Pleasant Hill Missouri Historical Highlights Tour
Tour Description
In 2005 the National Park Service placed the "Pleasant Hill Downtown Historic District" on the National Register of Historic Places. The nomination noted:"This collection of buildings documents the evolution of....Pleasant Hill's central business district from the mid-nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century."
Most of the buildings on this tour were featured in the 2005 designation and include information about the Pleasant Hill Historical Society and Museum, Knorpp's Opera House, Peoples Theater, the Missouri Bank Company building, the Booth Public Library, the WPA constructed Post Office, and the PWA constructed Municipal Power Plant.
Locations for Tour
Pleasant Hill Missouri Train Station
The railroad was the lifeblood of Pleasant Hill for the vast majority of its history, and this railroad station was at the center of it for nearly a century. The town’s original train station was constructed in 1866, as Pleasant Hill was coming out…
Pleasant Hill Missouri Historical Society Museum
Towns like Pleasant Hill must work diligently to look after their history, and the Pleasant Hill Historical Society Museum is the heart of such operations. Nestled right in the heart of the Historic District, the construction of the building has an…
Pleasant Hill Missouri Bank Company
Part of the draw of Pleasant Hill’s Historic District is the wide variety of architectural styles visible in such a small area. Throughout this tour alone, there have been buildings with Art Deco, neo-colonial, modernist, and more austere ornamental…
Pleasant Hill Missouri Booth Public Library
Situated just across the street from the Pleasant Hill Post Office, the Booth Public Library is another building that conveys the speed at which Pleasant Hill was developing in the mid-20th century. Constructed in the same rush of development that…
Pleasant Hill Missouri Post Office
Like the Municipal Power Plant, the Pleasant Hill Post Office on what is now Veterans Parkway is an artifact of the struggle to rebuild Pleasant Hill in the midst of the Great Depression. Alongside the Public Works Administration, which helped fund…
Pleasant Hill Municipal Power Plant
The downturn of the Great Depression was incredibly widespread, and its economic climate inevitably affected Pleasant Hill during the 1930’s. The Public Works Administration, one of the numerous New Deal programs designed to revitalize the economy…
Pleasant Hill Peoples Theater
Just as Knorpp’s Opera House was built to entertain the people of Pleasant Hill during the waning years of the 19th century with theater, a defining art form of the era, the Peoples Theater was built to entertain in the early 20th century with that…
Pleasant Hill Missouri Knorpp's Opera House
Standing tall on the corner of First and Commercial lies an unassuming cream colored building with a connection to opera. Knorpp's Opera House was initially constructed in the 1880s as Pleasant Hill experienced an economic boom as a railroad…