Frank Lloyd Wright church near KC’s Country Club Plaza gets $160K repair grant
When famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed what is now the modern, white Community Christian Church just east of Kansas City’s County Club Plaza, he reportedly declared it to be fireproof, earthquake proof and vermin proof.
Waterproof, not so much.
Dedicated on Jan. 4,1942, the building, placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2020, has so felt the ravages of 83 years of weather that on Tuesday, Wright on Main — the nonprofit formed to maintain the building — was awarded a $160,000 grant to help with repairs. They include cracks along the building’s gunite exterior, a type of sprayed concrete, and separation and cracking around its windows.
“This is jump-starting a major push for preservation,” said Jan Marcason, a former member of the Kansas City Council, and Wright on Main president. “Without a concerted preservation strategy we would be facing the potential loss of an important piece of our American architectural heritage and this extraordinary community asset.”
Awarded by the National Fund for Sacred Places, the $160,000 is a matching grant, meaning that Wright on Main is responsible for raising an additional $160,000 to bring $320,000 of repairs to the project. Working in collaboration of the National Trust for Historic Places, the National Fund for Sacred Places each year provides matching grants of between $50,000 and $500,000 to congregations undertaking significant capital campaigns.
Wright, who was born in Wisconsin in 1867, died at age 91 in 1959 as one of the world’s most famous architects, having designed more than 1,000 buildings. About 380 Wright structures still stand in the United States, according to the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy.
The Community Christian Church is one of three Wright-designed buildings in Kansas City, which also includes the Frank Bott House at 3640 N. Briarcliff Road and the Sondern-Adler house at 3600 Belleview Ave. In 2019, the Sondern-Adler home was purchased for just over $1 million by Omaha attorney George Martin.
In planning the Community Christian Church, then known as the Community church at 4601 Main St, Wright originally envisioned the beacons of light shooting toward the heavens, now known as the “Steeple of Light,” from inside the building. That feature, however, was beyond the technology of the era.
More than 50 years passed before Kansas City artist and sculptor Dale Eldred in 1990 devised a workable design. Eldred died, tragically, inside his West Bottoms studio during the 1993 flood. Carrying on his work, his spouse Roberta Lord saw the project through. The beams first illuminated the night sky in December 1994.
The beacons lasted until they went dark in the fall of 2019, due to deferred maintenance. They were relit in May 2021 following an $80,000 fundraising campaign by Wright on Main and the church.
This story was originally published October 21, 2025 at 5:30 AM.
