Best Thing Made in Kansas City
A. Zahner Company
On a recent road trip to Chicago, we found ourselves ignoring views of the skyline and Lake Michigan and staring instead at the band shell in Millennium Park, wondering how anyone could curl steel like Christmas ribbons. Little did we know that it was done here in Kansas City. The firm that fabricated the 14 geometric shapes of stainless steel is A. Zahner Company, which contributed to some of the world's most renowned metal buildings. In 1897, Zahner (pronounced zay-ner) began by making custom cornices, those metal moldings that crown historic buildings. Zahner expanded worldwide in the 1980s and now claims annual revenues of $30 million. Projects have included the Frank Gehry-designed Fisher Performing Arts Center at Bard College in New York and the Weisman Art Museum in Minnesota, two buildings that look less like something done with metal and more like a product of Dr. Seuss' imagination. But the family-owned company still takes on local projects. You can marvel at its copper and zinc work at the Kansas City Art Institute's new Dodge Painting Building. Even better, the refurbished Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art's sculpture garden features a Zahner marvel: a gold-leaf island that looks like a giant ingot in the otherwise smooth water.
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