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Southmoreland, Kansas City — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Southmoreland is the museum quarter of Kansas City, a grid of large houses and gallery lawns between Main Street and Gillham Road.
About Southmoreland
Where to stay in Southmoreland
Where you base yourself shapes the visit — here's the character of each area.
Hotel rooms cluster along Main Street rather than inside Southmoreland's own blocks of houses. That edge works: the streetcar extension runs the length of Main Street between Union Station and the University of Missouri-Kansas City, putting the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art a few blocks off the line. Gillham Road holds the quieter edge.
Term time at the Kansas City Art Institute keeps the northern streets awake.
About Southmoreland
What are the main landmarks in Southmoreland?
Southmoreland's museums stand within a few blocks. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art holds the largest ground, the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art sits beside the Kansas City Art Institute, and the National Toy and Miniature Museum keeps a smaller collection a short walk south. Mineral Hall, the Epperson House, and Community Christian Church carry the built history.
The Bernard Corrigan House stands among the mansions that set these streets' scale, and the Thomas Hart Benton Home and Studio State Historic Site sits just off the northern edge.
What is the history of Southmoreland?
The neighborhood grew as a set of large lots, and the houses that filled them still carry their owners' names: the August Meyer House, the Bernard Corrigan House, the Judge Louis Gates House, the Reverend Nathan Scarritt Home. The First Swedish Baptist Church followed them. Westminster Congregational Church served the same blocks, and the arrival of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art pulled a residential quarter into the cultural center of Kansas City.
Thomas Hart Benton kept a studio at the northern edge.
Where is Southmoreland?
Southmoreland runs from 39th Street south to Emanuel Cleaver II Boulevard, with Main Street closing the west side and Gillham Road and Rockhill the east.
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Updated September 2026