After Quality Hill — the historic district situated on 200-foot-high bluffs overlooking West Bottoms — Pendleton Heights is Kansas City’s second oldest residentially-designed neighborhood.

If you’ve spent much time there, you know the area is teeming with Victorian houses, notable landmarks, parks and community gardens — not to mention diverse food options and markets.

Geographically, Pendleton Heights is bordered by Independence Avenue to the south, Chestnut Trafficway to the east and The Paseo to the west. The north side sits on cliffs, with East Bottoms and the Missouri River below. On a good day, from the top of those cliffs, you can see clear to Kansas City, Kansas.

Here, we’ve also included points of interest in the Scarritt Renaissance neighborhood, located just east of Pendleton Heights. As you follow Independence Avenue through both historic districts, drift north a bit and check out thoroughfares like Gladstone Boulevard, Cliff Drive and St. John Avenue.

Kansas City Museum

An impressive four-story, 70-room mansion at the northernmost tip of Scarritt Renaissance, Kansas City Museum reopened in 2021 after a renovation that spanned seven years. A Beaux-Arts style mansion, the building was built by lumber baron Robert A. Long in 1910 for $1 million — the equivalent of $29.1 million today — and named Corinthian Hall.

After his death in 1934, Long’s daughters emptied the mansion of its furnishings and opened it to the public as a history and science museum, then as a natural history museum, complete with fossils, rocks, minerals, a 50-seat planetarium and an ice cream parlor.

Today, the museum is owned and operated by Kansas City Parks & Recreation. It still features an ice cream parlor, as well as exhibits curated to “engage visitors in unfolding stories about Kansas City’s vibrant history, cultural heritage and…