From www.kansascity.com:
Just what is too much Harry?
It’s a question that surfaces in Independence. One example occurred in 1993, when city officials approved the demolition of a vacant gas station that Harry Truman, the 33rd president, sometimes frequented after returning from Washington in the early 1950s.
After hearing the testimony of residents who believed Truman’s connection with the structure deemed it worth preserving as part of the built environment he once knew, the Independence City Council reversed its decision.
The gas station still stands.
The context for what may strike some as a trivial controversy occurred about 10 years before. That’s when the Independence City Council in 1984 voted to reduce the size of the city’s heritage district, following debate over the plans of the First Baptist Church of Independence to remove several residences near the Truman home so it could expand its building. In this instance, writes author Jon E. Taylor, those wishing to preserve Truman’s old neighborhood came into open conflict with church officials seeking to grow their own faith community.
And yet the First Baptist Church wasn’t the only Independence church wanting to tear down old structures near the Truman home.
If it sounds complicated, it is. The sheer amount of historic event per square foot in Independence may not rival colonial Philadelphia, but it’s plenty rich enough. The Truman preservation drama is only one piece of it.
That’s why Jon E. Taylor’s book, A President, a Church, and Trails West, represents a public service. Anyone who may casually decide to drop in on historic preservation topics in Independence can feel like a tag-along guest at a family holiday dinner who innocently wanders into the middle of a dialogue that has been going on since sometime after the pumpkin pie. Consider Taylor the peacemaking uncle who declares a ceasefire and then summarizes the story so far.
Truman’s story is familiar. After returning to Independence in 1953, the former president built his library, dedicated in 1957.
But there’s also the 19th-century wagon-wheel legacy of those who traveled west on overland trails — Santa Fe, California and Oregon — many of whom outfitted themselves in Independence. Eastern Jackson County is studded with inscribed markers denoting the trails’ various paths.
Then there’s Joseph Smith Jr., the Mormon prophet who is believed in 1831 to have dedicated a location in Independence as the site of a future temple. Today the spiral-topped temple of the Community of Christ Church (formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) dominates the Independence skyline. The Mormon Church (or Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), based in Salt Lake City, maintains a visitors center just to its south.
All are reasons why Independence may lead the Kansas City area in the number of granite markers planted by highways and bronze plaques embedded in sidewalks.
And yet this enlightened regard for events long passed was a hard time in coming. (cont.)