Holy Spirit, Kansas City, Missouri

I didn't hold out much hope Saturday evening (and the day didn't hold out much more light) on my way home from St. Michael. The little Curmudgeon had played her trump card (i.e., "Daddy I have to go potty") in order to get herself home. But it was on the way, so I thought I'd see if there was anything left of Holy Spirit at 2500 Euclid Avenue, the Negro Catholic church from the days when everything in Kansas City was segregated. 2500 Euclid is south of I-70, near Bruce R. Watkins/US 71 highway.

As I got near, I saw, on the hilltop in the darkening sky, a huge church with a magnificent spire that wasn't on the day's list. I knew right away that it wasn't Holy Spirit, because we were several blocks away from where it was and I knew Holy Spirit was a poor little church--. I started to get excited, until I realized that the church I was driving by was just Holy Name, which I've covered here and here, and which I didn't recognize because I was approaching it from a new direction, the east.

I passed Holy Name, went down Prospect, and reached 2500 Euclid. As you can see, where once stood a simple cinderblock church (from what I remember of the photo in the book) is now a vacant lot. All I saw on the lot (from my car) was an abandoned yellow side-by-side refrigerator. At least whoever dumped it had the decency to remove the doors so a kid wouldn't suffocate.

Since my little Curmudgeon had played the trump card (and since it was getting dark on New Year's eve and the house next door had all the markings of a crack house), I elected not to kick around the abandoned lot, and the reader will simply have to make do with the refrigerator picture.

As you can see, except for the happy discovery of an "unclosed" closed church at Assumption/St. Anthony's, Saturday's drive was not as architecturally interesting as my two trips in October and November. I've hit six of the 17 candidate locations I found last week, and with 11 more to go, I can tell that one or two are certainly torn down (one's address on mapquest is in the middle of the new US-71/Bruce R. Watkins Drive, and the other is downtown where an office building now stands) I hope that among the nine or so that are left, there's still something interesting to look at.