Kansas City Club

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Coordinates: 39°06′11″N 94°35′04″W / 39.102931°N 94.584405°W / 39.102931; -94.584405
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The Kansas City Club
Company typePrivate club
Founded1882; 142 years ago (1882)
Defunct2015; 9 years ago (2015)
Headquarters918 Baltimore Avenue
Kansas City, Missouri 64105
Websitekansascityclub.com

The Kansas City Club, founded in 1882 and located in the Library District of Downtown Kansas City, Missouri, USA, was the oldest gentlemen's club in Missouri. The club began admitting women members in 1975. Along with the River Club on nearby Quality Hill, it was one of two surviving private city clubs on the Missouri side of Kansas City. Notable members include Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower, General Omar Bradley, and political boss Tom Pendergast. It closed in 2015.

Clubhouse[edit]

Main entrance on Baltimore Avenue

The former clubhouse is a neoclassical masonry and reinforced concrete building at 918 Baltimore Avenue, which was designed by John McKecknie and built in 1922.[1] It is at the corner of Ninth Street across Baltimore Avenue from the Central Library and across Ninth Street from the New York Life Building. The clubhouse was home to the University Club of Kansas City from 1922 to 2001.

The four-story clubhouse contained a dining room, a pub, a library, a cigar stand, full-service athletic facilities, and banquet and meeting facilities including a lounge, a ballroom, and private conference rooms. Two inner clubs had their own private lounge and bar spaces for their own members. The athletic facilities included cardio, weight, and strength training equipment, a trainer, a masseuse, hot tubs, steam rooms, saunas, a racquetball court, and two squash courts.[2] Along with the University of Missouri-Kansas City and the Pembroke Hill School, the Kansas City Club was one of only three locations in Kansas City with squash facilities.[3]

History[edit]

Clubhouse, 1888-1922

After the Civil War, most of Kansas City's social clubs were pro-Confederate. A group of prominent local businessmen and professionals, including Edward H. Allen, Victor B. Bell, Alden J. Blethen, Thomas B. Bullene, Gardiner Lathrop, August Meyer, Leander J. Talbott, William Warner, and Robert T. Van Horn, decided to provide an alternative, and organized the Kansas City Club on November 10, 1882. Initially, the club met at Kersey Coates's hotel on Quality Hill. In 1888, the club moved into its first clubhouse, a brick building at the corner of 12th and Wyandotte Streets.[4]

Clubhouse, 1922-2001

In 1922, having absorbed several other clubs, and with a membership of more than 600, the club built a 14-story beaux arts clubhouse (the Kansas City Club Building) at the corner of Thirteenth Street and Baltimore Avenue, designed by local architect, Charles A. Smith. The clubhouse included a large dining room, several bars, private meeting rooms, a banquet hall, athletic facilities, an indoor pool, six floors of guestrooms, and a rooftop terrace. The club quickly grew and entered into reciprocal arrangements with many other prominent clubs worldwide. Membership was opened to women in 1975.[4]

In 1987, the club had 2,180 members. By 2001, membership had dwindled to less than 900.[5] The club attributed this to the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which made private club dues non-deductible, and to cultural shifts of young professionals away from joining clubs.[6] The clubhouse also needed upgrades to its facilities that would have cost between $5 million and $10 million.[5]

Finally, effective July 31, 2001, the club agreed to merge with the University Club, a 100-year-old men's social club with 200 members at the corner of Ninth Street and Baltimore Avenue, and purchase the University Club's facilities, which were smaller and cost only $1 million to upgrade.[5] In 2002, a developer bought the Kansas City Club's 1922 building and turned it into loft apartments and a banquet hall, renaming it the Clubhouse on Baltimore.[7]

Since 2010, the club has lent space to Washington University in St. Louis's Olin Business School local "Executive MBA" program.[8][9] In November 2012, the club celebrated its 130th anniversary with a charity gala.[10]

After 133 years, the Kansas City Club closed on Saturday, May 23, 2015.[11] Epoch Developments, from Denver, bought the facility out of bankruptcy in mid-2015 and spent millions of dollars renovating, improving, upgrading the systems, and returning the facility to use as a private venue for corporate gatherings, weddings, and still squash or basketball plus a unique golf simulator.

In 2020, the building was relaunched as Hotel Kansas City. The first five floors were preserved in original condition and are meeting and event spaces.

Notable members[edit]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "Library District Walking Tour". Kansas City Public Library. Retrieved August 5, 2013.
  2. ^ "Kansas City Club Event Venue Collection". The Kansas City Club.
  3. ^ "United States Squash Racquets Association: Missouri facility locations". U.S. Squash. Archived from the original on July 17, 2011.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab Jerry T. Duggan, A History of the Kansas City Club: 1882-1982 (The Kansas City Club: 1982)
  5. ^ a b c Katie Hollar, "Kansas City Club, University Club will merge," Kansas City Business Journal (July 25, 2001)
  6. ^ Leslie Zganjar, "Kansas City Club has 30 days to decide, University Club president says," Kansas City Business Journal (May 25, 2001)
  7. ^ Rob Roberts, "Owners will convert Gumbel Building into condominiums," Kansas City Business Journal (May 8, 2005)
  8. ^ "Executive MBA Kansas City Program Launched by Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis". PRWeb.
  9. ^ "Executive Education Programs | Olin Business School". olin.wustl.edu.
  10. ^ ""Kansas City Club 130th Anniversary Celebration," Kansas City Independent (November 2012)".
  11. ^ Davis, Mark (26 May 2015). "The Kansas City Club padlocks its doors and pursues bankruptcy". Kansas City Star. Retrieved 19 July 2023.
  12. ^ "William E. Connelley, A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans (Chicago: Lewis, 1918)". Archived from the original on 2013-06-10. Retrieved 2013-08-07.
  13. ^ George Derby and James Terry White, The National Cyclopedia of American Biography (2012 ed.)
  14. ^ ""James Alexander Reed (1861-1944) Papers," University of Missouri-Kansas City Western Historical Manuscript Collection (retrieved Aug. 9, 2013)" (PDF).

External links[edit]

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39°06′11″N 94°35′04″W / 39.102931°N 94.584405°W / 39.102931; -94.584405

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