connecting with a former Kansas Citian working in Baltimore land development.
Edward Bouton had been developing the Roland Park subdivisions on the northern boundary of Baltimore since 1891 when he had left his native Kansas City to take the job. George Kessler planned the initial section of Roland Park when both he and Bouton worked for the Kansas City investment firm of Jarvis & Conklin. In 1912, Bouton and Nichols met in Baltimore. Bouton appears to have suggested that Nichols contact the Olmsted firm for advice on the layout of Mission Hills.
In a peculiar turn of events, Olmsted suggested to Nichols that he had a first-rate young landscape architect right there in Kansas City — Herbert Hare. The two met; Hare recorded in his diary that he hoped it would be a profitable relationship. Hare immediately took charge of designing Hempstead Gardens [south of 59th Street and east of Ward Parkway] in Kansas City. He also jumped into the planning of Mission Hills.
Innovative Urban Design
In Mission Hills, Hare had the opportunity to plan large irregular lots and blocks for sale to affluent purchasers. In doing so, he pioneered what planners have called the “super block” form which gained popular appeal in the late 1920s at a subdivision called Radburn, near Fairlawn, New Jersey. In most histories of urban planning, the New Jersey effort is usually cited as the pioneer of what is today the standard in suburban, residential land planning — the construction of larger blocks with fewer streets cutting through them.
There are several ironies in all of this. The first is that Herbert Hare did not ever get any national recognition for creating this comparatively new urban design. The second irony is that the designer of Radburn, Henry Wright, was the employee who had left George Kessler’s firm in St. Louis in 1909, creating the need for Kessler to relocate there. Kessler’s removal allowed Hare to enter the scene in Kansas City with Nichols in 1912. To top it all off, the real originator of the “super block” scheme was Kessler himself in the first plat of Roland Park near Baltimore in 1891-92. The plan was expanded after the Olmsted firm took over land planning for Roland Park in 1896.
If all this seems too neat or too complicated, suffice it to say that one of the basic planning standards utilized across the United States in the 1990s has deep Kansas City and Johnson County roots. The idea is that in residential subdivisions, streets should conform to the “lay of the land” and that “blocks” formed by those streets do not have to conform to any particular standard size. In fact, as most current developers will attest, the fewer the number of streets, the lower the development cost and the fewer cars to disrupt residential peace and quiet.
The Planning of Mission Hills and Its Effect on Johnson County
As the first planned community in Johnson County, the planning concepts apparent in Mission Hills deserve a closer examination. Much of the effect desired by the Nichols Company and delivered by Herbert Hare centered on the creation of a rural village pattern. For example, sidewalks were largely omitted. Streets proved to be narrow along winding routes that followed the rough contours of the land. Houses were generally set back significant distances from the streets.
Beautification was a major goal. The site contained major tree growth throughout on the hillsides and in the ravines cut by Brush Creek and its tiny tributaries. This called for leaving as many trees intact as possible. Additionally, Nichols sought to add value to the district by placing art objects — both large and small — at various intersections and “beauty spots.” Probably the best known of these is the Verona Columns located in the heart of the original section north of 63rd Street. The company exercised control of architectural styles by requiring the approval of all house plans by the company architect (usually someone delegated to the task by chief architect Edward Tanner). The effect was usually an emphasis on variations of traditional English styles. This pattern was encouraged by the choice of street names such as “Overhill Road” and “Drury Lane.”
A second pattern of street naming emerged in the newer section of Mission Hills, the Indian Hills subdivision. There the practice of using names of Indian tribes or terms with Indian connotations became the norm. Partly because Mission Hills and Indian Hills were among the earlier subdivisions in the northern corner of the county, many of these street names continue on north-south roadways as far as southern Leawood.
Later subdivisions in Johnson County emphasized winding narrow streets, few sidewalks, frequent long setbacks for houses, abundant marking of entrances and intersections with outdoor art, and street names reflecting the curious mixture of English and Indian examples. All of these patterns stem from the earliest planning done by Herbert Hare and J.C. Nichols for Mission Hills.
This is not to say that all Johnson County is an extension of Mission Hills. Indeed, most of the county contains much more affordable housing and somewhat less exclusive features than did this first effort at creating a planned residential community in 1913. Nonetheless, the influences of Mission Hills on the rest of the county, and, therefore, the influence of urban planner Herbert Hare, is quite important to recognize in its proper perspective.
The key to this influence is the unfolding of Mission Hills in the land development profession. While Wright’s “Radburn Plan” is usually cited in textbooks, the fact remains that it was not a profitable subdivision. Land developers have an understandable tendency to shy away from examples which did not turn a profit. Mission Hills, on the other hand, was quite profitable for Nichols. He bought the land for less than he paid for any other land he ever developed (less than $400 per acre) and sold it to create what is now one of the highest income communities in the United States with land values to prove it.
Sadly, for Herbert Hare, Mission Hills generally was attributed more to Nichols, the entrepreneur, than to Hare, the landscape architect. One looks in vain for references to his influence in the shaping of the residential landscape of Johnson County.
Nevertheless, Herbert Hare’s Mission Hills design creativity was well-recognized by Nichols himself. In his offices on the Country Club Plaza, J.C. Nichols assembled a group of pictures of men who had influenced him over the years. Present in places of honor, along with national and international figures, are Herbert Hare and George Kessler.
It is time for Johnson Countians to recognize that the key individual who created the most desirable landscape in the county was Kansas City native son Herbert Hare, working closely with Johnson County native son J.C. Nichols.
--ALBUM vol. 10, no. 2 (spring 1997)