After a two-year search for a site, the Library, working with the Downtown Council of Kansas City, created a public-private partnership to fund its new home. Adaptive re-use of the historic First National Bank Building, a neoclassical structure originally built in 1904 and added onto in 1926, in combination with new construction has acted as an urban revitalization catalyst at the heart of the Central Business District in the Ninth Street Historic District. The project incorporated sustainable design elements such as a vegetated roof terrace that functioned as an outdoor assembly space occupying approximately a third of the terrace area. The parameters of adaptive re-use and new construction offered the Library the unique ability to be expressive of its past, while at the same time allowing for the expression of its new mission in the information age.