Kansas City Workhouse
Introduction
Text-to-speech Audio
Images
The Kansas City Workhouse was built in 1897 as a jail.

City Work House, Frontal and Side View. 1900 Credit Missouri Valley Special Collections, Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City, Missouri

Postcard of the Workhouse Prison Credit Missouri Valley Special Collections, Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City, Missouri

Backstory and Context
Text-to-speech Audio
History of the KC Workhouse Castle
The Kansas City Workhouse was built in 1897 to be used as a city jail for minor criminals. Following the popular Romanesque revival architectural trends of the time, as well as the idea that the medieval style imposed a sense of authority, Kansas City architects Wallace Love and James Oliver Hogg designed the prison to resemble a castle. Prisoners quarried the yellow limestone for the four-story structure, and the castle was completed at a cost of $30,000 (equivalent to over $850,000 today).1 The castle was built with the goal of reducing overcrowding and fire hazards in city prisons, and at the time of its building, the castle could house 112 men and 48 women. Prisoners at the workhouse were generally beggars, vagrants, local drunks and drug addicts (typically cocaine and opium), debtors, and other petty offenders. Beginning in 1907, the workhouse changed its mission to better reform prisoners. It was called a “House of Corrections” and sought to help the wives and children of prisoners by giving prisoners the chance to earn a fair wage.2
The workhouse continued operations until it closed in 1924. Following its closure, the workhouse was repurposed over a dozen times, and at different moments, it was a city storage facility, Marine training camp, dog euthanization center, and many others. By 1972, the castle was abandoned and was left to degrade. Since then, the roof has collapsed and it was filled with trash, weeds, and graffiti. The Workhouse was listed on the Kansas City Register of Historic Places on Nov. 29, 2007. In 2014, the castle was cleaned and renovated for a wedding venue, and several community members and organizations are planning to open up the castle for more events.3
Sources
2.) "City to Help Prisoner," Kansas City Star, 15 November 1907, p.1.
3.) Honig, Esther. "What Is That? Kansas City's Vine Street Castle." KCUR 89.3, 24 July 2014. Web. 9 July 2016. http://kcur.org/post/what-kansas-citys-vine-street-castle#stream/0