R.A. Long City And Country Homes Photo Album

Born in Shelby County, Kentucky, Robert Alexander Long (1850-1934) was a lumber baron and philanthropist whose lumber company became the world’s largest by the early 1900s. Long, who also founded the city of Longview, Washington, settled in Kansas City in 1873 where he started an ill-fated hay bale company with friend Victor Bell before the two formed Long-Bell Lumber Company in Columbus, Kansas (southeast Kansas). Long’s home in Kansas City, Corinthian Hall, was the city’s first million-dollar home; it now serves as the Kansas City Musuem. His country home, Longview Farm, sat on 250 acres on the outskirts of Kansas City; portions of the land are now sites of Longview College and Longview Lake.

Presented here are over 70 black-and-white images from a photo album titled R.A. Long’s City And Country Homes, capturing his palatial urban and rural estates circa 1916. The documentary-style shots provide architectural and historic perspective of both sites in their infancy – Corinthian Hall, completed in 1911; and Longview Farm, built between 1913 and 1914.

R.A. Long’s City And Country Homes photo album is housed in the LaBudde Special Collections Department of the Miller Nichols Library at the University of Missouri – Kansas City. For more information visit: http://laurel.lso.missouri.edu/record=b4840584~S3