Kansas City Club

{{Short description|Historical gentlemen's club of Kansas City, Missouri}}

{{Infobox company

| name = The Kansas City Club

| logo = Kcclublogo.jpg

| type= Private club

| foundation = {{start date and age|1882}}

| defunct = {{end date and age|2015}}

| location = 918 Baltimore Avenue
Kansas City, Missouri 64105

| website = {{URL|kansascityclub.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

File:Kcclub.jpg

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.{{Cite web|url=http://www.kclibrary.org/district-tour|title=Library District Walking Tour|publisher=Kansas City Public Library|accessdate=August 5, 2013|archive-date=November 1, 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121101152243/http://www.kclibrary.org/district-tour|url-status=dead}} 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.{{Cite web|url=https://kansascityclub.com/|title=Kansas City Club Event Venue Collection|website=The Kansas City Club}} 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.{{Cite web|url=http://www.ussquash.com/ssm/pages/Club_information.asp?orgid=127|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20110717181246/http://www.ussquash.com/ssm/pages/Club_information.asp?orgid=127|url-status=dead| publisher=U.S. Squash | title=United States Squash Racquets Association: Missouri facility locations|archivedate=July 17, 2011}}

History

File:Kansas City Club, Kansas City, Mo. - LOC 4a13242a.jpg

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.Jerry T. Duggan, A History of the Kansas City Club: 1882-1982 (The Kansas City Club: 1982)

File:Kcclubbuilding.jpg

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.

In 1987, the club had 2,180 members. By 2001, membership had dwindled to less than 900.[http://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/stories/2001/07/23/daily16.html Katie Hollar, "Kansas City Club, University Club will merge," Kansas City Business Journal (July 25, 2001)] 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.[http://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/stories/2001/05/21/daily31.html Leslie Zganjar, "Kansas City Club has 30 days to decide, University Club president says," Kansas City Business Journal (May 25, 2001)] The clubhouse also needed upgrades to its facilities that would have cost between $5 million and $10 million.

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. 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.[http://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/stories/2005/05/09/story8.html Rob Roberts, "Owners will convert Gumbel Building into condominiums," Kansas City Business Journal (May 8, 2005)]

Since 2010, the club has lent space to Washington University in St. Louis's Olin Business School local "Executive MBA" program.{{Cite news|url=https://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/03/prweb3719854.htm|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160305200647/http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/03/prweb3719854.htm|url-status=dead|archive-date=March 5, 2016|title=Executive MBA Kansas City Program Launched by Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis|website=PRWeb}}{{Cite web|url=https://olin.wustl.edu/EN-US/executive-programs/Pages/default.aspx|title=Executive Education Programs | Olin Business School|website=olin.wustl.edu}} In November 2012, the club celebrated its 130th anniversary with a charity gala.{{Cite web|url=http://www.kcindependent.com/2012/11/kansas-city-club-8/|title="Kansas City Club 130th Anniversary Celebration," Kansas City Independent (November 2012)}}

After 133 years, the Kansas City Club closed on Saturday, May 23, 2015.{{cite news | last=Davis | first=Mark | title=The Kansas City Club padlocks its doors and pursues bankruptcy | newspaper=Kansas City Star | date=26 May 2015 | url=https://www.kansascity.com/news/business/article22360131.html | access-date=19 July 2023}} 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

Edward H. Allen, 10th Mayor of Kansas City (1867–68)
Victor B. Bell, lumber magnate
Richard L. Berkley, 50th Mayor of Kansas City (1979–91)
Alden J. Blethen, newspaper publisher
Pasco Bowman, judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit (1983-2003)
Omar Bradley, senior U.S. Army field commander in North Africa and Europe during World War II
Thomas B. Bullene, owner of the Emery, Bird, Thayer Dry Goods Company, 22nd Mayor of Kansas City (1882–83)
Kersey Coates, early Kansas City hotel magnate
Harry Darby, U.S. Senator from Kansas (1949–50)
Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th President of the United States (1953–61)
John B. Gage, 45th Mayor of Kansas City (1940–46)
Ewing Kauffman, pharmaceutical magnate and owner of the Kansas City Royals
Charles E. Kearney, early railroad magnate
R. Crosby Kemper, banker and philanthropist
R. Crosby Kemper Jr., banker and philanthropist
Robert A. Long, lumber magnate{{Cite web |url=http://skyways.lib.ks.us/genweb/archives/1918ks/biol/longra.html |title=William E. Connelley, A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans (Chicago: Lewis, 1918) |access-date=2013-08-07 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130610042556/http://skyways.lib.ks.us/genweb/archives/1918ks/biol/longra.html |archive-date=2013-06-10 |url-status=dead }}
August Meyer, mining magnate
Ralph Leroy Nafziger, founder of Hostess BrandsGeorge Derby and James Terry White, The National Cyclopedia of American Biography (2012 ed.)
Tom Pendergast, Democratic Party political boss
Charles H. Price II, businessman, U.S. Ambassador to Belgium (1981–83), U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom (1983–89)
James A. Reed, U.S. Senator from Missouri (1911–29), 32nd Mayor of Kansas City (1900–04){{Cite web|url=http://www.umkc.edu/whmckc/collections/INVTRY/KC0443.pdf|title="James Alexander Reed (1861-1944) Papers," University of Missouri-Kansas City Western Historical Manuscript Collection (retrieved Aug. 9, 2013)}}
Jack Steadman, Kansas City Chiefs general manager (1966–76), president (1976–89), chairman (1989-2005), and vice-chairman (2005–07)
Leander J. Talbott, realtor and politician, 24th Mayor of Kansas City (1884–85)
Joseph P. Teasdale, 48th Governor of Missouri (1977–81)
Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States (1945–53), 34th Vice President of the United States (1945), U.S. Senator from Missouri (1935–45)
Robert T. Van Horn, lawyer, U.S. Representative from Missouri (1865–71), 6th Mayor of Kansas City (1861–62, 1863–65)
William Warner, lawyer, U.S. Senator from Missouri (1905–11), U.S. Representative from Missouri (1885–89), 13th Mayor of Kansas City (1871–72)
William L. Webster, 39th Missouri Attorney General (1985–93)
Charles Evans Whittaker, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (1957–62)
David Wysong, Kansas politician