Did you know there is a Harlem right here in River City? In fact, at one point this fifty-acre town was a thriving area where nearly 600 people lived on the north bank of the Missouri River, right by Wheeler Downtown Airport.
Named after the same Dutch town as its more famous counterpart in New York City, it was originally a cluster of log cabins where people would disembark from steamboats when Kansas City was known only as Westport Landing. It was repeatedly ravaged by floods which kept it from meaningful growth, but it did evolve into a viable community which sided with the North during the Civil War years and threatened to secede from Missouri when the state considered joining the Confederate states. Frank James was born there and both he and his more famous brother, Jesse James, lived there from time to time. The advent of bridges spanning the Missouri River meant that Harlem became less important because the railroads could bring people and goods directly into Kansas City instead of off-loading in Harlem to be ferried across the river.
