page_title: United States Courthouse and Post Office (Kansas City, Missouri)
section_title: Building history
hierarchical_section_title: United States Courthouse and Post Office (Kansas City, Missouri) / Building history
caption_attribution_description: English: United States Court House and Post Office (1939), Kansas City (Jackson County, Missouri). National Archives, RG 121-BS, Box 54, Folder A, Print 1
context_page_description: The United States Courthouse and Post Office, also known as Federal Courts Building, is a historic courthouse and post office located at Kansas City in Jackson County, Missouri. It was formerly the courthouse of the United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri.
context_section_description: Acting as a point of departure during the great migration to the West, Kansas City experienced phenomenal urban growth and development during the early years of the twentieth century. By 1930, the city's increasing population warranted a new federal building to replace an existing post office and custom house. The 1930s New Deal programs, created to generate employment during the widespread economic downturn of the Great Depression, provided funding for construction of new federal buildings nationwide. Responding to Kansas City's need for a larger, more efficient building, the program funded a new U.S. Post Office and Courthouse in 1935. The building's construction, from 1938 to 1939, symbolized the ideals of the progressive public works projects. As one of the New Deal's last major construction projects of the 1930s, the U.S. Post Office and Courthouse provided modern space to accommodate the burgeoning presence of the federal government in Kansas City.
  The building's architectural design was produced by the prominent local architecture firm Wight and Wight, whose distinguished civic work includes the Jackson County Courthouse (1934), City Hall (1937), and the Municipal Courts Building (1938). These projects, including the U.S. Post Office and Courthouse, represent Wight and Wight's shift from the Classical Revival, which previously dominated federal architecture, toward the Moderne movement that was beginning to emerge nationwide during the 1930s. The Courthouse's abstracted classicism with Art Deco references embodies this stylistic transition.
  In 1952, the building received national attention when Thurgood Marshall represented the plaintiff of the Swope Park Swimming Pool desegregation case. As the first major desegregation case in Kansas City, the deliberations stirred the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement.
  Plans have been made to renovate the entire building to accommodate new, nonfederal tenants as part of an upcoming outlease program. The U.S. Post Office and Courthouse was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003.
caption: U.S. Courthouse and Post Office
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