The first recorded church on the site was built in 1822 at the behest of François Chouteau, who is credited as the founder and first Euro-American permanent settler of Kansas City.

[2][3] Today, the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, is on the site of Chouteau's church.

Two blocks down Washington Street is Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral, which was built beginning in the 1860s, and serves as the seat of the Episcopal Diocese of West Missouri.

One figure who greatly influenced Quality Hill's rise was Tom Pendergast, a notorious political boss in the city.

In 1941, Pendergast arranged for President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration to build a large park on Quality Hill overlooking the Kansas City Downtown Airport, which also was built during his reign.

The statue's sculptor was Will Decker with Rochetti and Parzini of New York City, and it was manufactured at the Colonial Plastic Corporation of Newark, New Jersey.

As a result, houses were divided into multiple families, income levels of residents went down, and Quality Hill gradually fell into extreme disrepair.

In the early 1970s, Arnold Garfinkel, a real estate developer, began acquiring and assembling properties and by 1976, he controlled several large parcels.

These new developments encouraged the Kansas City LCRA, in 1983, to revise the downtown central business district plan to include the revitalization of the Quality Hill area.

[6] In 2004, Kansas City Southern Industries completed a multimillion-dollar new headquarters between the two cathedrals and designed after Quality Hill's distinctive architectural style.

Around that time, State Street purchased Quality Hill property from DST Systems and opened a major branch.

Quality Hill's appeal to potential residents is based both in its historic beauty and its ready access to the cultural and business life of downtown Kansas City.

In February 2008, McCormack Baron Salazar, who owned and managed its large property as a development called New Quality Hill, sold 21 buildings (consisting of 382 residential units_ to C.R.E.S.

McCormack Baron Salazar initially said it was working to address those concerns,[7] but in November 2006 decided to sell the bulk of its property on Quality Hill.