Sears, Roebuck and Company Warehouse Building (Park Lofts)

By the time Sears & Roebuck opened this nine-story warehouse in North Kansas City in 1913, the company had grown from a small mail-order business to one reaching $100 million in sales. By the 1960s, that total would reach $11 billion. City boosters in neighboring Kansas City, Kansas tried to convince Sears executives to build this facility in their city, but in the end, the company chose to build in the developing industrial city of North Kansas City which was located across the Missouri River and a few miles north of Kansas City, Missouri. Sears sold numerous large items, such as farming equipment, to rural locations throughout the West, and this North Kansas City warehouse served its needs well for many years. The presence of Sears helped anchor North Kansas City's industrial center, which developed quickly during the early 1910s. Demonstrating North Kansas City's transition to a mixture of industrial, retail, and residential areas, the former warehouse is now home to an apartment complex and surrounded by small parks and green spaces.

The Sears, Roebuck and Company Warehouse Building, constructed in 1912-1913 for the Chicago-based Sears, Roebuck and Company, served as an anchor for the North Kansas City central business and industrial district. Sears and Roebuck emerged in 1893 and grew into a catalog-driven (mail-order) juggernaut, eventually reaching $11 billion in sales by the 1960s. In 1913, when Sears chose to build in North Kansas City, the company had just reached $100 million on sales. Its arrival helped spur a commercial and industrial boom in North Kansas City, but Sears vacated the building in 1925 and moved across the river to Kansas City. 

Before residents populated North Kansas City, the suburban town already stood home to commercial and industrial buildings, lighted and paved streets, a waterworks system, and parks. The North Kansas City Development Company (NKCDC) produced plans in 1910 to develop North Kansas City as an industrial town. Prior to 1910, plans to urbanize the land north of the river (north of Kansas City) proved unsuccessful. For instance, a successful speculator's plan to build a bridge across the river during the late 1880s failed to materialize when the local real estate boom collapsed. But, the formation of the NKCDC in 1903 included purchasing the Winner property, levee construction, and the eventual completion of a bridge in 1911, along with the subsequent development of the Kansas City, Clay County, and St. Joseph Interurban Railway, which made stops in North Kansas City. 

With the infrastructure and transportation in place, the NKCDC lured commercial operations to North Kansas City, with Sears, Roebuck, and Company as one of the first to open. Sears sought to build near Kansas City because it desired a central location to ensure quick delivery and reduce freight charges on heavy merchandise sent to Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming. Sears, Roebuck, and Company announced its plans to move to North Kansas City in 1912. Kansas City, Kansas, had offered them numerous perks, such as receiving water and electricity at cost. Still, the company chose to build their plant near the recently-built Interurban Railway in North Kansas City. Sears purchased five acres of land, which allowed for plenty of growth, and there existed plenty of nearby property for which to construct homes for newly arriving employees. 

Because Sears needed to move heavy merchandise such as farm implements, furniture, and buggies, the new building functioned as a warehouse instead of a mail-order house. George C. Nimmons and Company, who designed the Sears, Roebuck, and Company Mail Order Plant in Chicago, finished the nine-story building in 1913. However, the company planned also to build several sizable additions, but that never came to fruition because of issues related to World War I and the the eventual construction of a large mail-order plant in Kansas City, Missouri.

Founded in 1893, Sears, Roebuck, and Company enjoyed success as a mail-order operation and then moved to Chicago in 1895. By 1900, after embarking on a massive advertising campaign and concentrating on the rural market, the company surpassed the retail stalwart Montgomery Ward with sales exceeding $11 million. Although Sears advertised widely in magazines and newspapers, the company's principal selling tool involved the catalog, which became part of everyday American culture by the mid-twentieth century. In its infancy, in the late 1890s, the catalog offered a wide range of general merchandise, including harnesses, farm equipment, household furnishings, dishes, dry goods, firearms, musical instruments, etc. After a brief period of financial trouble, forcing Richard W. Sears to sell his shares in 1908 (Alvah Curtis Roebuck left the company in 1895), the company was again a success by 1910, with total sales eclipsing $40 million and branch offices opening in Dallas, Seattle, and Philadelphia. By 1914, one year after opening the branch in North Kansas City, Sears, Roebuck, and Company sales increased to $100 million.

Following the initial success of this Sears building, many prominent industrial firms moved their operations to North Kansas City between 1913 and 1915. Furthermore, the NKCDC began the development of North Kansas City's central business district with the construction of The Pioneer Building and the Commercial Building in 1912-1913 and 1913-1914, respectively. But, not only did the extensive expansion of the Sears, Roebuck, and Company building fail to materialize, the company only used a small portion of the building, and its occupation of the historic structure proved fairly brief. Sears & Roebuck leased the upper six floors of the building and continued maintaining its distribution center on the lower floors during WWI. The bulk of the middle floors functioned as a soldier barracks and mechanics training camp, while the upper floors served as storage for truck, tank, and airplane engines. After the war, Sears continued to use the lower floors while leasing the middle and upper floors to several prominent businesses. Finally, in 1925 (twelve years after the building opened), Sears, Roebuck, and Company made plans to move into a much larger facility.

Sears grew to become the world's largest retailer by 1964, surpassing the A & P grocery chain. In 1973, the company operated 837 retail stores, 12 catalog order plants, 2,647 catalog and telephone sales offices, and made $11 billion in total sales. This growth led to the construction of the Sears Tower in Chicago, which stood as the tallest building in the world for several decades. Meanwhile, the historic North Kansas City building that Sears built in 1913 served the community as a commercial building occupied by various businesses through the twentieth century. Demonstrating North Kansas City's change in recent decades, the former Sears warehouse was repurposed to serve as an apartment complex known as Park Lofts. 

Adams, John Q. "The North Kansas City Urban District." Economic Geography 8, no. 4 (1932): 409–25.

Longstreth, Richard. "Sears, Roebuck and the Remaking of the Department Store, 1924-42." Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 65, no. 2 (2006): 238–79.

Millstein, Cydney E. "Registration Form: Sears. Roebuck and Company Warehouse Building." National Register of Historic Places. mostateparks.com. 1997. https://mostateparks.com/sites/mostateparks/files/Sears%2C%20Roebuck%20and%20Co.%20Warehouse%20Bldg.pdf.