Kansas City’s downtown has some iconic landmarks — the Western Auto building, the T-Mobile Center, and a giant bookshelf?

It’s Library Week, so we figured it would be fun to flip through the pages of a KC landmark.

Kansas City Library's Community Bookshelf consists of 22 book spines that list 42 titles. The books, ~25 feet tall by 9 feet wide, are made of signboard mylar. Two glass elevators bookend the seismic shelf.

Don’t judge the books by their cover. The community bookshelf — which might just be the world’s biggest bookshelf — is actually a parking garage built in 2004 to create additional downtown parking. It runs along 10th Street between Wyandotte Street and Baltimore Avenue.

The public was asked to submit their favorite book titles, and the final selections were made by The Kansas City Public Library Board of Trustees. To keep yourself booked with a long TBR list, check out the titles on the Community Bookshelf. A list can be overwhelming, so we grouped them according to genre below:

KC History

Kansas City, Missouri: Its History And Its People, 1808-1908 by Carrie Whitney
Kansas City, Missouri: An Architectural History, 1826-1990 by George Ehrlich
Tom's Town: Kansas City and the Pendergast Legend by William M. Reddig
Farm by Richard Rhodes
Mr. Anonymous: The Story of William Volker by Herbert C. Cornuelle
Journeys Through Time: A Young Traveler's Guide to Kansas City's History by Monroe Dodd
I Was Right On Time by Buck O'Neil
The O'Donnells by Peggy Sullivan
Independence Avenue by Eileen Bluestone Sherman
Truman by David McCullough
PrairyErth by William Least Heat-Moon
Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell

Classics

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Black Elk Speaks by Black Elk, as told to John G. Neihardt
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Cien Años de Soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude) by Gabriel García Márquez
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
O Pioneers! by Willa Cather

American History

Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, And The Opening Of The American West by Stephen Ambrose
Journals of the Expedition by Lewis and Clark
The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes by Langston Hughes
Messages From My Father by Calvin Trillin
Virgil Thomson, a Reader by Virgil Thomson

Philosophy

Tao Te Ching by Lau Tzu
The Republic by Plato

Children’s Books

Charlotte's Web by E.B. White
Stella Louella's Runaway Book by Lisa Ernst
Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown
Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson
Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne
Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss
What A Wonderful World by George Weiss
Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
M.C. Higgins, the Great by Virginia Hamilton