Watch parts of one of Kansas City’s oldest buildings get demolished
The project to demolish one of one of the oldest buildings in Kansas City is underway.
Built in 1888, the Jeserich building on the corner of 31st and Main Streets in Kansas City was recently declared unsafe and is getting demolished. After standing for 137 years, it was the oldest building along KC’s downtown Main Street corridor.
The job, says, Chuck Cacioppo, Jr., president of Industrial Salvage & Wrecking Co., is “very difficult, very difficult.” The Jeserich building and the three buildings that once stood alongside it sit only feet from the corner streetcar stop, active since the Main Street extension opened on Oct. 24.
“This is something that has to be done with kid gloves. We’ve got to physically take it down brick-by-brick,” Cacioppo said recently. “It’s not going to be quick. I want it to be safe.”
The buildings’ previous owner, an LLC connected to the PriceMgmt Co., had sought to demolish it in 2022. But in 2022, urged on by preservationists and neighbors, the Kansas City Council took the highly unusual step of going against the owners’ wishes, and voted to offer the buildings limited protections by placing them on the Kansas City Register of Historic Places.
In September 2024, however, a new owner, Thirty-First and Main Properties, LLC, took possession. A principal partner in the company, Thomas Feyerabend, Jr., is a current owner of the neighboring Union Hill Animal Hospital, 3025 Main St., feet away from the historic corner.
Feyerabend said the company’s prime intention is to expand the animal hospital into a new and larger, 10,000-square-foot space, as part of a larger development.
In both written statements and interviews, Feyerabend has said that the company looked into the cost and feasibility of restoring the buildings, perhaps using the facades, in league with fresh development.
“Developer interest for restoration was not found,” the company wrote in a September press statement, “and the engineer assessments were disturbing, including meeting 19 of the 20 conditions for a dangerous building in the City’s code.”
Two of the structures, including the 1905 limestone Ward building, have already been demolished. Because the Jeserich building is in such precarious condition, and close to the new streetcar stop, special care will be needed to take it down, working brick-by-brick in the building’s interior before it can be razed.
How that KC corner looked before
