Justice
A Vacant House That Should Become Public Art
A Kansas City artist wants to swap out a famous sculpture for a run-down home at the city's major museum.
Troost Avenue is notable as a north–south street that zips through most of Kansas City. It's notorious, though, as a bright line that divides the city racially, a border that has stood for hundreds of years. A visitor in Kansas City quickly comes to appreciate that Troost is more metaphor than motorway.
The ignominious history of Troost Avenue dates back to the time of Benoist Troost, one of the city's founding fathers, a Dutchman who maintained a massive slave plantation in the area just east of what would become the major thoroughfare. Further, even: Troost was once an Osage Nation hunting path and canoe trail, according to The Kansas City Star.