By Michael Bushnell
Northeast News
January 13, 2016
“The Hotel President located at 1329 Baltimore opened in January of 1926 is 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 workers.”

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 President closed in the 1980s and 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 hotel to purchase artifacts like plates, bowls, silverware — even the original watercolor paintings off the walls, sans frames, of course.

Today, the hotel stands as a testament of time and has proudly re-opened after a $40 million restoration project.