If you find yourself confronted by a towering wall of books while walking along W. 10th Street, don’t worry—you did not fall down the rabbit hole.
The impressive row of 25-foot-tall and 9-foot-wide books lining the south facade of the downtown Kansas City Public Library’s parking garage is the result of a 20-year-old library renovation. Known as The Community Bookshelf, the public art project was the brainchild of Jonathan Kemper, who served on the Kansas City Public Library Board of Trustees from 2004 to 2022 and is now the library’s Operations Committee chair.
The library acquired the First National Bank building, now known as the Central Library (14 W. 10th St., KCMO) and began renovating it in 2004. Kemper and members of the library’s fundraising committee worked with Dimensional Innovations, an integrated design firm, and two Kansas City-based architecture firms to develop the garage’s design. It was Kemper who suggested the bookcase theme. With the concept established, Kemper and the library reached out to the community.
“When I reflect on this now, every effort was made to seek and accept input from library staff and the larger community,” Kemper says. “I knew that we had 22 ‘spines’ available and wanted to bring true diversity to represent the library’s fundamental mission of community service through access to information and culture to all.”
While many of the 42 titles splashed across the 22 spines are well-known classics, such as To Kill a Mockingbird and Catch-22, the library board also wanted to pay homage to Kansas City. There are two volumes in the facade named Kansas City Stories that showcase multiple titles, such as Buck O’Neil’s autobiography I Was Right On Time.
To ensure a textured and colorful appearance, the library’s rare book collection located in the Linda Hall Library was used as inspiration in the facade’s design.
“[We had] free access to select several dozen books with distinctive bindings to use as models for the final images,” Kemper says. The team photographed and enhanced the bindings and used digital software to replace original titles with new ones.
The wall of books has fast become a Kansas City showpiece, and the library is discussing expanding The Community Bookshelf to the garage’s other sides.
