Sunday, July 29, 1934

Had fried rabbit for breakfast and fried chicken for dinner at Joe's. Emmett and Melvin and Henry and Newt were there. Shot rabbits. I stayed at Mart's all night.

Kansas City Metropolitan Rivers with Brush Creek in the middle


Kansas City political boss Tom Pendergast

The two most prominent companies owned by Pendergast were Ready Mixed Concrete Co. and the T. J. Pendergast Liquor Distributing Co.

His concrete company, one of the first in the nation to deliver to the site, furnished the concrete for many construction projects during the Depression, including the “Pendergast Pyramids”--present-day City Hall on 12th street and its sister building across the street, the Jackson County Courthouse. Other buildings built with Pendergast concrete were the Municipal Auditorium and Police Headquarters. Paving Brush Creek began November 1935 at a cost originally estimated at $1,395,000 and employing at one time 1,647 WPA workers. Concrete was laid eight to 10 inches thick and 70 feet wide.

Rumors to the contrary, the king of corruption apparently did not lay anyone to rest under Brush Creek on the Plaza. In 1991, when the Army Corps of Engineers was working on a Brush Creek flood control project, it found the creek was paved with just 10-12 inches of concrete — “insufficient,” The Kansas City Star pointed out, “for burying any but the skinniest political enemy.”



 



Saturday, May 6, 1933

Uncle Laten was by today. I sewed and read a little, then went out and played a while.

On May 6, 1933, President Roosevelt signed an executive order creating the
Works Progress Administration (WPA). The WPA was just one of many relief programs
created under the auspices of the Emergency Relief Appropriations Act, which Roosevelt
 had signed the month before. The WPA, the Public Works Administration (PWA) and other federal
 assistance programs put unemployed Americans to work in return for temporary financial assistance.