Old School Kansas City Folly Photos Debut

Sign of the times and a great look at local history and one of the best restorations Kansas City has ever seen . . . Here's the exhibit that offers a trip down memory lane . . .

A hand-written sign hangs lopsided in front of a shut door, reading, “Closed permanently — thanks for your patronage.” Above the entrance is a long wooden sign advertising “Burlesk” shows every Thursday. The black-and-white photographs preceding this image show a dilapidated theater and the performers and employees who occupied the space before it was presumed to be destroyed.

Now, some 50 years later, the Folly is a premier theater in Kansas City, an anchor of turn-of-the-century architecture and charm. “The Folly’s Last Gasp,” an exhibit curated by Stuart Hinds, curator of special collections & archives at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, gives a rare look into a seldom documented time in Kansas City’s history when 12th Street was a hedonistic strip of adult entertainment establishments.

Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com link . . .

'The Folly's Last Gasp' - KC STUDIO

At Miller Nichols Library, photographs by Bob Barrett capture the theater's colorful, at times racy, history.