By Dan Verbeck, KCUR News
Kansas City, MO – The Midwest's needs in financial and banking policy are being analyzed and drawn in the newest building in the federal reserve system. It brings a move of the region's money repository from downtown, where armored trucks maneuvered narrow streets to tote vast supplies of cash destined for local banks. The $200 million regional Central Bank has been dedicated.
The site at Liberty Memorial held old St. Mary's Hospital and Kansas Citians remember it as the place where loved ones were born and others who died there.
St. Marys was torn down. Rebirth brings the spacious new Federal Reserve Bank. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke spoke at the opening, quoting from the Board's first annual report in 1915
"..it should never be lost to sight that the reserve banks are invested with much of the quality of a public trust. They were created because of the existence of certain common needs and interests and they should be administered for the common welfare for the good of all."
While banking policy is churned over in the working part of the complex, most visitors will remember it for The Money Museum. They won't notice refinements supposed to make the building terrorist resistant.