12 24-12 christmas in kansas city
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Sharing sights and scenes of Kansas City at Christmas time
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Transcript of 12 24-12 christmas in kansas city
Sharing sights and scenes of Kansas City at Christmas time
Early beginning for Kansas City’s Country Club Plaza District
The Plaza Lights started with a string of 16 lights over a doorway in 1925. The first Plaza Lighting took place in 1930.
“In 1925, Charles Pitrat, head of the Nichols Company maintenance operation, placed a single six-foot strand of sixteen colored light bulbs across the doorway of the Suydam building. The tradition grew just the way the Plaza did. As buildings were added, so were lights. When the Plaza Theatre was completed in 1928, Pitratstrung lights across 47th Street to reach the theater building. The next year he outlined the buildings and towers with lights. And so it went, adding more lights to frame more buildings. Putting up those first lights took one man and a ladder. The chore is definitely more difficult today.”
Plaza Lighting Ceremony on Thanksgiving Day
Several thousands of people gather on the plaza for Kansas City’s annual lighting ceremony. Miles of lights outline the Country Club Plaza buildings and its many Spanish style towers
Fireworks begin once the lights and lit
. Tower lights are always one color. For example, The Time
Tower, at Broadway and Ward Parkway, is always red.
The big switch on the stage at the Plaza Lighting Ceremony really does turn on all the lights. The child chosen from the
audience is always chosen at random.
Putting up the lights is no small task. Starting after Labor Day each year, a crew of four electricians from Capital Electric begins stringing the lights while the weather is still warm.
The Mayor’s Christmas tree is lit the next evening on the Crown Center Square. The 100-foot-tall Mayor’s Christmas Tree, one of the nation’s tallest, is the centerpiece for an illuminating holiday celebration. Mayor
Sly James and a celebrity guest flip the switch to light the tree. The tree is a symbol of the Mayor’s Christmas Tree Fund, which is dedicated to assisting the city’s less fortunate.
Crown Center’s outdoor ice skating rink opens for its 40th season of great skating fun. It is located in the
shadow of the Mayor’s Christmas Tree.
New and renewed holiday traditions glow at Zona Rosa in Kansas City’s Northland
Zona Rosa’s developer learned about these mysterious oversized crowns that hung above the streets of downtown Kansas City near the popular
shopping district from the 1950s through the early 1980s. They wanted to bring the memorable crowns back to Kansas City.
For its first holiday season, three large crowns were built, and two have been constructed since. Zona Rosa contracted with the same company that built the original crowns for downtown to recreate and re-build the 17-foot-
wide, 2,000-pound crowns to be hung 30 feet in the air within Zona Rosa.
Zona Rosa kicks off the holiday season with a special lighting ceremony to spotlight the large crowns hung above the streets, as well as the featured 50
ft. Christmas tree in Town Square.
Some of the city’s most beloved traditions have been “handed over” to Zona Rosa. Customers’ faces light up as they recount the day they visited the once lost tradition of the Holiday Fairy Princess as a child in downtown Kansas City during the 1950s
Celebrating with Santa
Sharing part of Kansas City’s Holiday Celebrations
It’s been my pleasure to share some of the things that make the holidays so special here in the heartland.
Best wishes to you and yours during the Christmas celebrations and best as we move into the New Year!
Jason, Buster and Curly
