Iconic Nazarene globe awaits a new home

For more than 50 years, it was a landmark spinning high above the traffic on East Meyer Boulevard and The Paseo.

But now that the Church of the Nazarene World Headquarters has moved to Lenexa and the 13-acre campus is being made into a charter school, some may wonder: What has become of the giant globe?

Not to worry, says Barb Schulte, communications manager for the Kauffman Foundation. The Kansas City icon is safely in storage while the foundation looks around for a new home for it.

The 5,000-pound globe became the foundation’s property after it bought the former Nazarene campus at 6401 The Paseo last year. The Nazarenes moved to Lenexa in 2008.

The globe, 10 feet in diameter and standing 22 feet high on its motorized base, was installed atop the Nazarene building in June 1956, two years after the building was erected, church officials say. It was meant to symbolize the church’s worldwide ministry in 159 countries.

Judy Veigl, administrative director for the church, fondly remembers the noises that the globe made as it creaked through its rotations.

“We used to call it mooing,” she said.

On the last day before moving, the church conducted a ceremony that included the stopping of the globe.

“It was an emotional time for us,” Veigl said.

But church officials did not take the globe along on their move because it was a fixture of the building and had to remain for the sale.

Instead, they designed their new headquarters with an inflated replica of the globe in the visitor center. By the time the Kauffman Foundation bought the property and offered to let the church have the globe, there was no place for it.

The Kauffman Foundation is not actively looking for a buyer, but would be open to the idea of giving it to someone who could give it a new home, optimally in the 63rd Street corridor.

“We will not sell it, as long as someone can come pick it up,” Schulte said.