Coates House Hotel

The Coates House Hotel at 1005 Broadway was, for roughly a half-century, Kansas City’s premier hotel — a six-story luxury house on Quality Hill that grew out of a failed 1860s hotel acquired by land developer Kersey Coates in 1870 and was rebuilt in stages between 1886 and 1891 to designs by the Boston-trained firm Van Brunt & Howe.¹ It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on February 23, 1972, was gutted by the deadliest fire in Kansas City history on January 28, 1978, and was rehabilitated into apartments in the mid-1980s as part of the Quality Hill redevelopment.²³

History

The Old Coates House (1850s-1889)

The site lay within Coates’ Addition, an approximately 120-acre tract that Kersey Coates purchased in 1855 and developed over the following two decades from cow pasture into a prosperous residential and commercial district — the origin of Quality Hill. At the time, the commercial hub of the young city was about ten blocks north.¹

The original hotel was financed by a company formed for the purpose, with Coates among its promoters. Construction stalled at the Civil War; the completed foundations were incorporated into a federal fort. Work resumed after the war and the hotel was finished in the late 1860s — the Historic Kansas City Foundation gives the opening year as 1868 — under the proprietorship of W. A. Eldridge of Lawrence, Kansas, whose brother Thomas A. Eldridge managed it.¹³

The old building stood five stories, 100 feet along 10th Street and 142 feet along Broadway, brick with street-level shops and a mansard roof. Its architect and contractor was John Johnson, an Englishman who also served as Kansas City’s third elected mayor.¹

The hotel failed commercially. Coates acquired it in 1870, at which point it took the name Coates House.¹ It stood diagonally across 10th Street from the Coates Opera House — the first major entertainment venue in Kansas City, built by Coates in the mid-1860s and destroyed by fire in 1901 — and the pairing made the hotel a natural stop for touring theatrical companies.¹

Rebuilding in stages (1886-1891)

In 1886 Coates began adding a new wing at the south end, extending the building’s long axis roughly 80 feet. The wing was unfinished when Coates died in April 1887, but by that autumn it was complete enough to quarter President Grover Cleveland, his bride Frances, and their entourage in the southwest corner of the third floor.¹ The Historic Kansas City Foundation records that the Clevelands watched Kansas City’s first Priests of Pallas parade from their room on October 13, 1887.³

About a year after Coates’s death his widow and family resumed the project. The old hotel was demolished and the south addition was enlarged into the New Coates House Hotel, opened with a gala celebration on January 10, 1891.¹ Van Brunt & Howe designed the building; C. E. Clark of Boston was contractor, under a contract calling for completion by January 1, 1891.¹

President Benjamin Harrison stayed at the hotel during a Kansas City visit on October 11, 1890 — while the north section was still under construction — occupying a suite one floor below the rooms Cleveland had used three years earlier. The nomination form treats the two presidential stays, both in the unfinished building, as evidence of the hotel’s standing relative to its local competitors.¹

Decline and the 1978 fire

By the 1970s the building had passed out of first-class hotel use. The 1972 National Register nomination describes it as threatened by neglect and vandalism, and notes that the January 1971 “Kansas City Missouri Downtown Plan” — prepared for the city’s Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority — programmed acquisition of the site for a high-rise parking structure in its 1975-1980 phase.¹

By the late 1970s the building operated largely as single-room-occupancy housing. Before dawn on January 28, 1978, fire broke out in the south wing; twenty residents died and more than 100 were left homeless. It remains the deadliest fire in Kansas City history. Full account: 1978 Coates House Hotel fire.²

Rehabilitation (1979-1987)

Following the fire, the Historic Kansas City Foundation opened negotiations to buy the building and prevent its demolition; the sale closed in July 1979. The foundation held the property for more than five years, absorbing carrying costs, until McCormack Baron & Associates of St. Louis (later McCormack Baron Salazar) bought it as part of the firm’s Quality Hill redevelopment. Exterior renovation was completed in 1987, with the upper stories converted to apartments for moderate- to upper-income tenants.³ Wikipedia dates the restoration work 1984-1987.²

The building operates today as apartments and condominiums. In August 2009 a new owner, CRES Management, hosted an open house with the Historic Kansas City Foundation to unveil a returned Kersey Coates plaque on the building.³ Current ownership has not been verified against a recent source.

