In a recent guidebook to Art Deco/Moderne architecture in the United States, author and pioneering preservationist Barbara Capitman begins her account of Kansas City’s rich trove of 1930s architecture by referring to the 1940s song “Kansas City” from the popular Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, Oklahoma! In the story, an Oklahoma cowboy returns home at the turn of the century after a trip to Kansas City with stunned appreciation for the level of sophisticated modern conveniences found in that town. Kansas City’s obsession with improving its civic identity goes back to the 1880s, when a period of economic prosperity ushered in the construction of a series of multistory brick and stone office blocks in its downtown core. The advent of the Great Depression slowed Kansas City’s growth, but federally funded New Deal construction projects, skillfully garnered by the City’s political boss, Tom Pendergast, gave the town three major Moderne civic structures: the Jackson County Courthouse, Kansas City Division (1934), the Municipal Auditorium (1935) and City Hall (1937).

Kansas City’s residential architecture employed traditional period revival styles during the 1930s, with one major exception. In 1935, the noted Kansas City architect, Edward W. Tanner (1895-1974) was commissioned to design a mansion for Walter Edwin Bixby, Sr., (1896-1972) on State Line Road, in the then undeveloped westernmost portion of Kansas City’s exclusive Country Club District. Bixby was a rising insurance executive and philanthropist who would eventually become president of the Kansas City Life Insurance Company in 1939. At Bixby’s insistence, Tanner’s design was a striking departure from his more traditional residential work. It incorporated European-inspired “International Style” Modernist design principles including a flat roof with an outdoor sun deck and curved low horizontal walls stuccoed white and featuring wide expanses of glass fenestration. Tanner’s unusual fan blade-shaped plan was centered around an open two-story stair hall with a basement rumpus room directly beneath. The grounds around the house were specially designed by the landscape firm Hare & Hare and featured native Missouri plantings. Upon its completion in 1937 the Bixby’s new home was described by the Kansas City Star as exemplifying modern residential design based on the Modernist conception of “form following function.”

For Tanner’s Bixby house, Kem Weber created interior designs for thirteen rooms between 1936 and 1937, including the two-story circular entrance hall, whose railings included uplit Steuben glass posts; the more formal ground floor living and dining rooms; the brightly colored linoleum-sheathed family breakfast room; a basement rumpus room; as well as family and guest bedrooms and a personal study for Bixby. Weber was most likely commissioned by Bixby to design the interiors because of his national prominence as a modern furniture and industrial designer. He was an active lecturer throughout the Midwest on modern design during the 1930s, and between 1935 and 1940 his furnishings were manufactured by seven different Grand Rapids, Michigan-based firms and sold to specialty stores, including the Robert Keith Furniture and Carpet Company of Kansas City, which executed many of Weber’s custom-designed pieces for the Bixby residence.

The Bixby House was Kansas City’s only major Streamline Moderne residence. In its 1939 review of the Bixby interiors the London-based International Studio praised Weber’s exploration of the full creative potential of the Moderne aesthetic through bold colors—Dubonnet (maroon), midnight blue, coral red—and such new materials as aluminum, glass block, linoleum, and masonite as well as richly veneered plywood and cork paneling. Weber used moveable and built-in furniture, combined with veneered wood paneling surrounds to manipulate the existing outline of Tanner’s rooms. Critics singled out Weber’s distinctive use of the curved line in his design for the built-in furnishings of the basement rumpus room and its drop ceiling with concealed overhead lighting. Weber’s manipulation of the existing architectural spaces is enhanced in his drawings by the technique of presenting solid walls as transparent and using lettering set at an angle reminiscent of motion picture credits. These artistic devices were deliberately employed by Weber in his drawings to allow the viewer a full view of the interior space, something not possible in the actual executed space. By blurring the work of architect and interior designer, Weber created a unity of structure through architecture and furniture as well as a futuristic visual appeal that was the hallmark of the Moderne.

With the exception of the railing in the circular stair hall and the curved sofa in the basement rumpus room, Kem Weber’s interiors for the Bixby House no longer survive. Walter Edwin Bixby, Sr., sold the house in 1949 and the furnishings were either disbursed to interested family members and friends or sold. Walter Edwin Bixby, Jr., however, never forgot Weber’s work and in the 1990s chose to outfit his private screening room in his Kansas City penthouse apartment with Weber designed Airline chairs. Recognizing the importance of Edward Tanner’s design, the house’s owners had it protected as a listed structure on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. Although Kem Weber’s Bixby House interiors no longer physically survive in Kansas City, his superb watercolor renderings and R. B. Churchill’s striking black-and-white photographs from the Weber archives in the University Art Museum’s Architecture and Design Collection are rich visual documents of a unique and rare residence in America’s heartland, one whose Streamline Moderne forms and materials optimistically pictured the future during a time of great social and economic uncertainty.

Image Credits:
Top Left: Garden Facade of W. E. Bixby, Sr., Residence, 1935-1937.
Photograph by Norman Hobart. Courtesy of Leon and Margaret Jacobs.
MIddle Right: Kem Weber. Elevation of Breakfast Room for W. E. Bixby, Sr., Residence, 1936-37
watercolor and graphite on board.
MIddle Left: Kem Weber. Elevation of Rumpus Room for W. E. Bixby, Sr., Residence, 1936-37
watercolor and graphite on board.
Bottom Left: Rumpus Room of W. E. Bixby, Sr., Residence, Kansas City.
Photograph by R. B. Churchill, 1937.

Note: Select thumbnail for larger image.

Kurt Helfrich
Curator, Architecture and Design Collection
University Art Museum, UCSB

The brochure upon which this web essay was based accompanied the University Art Museum exhibition, Designing the Moderne: Kem Weber’s Bixby House (November 29, 2000 – February 11, 2001). It was supported in part by funding from the Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara, Paul Gray, FAIA, Edward B. Cella, and Stephen Harby, Architect.

© 2001 The Regents of the University of California
University Art Museum, Santa Barbara, California, 93106-7130
All rights reserved. No portion of this brochure may be reproduced or used without the written permission of the University Art Museum, UCSB. The photographs and images reproduced in this web brochure are subject to copyright.

Unless otherwise noted, all images are from the Kem Weber archives in the Architecture and Design Collection, University Art Museum, UCSB. Gift of Erika Weber.
Photographers noted as known.