The Waltower Building

While somewhat nondescript by today’s standards, the construction of the 12-story Waltower Building in 1929, built on the plot where the previous Ricksecker Building had just been razed, helped signal a significant era in the Kansas City skyline: we ranked eighth in the country for number of 10-story-high buildings. Among its first tenants were insurance companies, accounting and investment firms. The Waltower’s skyward optimism would be quickly crushed by the stock market crash that came later that year. The Waltower struggled to retain occupants during the Great Depression until a St. Louis-based company, Confero Paint Company, bought he building and within the same year gained full occupancy from local broadcasting companies, law firms and Mid-Continent Airline. Ownership of the building changed multiple times in the following decades. Luckily, the exterior remained largely unchanged, and the Gothic Revival design of architect Albert C. Wiser continues to be a stately—if relatively shorter—piece of the Kansas City skyline today.  In 2005, it was converted into 53 luxury residential lofts.