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While these men spoke of urban beauty, a young landscape architect was trying to make a living designing. George E. Kessler came to the Kansas City area on the heels of both Nelson and Meyer. He had a job, at the age of twenty, with the Kansas City , Fort Scott and Memphis Railroad Company to design, build and supervise a railway amusement park in Merriam , Kansas . He did the job well. Born in Frankenhausen, Germany, George Kessler came to the United States as a child, but returned to his native country to study landscape architecture and civil engineering. He first served a two year apprenticeship at the Grand Ducal gardens of Weimar; then he studied forestry, botany, and civil engineering under the auspices of the University of Jena; and finally he pursued technical engineering studies at the Gartner-Jehranstalt at Potsdam, capping it all with a year of travel throughout Europe. "Of it all", he later said, "the travel was of most value".
Back in this country, he worked for six or eight months in New York City at LeMoult's, a seed company and florist. During this brief period he corresponded with Frederick Law Olmsted, the American born luminary in the field of Landscape Architecture. Olmsted, who maintained a firm in Boston, was an urban reformer of genuine stature in that day. He saw parks as a way to cure society's ills, with natural landscape restoring the worn down spirits of city-bound people. In his letters to Kessler, Olmsted offered advice and suggested books the young man should read.
But, most significant to Kansas City's development, Olmsted put Kessler in touch with one of his upstate New York clients who hired him for the Merriam railway park job.
Owing to the great success of the Merriam railway amusement park, property owners in Kansas City wanted Kessler to do their landscaping. He responded by opening a private practice. The most impressive achievement of his private practice was Hyde Park between 36th and 39th streets on Gillham Road . Hyde Park was one of the first fashionable suburbs, and the owners of the newly built mansions worried about the rough gully at their doorsteps along Gillham Road . Kessler converted the rocky ravine and its tangled brush into a tasteful parkway. The positive effect of his work on real estate values in the Hyde Park neighborhood did not go unnoticed.
Among those who observed Kessler's success was August Meyer who requested Kessler to landscape the grounds of his new mansion. As Kessler worked to develop his private practice, he kept a sharp eye on the maneuverings for public parks. Civic leaders were pushing for green spaces within the city, using the rationale that Kansas City must have parks because other cities had them.
The structure of Kansas City government was changing in the 1880's and 1890's as the growing city struggled to find a form of government suitable to managing increasingly complex urban problems. Supporters of parks saw an opportunity and pushed for an amendment to the city charter to allow a politically independent park board. They also worked for state legislation, because the city could not issue bonds for civic improvement without legislative approval.
In 1889, the city's first home rule charter provided for a Board of Park Commissioners, but gave the Board no authority to acquire land. A subsequent park law empowered a board to issue bonds, with two thirds voter-approval and a board was appointed.
On May 31, 1890, George Kessler sent a letter of application to this board for the position of landscape architect. However, in January 1891, the Missouri Supreme Court declared the park law unconstitutional, and the board ceased to exist.
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