Emery, Bird, Thayer Dry Goods Company


Emery, Bird and Thayer Building
Formerly listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Emery, Bird, Thayer Dry Goods Company
Location	1016--1018 Grand Ave., Kansas City, Missouri
Area	0.8 acres (0.32 ha)
Built	1889
Architectural style	Other, Free Romanesque
NRHP Reference #	72001561^[1]
Removed from NRHP	January 1, 1999

Emery, Bird, Thayer & Company was a department store in Downtown Kansas City that traced its history nearly to the city's origins as Westport Landing.

The store, known as EBT, closed in 1968, and its building, which was on the National Register of Historic Places, was torn down in 1971.

The store was started by Kersey Coates and William Gillis in the 1860s in the then Town of Kansas at the corner of Missouri Avenue and Main Street. Although initially outfitting travelers on the Oregon Trail and Santa Fe Trail, it soon became more upscale. It moved to a new three-story building at Seventh and Main.

The original Coates and Gillis store became Coates and Bullene when it merged with a store operated by Thomas B. Bullene. It then became the Bullene, Moore and Emery department store. The store assumed its final name in the 1890s from the investors W. E. Emery, Joseph Taylor Bird. Sr. and William B. Thayer.

In the 1890s it opened a new building occupying a full block along East 11th Street from Walnut to Grand, designed by the architectural firm of Van Brunt & Howe. It soon became the prime attraction on the city's main retail thoroughfare, popularly known as "Petticoat Lane," and became famed for its Tea Room.

Although the store attempted to expand, opening a branch on the Country Club Plaza in 1925 (enlarged in 1963) and purchasing the Bundschu store on the courthouse square in Independence, it could not keep pace with changing retail fashions and settlement patterns, and in 1968 it closed, with the loss of 800 jobs.

A restaurant called EBT, at 103d Street and State Line Road near I-435, currently houses memorabilia from the store. The firm's warehouse at 16th and Walnut has been converted into residential lofts. During the renovation, lettering on the side of the warehouse reading "Emery Bird Thayer Warehouse" was repainted.

References

↑ National Park Service (2010-07-09). "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service.

External links

U.S. National Register of Historic Places

Topics	Architectural style categories Contributing property Historic district History of the National Register of Historic Places Keeper of the Register National Park Service Property types

Lists by states	Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming

Lists by insular areas	American Samoa Guam Minor Outlying Islands Northern Mariana Islands Puerto Rico Virgin Islands

Lists by associated states	Federated States of Micronesia Marshall Islands Palau

Other areas	District of Columbia Morocco

Portal WikiProject

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 7/1/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.