Architecture

The 1972 nomination describes the surviving building — the 1886-1887 south wing plus the 1889-1891 north section — as a late-nineteenth-century urban hotel built with contemporary design systems and luxury features.¹

Plan and dimensions: 220 feet along Broadway (the primary, west facade) and 142 feet along 10th Street; six stories; a light well on the east side gives the building a “U” plan¹
Walls: red pressed brick with stucco-faced limestone belt courses above; stone painted white alternating with brick courses at the first story; ornamental stone insets between the fifth- and sixth-story windows; molded brick in a checkered square-and-ball pattern above the sixth-story windows¹
Structure: brick bearing walls with an interior metal column-and-beam frame — a fire-resistant system of the period¹
Fenestration: the salient exterior feature — double-hung windows in bays running through the second to sixth stories, grouped between projecting polygonal and rectangular bay windows of wood construction clad in heavy-gauge ornamental sheet metal¹
Balcony: a second-floor balcony crosses the Broadway and 10th Street facades on ornate iron brackets, widening into an entrance porch on four cast-iron pillars at the main entrance¹
Interior: an open-well “U”-plan main stair with white Italian marble treads and risers; terra cotta floor tile in geometric patterns; paneled wood wainscoting in the lobby, corridors, and second-floor main dining room; birds-eye maple wainscoting and beveled mirrors in the most luxurious suites; basement Turkish bath and barber shop¹

Features present originally but already lost by 1972 include a crenellated parapet carrying the name “Coates House” in stone on both street facades, copper-clad mansardic-domed belvederes at the corners (the one at 10th and Broadway used as a lookout), an iron balustrade at the second-floor balcony, and a four-story rear wing that closed the court into a four-square plan.¹

Significance to Kansas City

The Coates House is the building that made Quality Hill — the National Register nomination frames it as a luxury hotel “built on a site of a mid-nineteenth century, urban hotel which precipitated development of its neighborhood.”¹ Kersey Coates put a hotel and an opera house in a pasture ten blocks from the commercial district and pulled the city’s fashionable quarter to them.

It is also one of the surviving Kansas City works of Van Brunt & Howe, the Boston firm that relocated its practice to Kansas City in 1886. Much of the firm’s local output is gone: the Kansas City Club (1888) and the Gibraltar Building (1888, razed 1971) among them.¹ Henry Van Brunt (1832-1903), a Harvard graduate who trained under Richard Morris Hunt and partnered with William Robert Ware before joining Frank M. Howe, was as well known for his architectural writing as for his buildings; Howe (1849-1909) later became senior partner of Howe, Hoit & Cutler, a lineage that runs forward to Power and Light Building architect Henry F. Hoit.¹

Finally, the building is a preservation case study: slated in a 1971 downtown plan for replacement by a parking garage, listed on the National Register in 1972, gutted by fire in 1978, bought by a preservation nonprofit that carried it for five years, and returned to use in 1987.¹³

Notable dates

1855 — Kersey Coates purchases the ~120-acre Coates’ Addition¹
late 1860s (1868 per HKCF) — original Broadway/Coates House hotel completed under Eldridge proprietorship¹³
1870 — Coates acquires the failing hotel; it becomes the “Coates House”¹
1886-1887 — south wing added; Grover Cleveland stays, autumn 1887¹
April 1887 — Kersey Coates dies with the wing unfinished¹
October 11, 1890 — Benjamin Harrison stays during construction of the north section¹
January 10, 1891 — New Coates House Hotel opens¹
February 23, 1972 — listed on the National Register of Historic Places, ref. #72000715²⁴
January 28, 1978 — fire kills 20; deadliest in city history²
July 1979 — Historic Kansas City Foundation closes purchase³
1987 — exterior renovation completed; upper floors converted to apartments³

Visiting

Address: 1005 Broadway, Kansas City, MO 64105 (Broadway at 10th Street)¹
Public access: Private residential building; exterior viewable from Broadway and 10th Street

Neighborhood context

Neighborhood: Quality Hill, on the western edge of Downtown KC
Related hotels: Muehlebach Hotel, Savoy Hotel, Hotel President

