Word: pendergastlies
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Election returns were coming in. Roberts spotted the trend in a precinct report from the onetime "Bloody First" Ward, a Pendergast stronghold. "That's a barbershop on North Main," he said. "They used to vote about 385 to 6 for the machine. Look what they got - only two to one." It was soon clear that the election was in the bag for the Citizens Association, a loose fusion of anti-Pendergast Democrats, yeasty Republicans and independents, held together by the Star's backing. What was left of Old Tom's once mighty machine, now run with little...
They turned south on Main Street (see map), away from the cluster of tall buildings which give northwest Kansas City its impressive skyline - a skyline dominated by the 30-story, $6,000,000 city hall, built during the Pendergast days and still much too large for the city's needs. They passed the two-story, yellow brick building at 1908 Main, where Old Tom Pendergast's greedy fingers had pulled the strings. The lights there were still on ; Jim Pendergast's men were measuring their defeat...
...flame-colored light, they drove through a district of small homes and gardens to Country Club Plaza, the neo-Spanish shopping center of J. C. Nichols' famed suburban development (TIME, Dec. 1). Just beyond, they turned west along Brush Creek, lined and bottomed with the concrete Tom Pendergast sold. Just across the Kansas line, the car turned up a short driveway to a large stone-and-brick house,† a full eight-iron shot from the tenth green of the Mission Hills golf course. As he opened the front door, Roberts whistled shrilly and yelled to his wife...
After Tom Pendergast got his grip on the city administration, its seamy side got much more national attention than its solid core of respectability and its increasing commercial importance. During Pendergast's reign, the town was a free-&-easy capital of grifters, gamblers, gangsters and striptease grinders. In no other city in the U.S. were vice and gambling so well protected. When the Boss needed money, his boys put a deeper bite on the brothel-keepers, bookies and crapshooters. Tom Pendergast, who made his town a trap for suckers, turned out to be one of the biggest suckers himself...
Many Kansas Citians, always more than a little envious of St. Louis' maturity and greater size (by 366,000), thought all this high-bucking naughtiness good business; it brought visitors and dollars. Besides, the machine was building up the town. The Star, which always fought Pendergast politically, treated him personally with respect. It reported his comings & goings in the society columns, recorded his growing prowess in Democratic national affairs...