Hotel Kansas City (Kansas City Club)

The Kansas City Club Building was constructed between 1918 and 1922 on the northwest corner of Baltimore Avenue and 13th Street in the heart of the Central Business District. Designed as a clubhouse for the Kansas City Club, an exclusive organization for the city’s business and civic leaders, the building originally contained exceptionally appointed common spaces for dining, entertaining, and recreation, as well as multiple floors of private sleeping rooms. Previous renovations converted the upper half of the building into market rate apartments, rehabilitated most of the dining/entertainment spaces on the lower floors, and converted the top-floor apartments into a rooftop event space.  

In 2016, MFH Properties, LLC embarked on a rehabilitation project using state and federal historic tax credits to convert the building into the Hotel Kansas City under the Hyatt banner. In the conversion to hotel, the project retained and refreshed the opulent gathering and entertainment spaces, specifically the lobby and multiple ballrooms with their ornate wood paneling and plaster ceilings, intricate wood ornament and stained-glass windows. These restored rooms serve as elegant event spaces. 

Rosin Preservation worked closely with the ownership group and design team throughout the project to ensure the unique and highly decorative spaces within the building were preserved while still meeting the needs of the new use. The primary work focused on reconfiguring the upper floors as hotel rooms, including the Walnut Room on the sixth floor and the former swimming pool on the thirteenth floor. In these two spaces, the dominant historic finishes (wood paneling and ornate ceramic tile, respectively) were retained and incorporated into the design of the hotel rooms. Historic partitions and finishes had been removed during the previous conversion to apartments, thus there were no historic materials left to preserve during this project. This allowed the developer some flexibility in creating an optimal configuration and selecting modern finishes for the hotel rooms. 

This stunning transformation preserved most of the signature spaces within the building while implementing a new, compatible use. Centrally located between the Kansas City Convention Center and the Streetcar, the Hotel Kansas City contributes to the vibrant redevelopment of the area.