The National WW1 Museum and Memorial is located in Kansas City, Missouri. The Monument was completed in 1926, when 100,000 people came out to hear President Calvin Coolidge speak at the grand opening ceremony. While the Monument was completed shortly after the end of WW1, it would take nearly 80 years to be recognized as the National WW1 Museum & Memorial. Congress designated the site as the National WW1 Museum in 2004, and followed up in 2014 designating it the National WW1 Memorial as well. Additionally, it was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2006.
You may be wondering how the National WW1 Museum & Memorial ended up in Kansas City. Unlike my trip to the National WWII Museum in New Orleans (link below if you missed that one), there is no interesting historical connection. Rather the National WW1 Memorial ended up in Kansas City because over 83,000 locals donated money to construct it there. Over the course of 10 days in 1919, the people of Kansas City raised $2.5 million dollars, the equivalent of $40 million today. Certainly an impressive fundraising effort in 1919.
Visiting The National WW1 Museum and Memorial
The Memorial is located in Kansas City, just outside of the downtown are, so it’s very easy to get to. Tickets are $20, giving you access to both the Museum and the Memorial Tower. Quite the bargain when you consider it now costs $40 to park at a baseball game. I started my visit with a trip to the top of the Liberty Memorial Tower. Standing 217 feet tall, the observation deck offers amazing views of downtown Kansas City. After taking in the views, I headed back down to start the museum tour.
The museum tour kicks off with a 10 minute introductory video, which reviews the economic, social, and political trends that ultimately led to the outbreak of WW1. After the video you can dive into the exhibits, all of which were extremely well done. The museum is nicely laid out, and the exhibits are a good balance of artifacts and informational graphics. The museum is split in 2, with the first half primarily covering the European perspective, and the second half detailing America’s involvement.
All of the timelines and informational exhibits are extremely detailed. I stopped to read almost all of the timelines, and it took me 4 hours to see everything. If you’re operating on an accelerated timeline, you could get a lot out of the museum with as little as an hour. All in all the museum is very educational, and full of interesting history. If you’re ever in Kansas City it’s definitely worth a visit.
I was staying in downtown Kansas City and did a walking tour which ended up at the Memorial Tower, but I didn’t even realize there was a museum there! Union Station, just across the street, has some great architecture. When I take walking tours I take a lot of pix and post them on my photo sharing site. If you’d like to see my walk through KC go to https://braddupray.smugmug.com/Photography/Kansas-City/. It includes architecture, Union Station, and the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, along with the empty lobby of a restored 1920’s hotel that I stumbled in to.
Will definitely check those out. The museum also has an interesting next door neighbor, the Kansas City Federal Reserve, which has a museum open to the public.