Sources

National Park Service / Missouri State Parks — “Coates House Hotel,” National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination Form (1971-1972) — asserts: 1005 Broadway, Kansas City, Jackson County; original hotel completed late 1860s, enlarged 1886-1887 by a south wing, original building replaced 1889-1891; specific dates “S. Wing: 1886-1887; N. Section: 1889-1891”; 220 ft on Broadway, 142 ft on 10th Street, six stories, “U” plan light well on east; red pressed brick with stucco-faced limestone belt courses; brick bearing walls with metal column-and-beam interior frame described as a contemporary fire-resistant system; second-floor balcony on iron brackets, entrance porch on four cast-iron pillars; original crenellated parapet inscribed “Coates House,” copper-clad mansardic-domed belvederes at corners, iron balustrade, four-story rear wing forming a four-square plan — all removed; white Italian marble open-well main stair; terra cotta geometric floor tile; birds-eye maple wainscoting in luxury bedrooms; Turkish bath and barber shop in basement; Coates’ Addition ~120 acres purchased by Kersey Coates in 1855, commercial hub then ~10 blocks north; original hotel financed by a company, uncompleted at the Civil War with foundations incorporated into a federal fort, completed under proprietorship of W. A. Eldridge of Lawrence, Kansas, managed by brother Thomas A. Eldridge; old hotel five stories, 100 ft on 10th Street, 142 ft on Broadway, brick, mansard roof; John Johnson architect and contractor, an Englishman and Kansas City’s third elected mayor; Coates acquired the failing hotel in 1870; Coates Opera House diagonally across 10th Street, built mid-1860s, burned 1901; south wing begun 1886 extending the long axis ~80 ft, unfinished at Coates’s death April 1887, sufficiently complete by that autumn to house President Grover Cleveland and his bride in the third-floor southwest corner; widow and family resumed the project about a year later, old hotel demolished, new hotel opened January 10, 1891 with a gala; Van Brunt & Howe architects, office opened in Kansas City 1886 having moved from Boston; C. E. Clark of Boston contractor, contract completion date January 1, 1891; Henry Van Brunt 1832-1903, Harvard 1854, trained under George Snell and Richard M. Hunt, partnership with William Robert Ware; firm’s Kansas City work included the Kansas City Club (1888, razed) and the Gibraltar Building (1888, razed 1971); Frank M. Howe 1849-1909, MIT, later senior partner of Howe, Hoit & Cutler; Kersey Coates 1823-1887, born Sadsbury, Pennsylvania, Quaker, anti-slavery, lawyer, came west 1854; President Benjamin Harrison stayed October 11, 1890 one floor below Cleveland’s rooms; 1971 “Kansas City Missouri Downtown Plan” for the Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority programmed acquisition of the site for a high-rise parking structure in Phase 2 (1975-1980); building then threatened by neglect and vandalism. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸ ↩¹⁹ ↩²⁰ ↩²¹ ↩²² ↩²³ ↩²⁴ ↩²⁵ ↩²⁶ ↩²⁷ ↩²⁸ ↩²⁹ ↩³⁰ ↩³¹
Wikipedia — “Coates House Hotel.” — asserts: 1005 Broadway; NRHP reference #72000715, listed February 23, 1972; original design 1857 by English architect John Johnson; built in the late 1860s as the Broadway Hotel; renamed by Kersey Coates in 1870; south wing added beginning 1886; rebuilt 1888-1891 after Coates’s death, opening January 10, 1891; Van Brunt & Howe architects, C. E. Clark builder; six stories, brick with stone ornamentation; marble main staircase; original crenellated parapet, turrets, balconies; barber shop, florist, bonnet shop, Turkish baths; nicknamed “the hotel of the presidents”; guests included Presidents Cleveland, Harrison, McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, plus Edwin Booth, William Jennings Bryan and Oscar Wilde; fire January 28, 1978 at about 4 a.m. killed 20, mostly by jumping from upper floors; Historic Kansas City Foundation purchased the ruins July 1979; McCormack Baron Salazar restored the building 1984-1987; now an apartment building. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵
Historic Kansas City Foundation — “Historic Coates House Marks the Survival of Demolition with Honorary Plaque and Celebration on August 14th” (press release, August 1, 2009) — asserts: CRES Management was the new owner of the Quality Hill Condominiums and apartment homes in 2009 and hosted an August 14 open house to unveil the returned Kersey Coates plaque; HKCF began negotiations to purchase the building after the January 1978 fire to save it from demolition, closing the sale in July 1979; HKCF held the building more than five years before McCormack Baron & Associates of St. Louis purchased it as part of their Quality Hill redevelopment project; exterior renovation completed 1987 with upper stories converted to apartments for moderate to upper income levels; the Coates House hotel “opened in 1868”; President Grover Cleveland and his bride viewed Kansas City’s first Priests of Pallas parade from their room on October 13, 1887. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹
Missouri State Parks — “National Register Listings by County: Gasconade-Jackson.” — asserts: Coates House Hotel, Kansas City, Jackson County, is a National Register listing. ↩