Westwood Hills, KS

Westwood Hills is a small Johnson County city whose entire footprint is a historic district. J.C. Nichols platted the Westwood Hills subdivision in 1923, and residents formed a homes association three years later. The neighborhood became its own city in 1949, as Johnson County was filling in around it, and the boundaries still hold the original planned-residential idea together. The district was listed on the National Register in 2013 and includes 255 documented properties, including architect-designed houses, entranceways, traffic islands, and the city’s historic lamps. With Kansas City, Missouri, just across the line, Westwood Hills feels like a neighborhood that kept its own municipal name and a remarkably complete record of its first plan.