Michael Bushnell
Northeast News

The Hotel President, located at 1329 Baltimore, opened in January of 1926 as a magnificent fifteen-story structure incorporating therein all that is best in modern hotel construction.

“The hotel contains 450 rooms and 450 baths, is beautifully furnished and is complete in every detail. The Congress and Junior Assembly rooms on the fourteenth floor have a seating capacity of 1,000. The Aztec room on the second floor is one of the most unique in the country and the first to exemplify the craft of America’s earliest aboriginal art works.”

So reads the description on the back of this Hall Bros. postcard published in 1929. The hotel was one of the many prominent hotels in downtown Kansas City, sharing the stage with such hotels as The Baltimore, The Midland, The Hotel Kupper, The Aladdin, The Westgate and more. The Hotel President was built in 1926 by Niagara Falls businessman Frank Dudley, and was operated by the United Hotels Company. During its heyday the Hotel President was the headquarters for the Republican National Convention in 1928, where Herbert Hoover was that party’s Presidential nominee.

The Drum Room, one of the hotel’s signature lounges, drew national entertainment names such as Frank Sinatra, Benny Goodman and nationally recognized local talent Marilyn Maye. Maye, a Kansas City treasure, will soon turn 90 years old and is still actively performing today.

The President closed in 1980 as downtown continued its decline, ultimately bottoming out in the mid 1980s. The Hotel somehow managed to avoid the wrecking ball, which befell so many other downtown structures. A public sale in the early 1990s allowed the public into the dusty hallways and stairwells of the hotel to purchase artifacts like plates, bowls, silverware, even the original watercolor paintings off the walls of the guest rooms, sans frames, of course.

The hotel stood vacant for almost fifteen years. In 2005 it reopened after a $45 million dollar restoration and renovation by local Hotelier Ron Jury. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.