Pleasant Hill Pool Hall

Pleasant Hill Pool Hall is a bar and billiards room at 119 S 1st Street in the Pleasant Hill Downtown Historic District, Cass County, Missouri. The building was erected as a pool hall in 1907 and has operated as one continuously since — a claim that makes it, by a 1992 historical marker’s account, the oldest pool hall still operating in Missouri.

Description

The Pleasant Hill Pool Hall occupies a single-storey brick storefront on the west side of 1st Street in downtown Pleasant Hill, a block of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century commercial buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Pleasant Hill Downtown Historic District in 1994.¹² The building carries a Pleasant Hill Downtown Association interpretive marker mounted in 1992.²

The room has changed remarkably little. Kansas City magazine, visiting in 2023, reported that the establishment “retains many of its original features, from the barbacks and pool cue racks to the wood floors and intricate gold-tile ceilings,” and noted a local story that the tables inside have “floated three times.”³ During a renovation, signs were discovered beneath old wallpaper advertising “Kelly Pool 5 cents per que.”²

It operates as a bar as well as a billiards room, holding a Missouri Retail by Drink – Resort licence at the 1st Street address.⁴

On the “oldest” claim

Three different superlatives attach to this business and they should be kept distinct, because none of them has been independently adjudicated:

• The 1992 marker text states the pool hall “is believed to be the oldest in the state of Missouri still in operation.”²
• The business’s own Facebook page describes it as the “oldest continuously operating pool hall west of the Mississippi, and probably the third oldest in the USA.”⁵
• Kansas City magazine reported in 2023 that Pleasant Hill “is also home to the oldest pool hall in the United States.”³

The verifiable underlying fact is narrower and well-sourced: the present building was erected in 1907 specifically as a pool hall and has been one ever since.²³ “ — any independent verification of the state, regional or national “oldest” rankings.

Ownership and history

The first building on the site was destroyed by fire in 1893. In 1907 the present building was erected for a pool hall, constructed to carry a second storey that was never added.²

Ownership history is thinly documented. The 1992 marker names Jeffery Johnson as “the current owner” as of that year.² A 2010 bar-journal entry recorded the hall as being operated by a Vikings USA Bootheel MO Post 190 chapter, though this is a self-published source and is not treated here as established.⁶ The current Missouri alcohol licence of record is held by Six Happys LLC trading as Pleasant Hill Pool Hall.⁴

“ — the identity of the present-day owner or owners, the chain of ownership between 1907 and 1992, and the principals behind Six Happys LLC.

The hall has served as a filming location; a Facebook community group for the business states it was used as the setting for several scenes in a production, but the production is not named in a source verified here. “

Links

• Facebook (primary web presence; no independent domain located): https://www.facebook.com/phpoolhall/

Sources

Footnotes

1. “Pleasant Hill 2026 Membership Directory,” Pleasant Hill Missouri Chamber of Commerce (published via ChamberVu / Town Square Publications) — source for the Pleasant Hill Downtown Historic District’s 1994 National Register listing. Accessed 2026-08-26. URL ↩

2. “119 First Street — Historic Building circa 1907,” historical marker erected 1992 by the Pleasant Hill Downtown Association; catalogued in The Historical Marker Database, marker 88567, page last revised December 19, 2025. Photographed by William Fischer, Jr., August 25, 2015. URL ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

3. Reece Parker, “A theater is the center of a bold revitalization of quaint Pleasant Hill,” Kansas City magazine, April 5, 2023. URL ↩ ↩² ↩³

4. “Missouri Primary Alcohol Licenses,” Missouri Division of Alcohol and Tobacco Control, data.mo.gov dataset d9fr-pncw; rows updated 2026-08-26. Record: licence 222102, Retail by Drink – Resort, SIX HAPPYS LLC dba PLEASANT HILL POOL HALL, 119 South 1st Street, Pleasant Hill, Cass County. URL ↩ ↩²

5. “Pleasant Hill Pool Hall,” official Facebook page. Accessed 2026-08-26. URL ↩

6. “Pleasant Hill Pool Hall,” Scooter’s Bar Journal, March 2010. Self-published blog; cited here only for the 2010 operator claim, which is not treated as established. URL ↩