KANSAS CITY, Mo. — In America the arts are always on the lookout for a new home.

This city’s Convention Hall, a noble Beaux-Arts building, opened in 1899. Enrico Caruso and Geraldine Farrar sang “La Bohème” there, on tour with the Metropolitan Opera, and Sarah Bernhardt played Camille.

Less than 40 years later the hall was torn down to provide parking for the Municipal Auditorium, a moody Art Deco monolith that went up across the street in 1934. The Kansas City Philharmonic played there for decades. But the Philharmonic dissolved in 1982; a reconstituted Kansas City Symphony joined the Lyric Opera of Kansas City and the Kansas City Ballet at the slowly crumbling Lyric Theater nearby.

The next decades were hard ones for the city, which struggled with suburban flight. Only recently has downtown Kansas City begun to revive. As its fortunes have turned, the three companies inhabiting the Lyric Theater have wanted — needed — a new space that would reflect their high ambitions.

The answer, more than 15 years in the making, is the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, financed largely by the Kauffman pharmaceutical fortune, designed by the architect Moshe Safdie and built on a hilltop with an expansive glass lobby wall overlooking the city. (The spacious, gracious site was previously owned by Ross Perot.) Last week I attended three performances there, and it is one of the most enjoyable, exhilarating arts centers I’ve been to, a moving celebration of a city’s upward trajectory.