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Pendleton Heights, Kansas City — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Pendleton Heights is a historic Kansas City neighborhood between the Paseo and Chestnut Trafficway, north of Independence Avenue.
About Pendleton Heights
Where to stay in Pendleton Heights
Each area has its own feel; here's who each one suits.
Independence Avenue trades in storefronts, not room keys. Pendleton Heights is a residential plat of porches and short blocks, so a stay here means a rented apartment or a guesthouse room rather than a front desk, and anyone wanting a lobby crosses the downtown highway loop for it. The 21c Museum Hotel Kansas City sits over there, inside the loop.
Barney Allis Plaza marks the convention end. Pick your side by how you mean to spend the days, museums and evenings downtown or quiet streets and the bluff road up here.
About Pendleton Heights
What are the main landmarks in Pendleton Heights?
Cliff Drive is the set piece here. The road traces the bluff line that closes the neighborhood on the north, and the ground drops away below it while the grid behind runs level along Independence Boulevard. Independence Boulevard Christian Church lifts its dome further along that same boulevard.
East beyond Chestnut Trafficway the ridge carries the Kansas City Museum and the William Chick Scarritt House. An hour covers most of it.
What is the history of Pendleton Heights?
Merchants took this bluff early. The streets between the Paseo and Chestnut Trafficway still follow the plat lines drawn when the high ground north of Independence Avenue was where Kansas City money chose to build, and the houses went up in brick and frame. The William Chick Scarritt House and the Edward Lucky Scarritt House survive from that generation, out along the ridge that carries east toward the Kansas City Museum.
Then the downtown highway loop went through. A walk into downtown became a drive, and the district settled into the quiet residential pocket it has stayed.
Where is Pendleton Heights?
North of Independence Avenue and just outside the downtown highway loop, Pendleton Heights fills the blocks up to the bluff line that Cliff Drive follows.
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Updated September 2026