This temple on Linwood Boulevard helped bring down KC’s Pendergast machine

This house of worship made quite a statement when it opened in 1908 on Linwood Boulevard one block east of the Paseo.

The Greek Revival design, marked by massive columns, signaled just how much the congregation B’nai Jehudah had grown since its earliest days in a small wooden synagogue downtown.

Large stained glass windows and elegant furnishings added to the new building’s grandeur.

But a movement born inside it changed Kansas City history.

in 1932, Rabbi Samuel Mayerberg became the first public official to call out the misdeeds of the powerful Pendergast political machine.

And Rabbi Mayerberg kept speaking out — despite death threats, a heated argument with mobster Johnny Lazia, even an attempted assassination on a city street.

A few years later, Tom Pendergast went to prison and a wave of civic reforms (many advocated by Mayerberg) followed.

After WWII, the city’s Jewish population began shifting further and further southward. In 1967, B’nai Jehudah moved into a new, considerably more modern facility at Rockhill Road and 69th Street.

Today, the old temple’s exterior looks much the same as it did in 1908. But the name above the pillars has changed to the Robert Mohart Multipurpose Center, a city-owned hub for social service programs and community events.

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