OVERLAND PARK, Kansas — Nearly 70 years ago in a newly formed suburb of Kansas City, Kansas City Power & Light Co. built what it thought was a vision of the future — an all-electric home full of the latest technology.
“It was advertised as the lazy man’s paradise,” said Johnson County Museum curator Andrew Gustafson.
The house was a showpiece meant to sell electricity and the prospect of an all-electric future. It had outlets every few feet, buttons in the bedroom could turn on and off lights throughout the house, and it even had a fireplace, fake of course, powered by an electrical motor that simulated the sights and sounds of a crackling fire.