City workhouse castle (Vine Street workhouse castle, Brant Castle) is a city historical register site located at 2001 Vine Street in Kansas City, Missouri. The castle was constructed by contractors in 1897 for US$25,700 (equivalent to $904,000 in 2022) next to the natural deposit of yellow limestone which had been quarried by inmates of the preceding city workhouse jail across Vine Street. On December 20, 1897, the castle was inaugurated as the city's new workhouse with dedicated jail. Its Romanesque Revival architecture with castellated towers were in vogue among the Kansas City upper class at the time. Its first Superintendent, Major Alfred Brant, proudly declared it "the best building Kansas City has".
It was conceived as a model of humanitarian housing and rehabilitation. Its function in corrections ended in 1924, succeeded by the Leeds Farm to the remote east of the city where inmates also grew crops. The castle is two blocks south of the historic 18th and Vine, which has been referred to as America's third most recognized street after Broadway and Hollywood Boulevard due to the legacy of Kansas City jazz music. Across the next five decades, the castle and surrounding field were periodically repurposed more than one dozen times including as a city storage facility, a Marine training camp, and a dog euthanasia center—abandoned in 1972. Across the decades of infamous blight of the whole Vine Street District, the dilapidated wood interior collapsed down to only the open limestone walls. The structure steadily accumulated trash, trees, graffiti, and a cascade of unproductive owners and investors including Bank of America and a convicted con artist. The castle has been only a token feature among many broken promises by developers for lucrative areawide rehabilitation, at least one of whom proposed the structure's demolition. In 2014, it was bought conditionally cash-free by its current owner, Vewiser Dixon.
In 2014, Daniel and Ebony Edwards led a huge nonprofit project to successfully remove 62 tons of trash, and then hosted their own wedding and various community events there, with the ultimately unrealized goal of buying and developing it into a permanent community center. The Kansas City Star nicknamed the project "Daniel and Ebony's Modern Fairy Tale", as the castle's first functionality in 42 years. The site has resumed vacancy and attracting graffiti since 2016.
Continue reading on Wikipedia 
