their educational reach.
“These records belong to the people of the United States and we are the record keepers,” said Diana Duff, director of archival operations. “We take care of it and make sure it is here for you, and provide it for you. Because it does no good behind closed doors.”
The new location will include three permanent and free exhibit halls. A highlight of the May 22 opening will be a visiting appearance of the original Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which led to “Bleeding Kansas” and the border war with Missouri.
The archives will occupy about 39,000 square feet of an old structure at 400 W. Pershing Road that once housed the Adams Express Co. freight building next to Union Station. In fact, it was designed by Jarvis Hunt, the same architect who did the depot. In addition, 5,000 square feet of new space for the archives has been built adjacent to the old building. The project included climate controls for temperature, humidity and atmospheric gases.
About half of the records that were at the Bannister location are being transferred to storage in Lenexa or Lee’s Summit. The rest, considered the most likely to interest researchers and the public, are being moved downtown. It is not a casual operation.
“It has all been inventoried down to the gnat’s eyebrow,” said Regional Administrator Reed Whitaker. “It has been shrink-wrapped or otherwise encapsulated, put on pallets and moved very gingerly.”
The Central Plains archives includes federal agency records from Missouri, Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska as well as some documents from Minnesota and the Dakotas. More than a quarter of the 3,500 to 4,000 requests for information each year are for naturalization records, said Archives & Outreach Specialist Kimberlee Ried. In them family-tree climbers can find country of origin, port of entry and other details about their ancestors.
The second most requested, also sought by genealogists, are prison records, which include lists of correspondence sent and received by inmates along with names, dates and addresses.
Scholars are drawn to the archives for historic federal court records, steamboat registrations and other documents. One record pulled by Ried at random this week from an acid-free container was the Selective Service card for a Joseph Stout Franklin of Nebraska. He registered for service in World War II on April 25, 1942.
The Central Plains Region has had education and outreach programs for years, helping put together traveling exhibits that last year were seen by more than 60,000 people across the region.
But officials are looking forward to new opportunities, including 5,000 square feet of exhibit space in three galleries. All will be free to the public. One will be a welcoming center telling the story of the National Archives with an opportunity to take rubbings of the signatures of famous historical figures.
Another gallery will focus on regional history, beginning with the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Future plans call for an exhibit from the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.
The upcoming 150th anniversary of the Civil War might include the original Order No. 11, which forced people in Jackson and nearby counties from their homes if they could not prove loyalty to the Union.
The third and largest gallery will open with an exhibit focusing on “big documents, big ideas, big personalities and big events from our region.” It will mark the 75th anniversary of the National Archives. An exhibit scheduled for next year will come from the National Holocaust Museum.
The archives’ new headquarters in Kansas City also will include modern research rooms and facilities for teleconferencing with classrooms and forums elsewhere.
The prominent location is expected to draw tourists as well as locals to the archives and to complement nearby cultural assets such as Union Station and the National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial. The new Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, also nearby, has its own currency museum.
“We’re reaching critical mass,” said Eli Paul, vice president of museum programs at Liberty Memorial. “This is quite a complex that has sprung up around here.”
The National Archives and the Liberty Memorial have had an agreement for about five years that has led to collaboration on film programs and events surrounding Veterans Day. The new proximity will help the two entities work even more closely to assist scholars and to plan for the upcoming centennial observance of World War I. The archives collection includes “enemy alien” registrations of people of German ancestry during the war as well as food production records from the heartland to supply the troops.
And next door is the train station through which thousands of soldiers shipped out and returned home from that war.
“We are so fortunate to have this regional asset now in our neighborhood,” said Union Station CEO George Guastello. “It fits our core mission of history and science, transportation and education. There will be a very close symbiotic relationship.”
The National Archives public opening will coincide with Memorial Day weekend, the annual Kansas City Symphony concert at Union Station and the opening of the station’s soon-to-be announced summer attraction.
The archives move was a $10 million project of the General Services Administration and involves a 39-year lease with Union Station. The archives bookstore will be operated by The Kansas City Star.
