By Michael Bushnell
Northeast News
January 28, 2015

Hoping to bring more business to their block, merchants in the 300 block of East 12th Street organized a Ginger Club, using a Ginger Snap as an emblem.

The significance?

“Snappy merchants with plenty of snap in them.”

According to a Jan. 15, 1908, Kansas City Journal article, the club raised $500 to build large electric signs at either end of the block bearing the number 300 in figures seven- or eight-feet high.

“Five arc lights will be purchased and hung along the block on both sides of the street. The merchants will employ a man, whom they will dress in a white suit and cap, to keep the street between Oak and McGee streets clean. This man will be kept at work every day of the week except Sunday. Saturday afternoon at 3 o’clock beginning a week from Saturday, the members of the club will have 2,000 coupons distributed among people on the streets. One of these coupons will be worth $10 in trade, and two will be worth $5.”

The club later expanded their efforts to include all of 12th Street in the downtown area.

E.J. Richards, president of the Ginger Club, said merchants between Main Street and Walnut along 11th Street — Petticoat Lane — had an advantage over businesses less than a block away.

“Petticoat Lane is a name that everyone recognizes,” Richards said. “We want the women to know that ours is the cleanest block on the city, and the brightest at night. Even the Negro porters in the block are getting interested. Several of them have been to me today to know what they can do to help. ‘We want to do our best,’ they said.”

In this historic postcard published by the Elite Postcard Publishing company of Kansas City, MO, the newly hung “300” signs can be seen at each end of the block. Johnson’s Saloon is the building on the left in the postcard, opposite of I.V. Hucke’s Drug Store.

Today, the “old” central library and Kansas City School District headquarters occupy the former saloon site. A newly constructed, city-owned parking garage occupies the space where Hucke’s Drug Store once stood. The card was never mailed.