Pressure Washing
Kansas City
MO

He charged 25 cents a slab, wrapped it in newspaper, and inadvertently created what the world now knows as Kansas City barbecue. Perry's stand later moved to 17th and Lydia, then to 19th and Highland in the 18th & Vine neighborhood. Today there are more than 100 BBQ restaurants in the metro, July 3 is Henry Perry Day in Kansas City, and Perry sits at the top of the barbecue family tree that runs through Arthur Bryant's, Gates, and every pitmaster who followed.

That's the kind of city this is — one where the founder of an entire American food genre is just one entry in a long list. Kansas City is the largest city in Missouri by both population and area, with 508,090 residents at the 2020 census spread across 318 square miles in Jackson, Clay, Platte, and Cass counties. The city started as a port at the confluence of the Missouri and Kansas rivers in the 1830s. The Town of Kansas was incorporated June 1, 1850, reincorporated as the City of Kansas in 1853, and finally renamed Kansas City in 1889.

Westport — settled in the 1830s by the McCoy family as an outfitting point for travelers heading west on the Santa Fe, California, and Oregon Trails — was annexed on December 2, 1897. Kelly's Westport Inn is still standing there as the oldest surviving building in the city, built in 1851 as the Ewing Brothers store. The Hannibal Bridge in 1869, designed by engineer Octave Chanute, opened the floodgates: railroad freight, stockyards, meatpacking, and Pendergast-era political clout all built on top of each other. The metro now has 2.25 million people straddling the state line.

Kansas City is also the City of Fountains, with more than 200 registered fountains — second only to Rome. The nickname became official in 1992, but the work to keep the fountains running started in 1973 when Hallmark executive Harold Rice and his wife Peggy came home from a trip to Rome and founded the City of Fountains Foundation. Every April, all 48 publicly operated fountains are switched on for Fountain Day.

The Country Club Plaza opened in 1923 — the first planned outdoor shopping center in the country designed for cars. J.C. Nichols planned it in 1922, Edward Buehler Delk designed the buildings in Spanish Baroque Revival style modeled after Seville, and 15 blocks of towers, tile roofs, and 30-plus fountains followed. The Plaza Lights tradition started in 1925 and still draws crowds on Thanksgiving night.

Loose Park sits just south of the Plaza at 51st and Wornall. Its 75 acres were the main battleground of the Battle of Westport in October 1864 — the largest Civil War battle west of the Mississippi. Ella Loose bought the land in 1926 from the Hugh Ward estate and donated it to the city in honor of her husband Jacob, founder of the Loose-Wiles Biscuit Company. The Laura Conyers Smith Municipal Rose Garden inside the park is 1.5 acres with about 3,000 roses across 130 varieties, established in 1931.

Other landmarks: Union Station from 1914, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art with its iconic shuttlecocks, Moshe Safdie's Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, and Arrowhead and Kauffman stadiums sharing the Truman Sports Complex.

The neighborhoods are a patchwork. Hyde Park has Victorians and Queen Annes from the 1880s and '90s between Gillham and Troost. Brookside is bungalows and Tudors along the Trolley Track Trail. Crestwood, between the Plaza and Brookside, has curving drives and brick everything. Westport mixes 1800s buildings with modern entertainment. The West Bottoms is vintage stores and First Fridays. The River Market is the 150-year-old riverfront with the city's biggest farmers market. The Crossroads Arts District has the galleries. 18th & Vine is where Charlie Parker and Count Basie made their names — and where Perry's old neighborhood became the heart of Kansas City jazz. The Northland stretches north of the Missouri River into Clay and Platte counties.

With this much variety in architecture, age, and material, Kansas City keeps every pressure-washing crew busy.