Downtown Kansas City contains one of the finest concentrations of Art Deco architecture in the United States. The building boom of the 1920s and early 1930s coincided with the height of the Art Deco movement, and Kansas City's prosperity at that moment — fueled by its role as a rail hub and agricultural trading center — produced a run of architecturally ambitious towers and civic buildings. The 29-story Kansas City Power & Light Building (1931) with its illuminated crown, the 29-story City Hall (1937) with its stepped pyramid top, and the Federal Reserve Bank building are the most prominent examples.
The City Hall observation deck on the 30th floor is free and open to the public on weekdays — a rarely-publicized fact that means you are often the only visitor up there, looking out across the Missouri River to the north and into Kansas to the west. The streets immediately surrounding City Hall hold a high density of significant Art Deco commercial buildings. A walking tour of downtown covering the five or six blocks between City Hall and Union Station constitutes one of the better architecture itineraries in the Midwest.