Commerce Tower · KS.City

Commerce Tower, at 911 Main Street in Downtown Kansas City, is a 32-story, 421-foot office tower completed in 1965 for the Commerce Trust Company — the bank that became Commerce Bancshares.¹² Designed by the local firm Keene, Simpson & Murphy in a Miesian idiom of precast stone and glass curtain wall, it was the first skyscraper of local design in Kansas City since City Hall.¹ It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on 11 April 2014 and reopened after a roughly $70-90 million rehabilitation as a mixed-use “vertical neighborhood” of apartments, offices, retail and a downtown university campus.³⁴⁵

History

Construction, 1963-1965

Commerce Tower was built at Ninth and Main as an expansion project of the Commerce Trust Company, the Kansas City bank at the center of what became Commerce Bancshares.² The building was completed on 2 April 1965 and opened with a 500-person reception in the lobby.²

The topping-out was treated as a civic event: the final steel beam was signed by thousands of Kansas Citians, including former president Harry S. Truman, before it was hoisted into place.¹² Sources disagree sharply on how many signatures — Wikipedia says 18,000, the Clio entry says 180,000.¹²

The architects, Keene, Simpson & Murphy, moved their own offices into the finished building.¹

Top of the Tower

The top two floors housed the Top of the Tower restaurant, an unusual multi-cuisine operation that served five different national cuisines in separate dining rooms, each decorated to match — among them the French Tour d’Argent room and the German Salzburg Haus, both on the 30th floor.¹⁶⁷ The Missouri Valley Special Collections holds photographs of the rooms.⁶⁷

Commerce Bank departs, 1985

Commerce Bank moved its headquarters operations from the tower to 1000 Walnut Street in 1985, twenty years after the building opened.¹ The bank’s older 1908 Commerce Trust building stands across the block; both structures were later folded into the Commerce Trust Company Historic District, listed on the National Register on 9 November 2015.³

National Register listing and redevelopment, 2013-2017

Commerce Tower was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on 11 April 2014, opening the door to federal and state historic tax credits for a rehabilitation.³

Commerce Tower Group LLC announced a conversion of the building to mixed use, initially budgeted at about $70 million and initially scoped at roughly 160,000 sq ft of office space plus about 265 Class A apartments, with retail on the first floor, offices on floors 2-14 and 24-30, and apartments on floors 15-23.⁴ A separate account describes the project as a $90 million mix of office, residential and educational uses, driven in part by construction of the KC Streetcar line directly outside the main entrance.¹

As built, the finished project delivered 355 market-rate apartments in a 558,760-sq-ft renovation that also contains an early-childhood learning center, an undergraduate/graduate university campus, retail and restaurant space, an indoor dog park, a theater room, a rooftop pool and terrace, and greenspace.⁵ Ryan Companies provided architecture and construction management; the work required about $10 million of asbestos abatement and had to satisfy National Register review.⁵ The building is LEED Gold certified and participates in Kansas City’s energy benchmarking program and a HUD green initiative.⁵

Architecture

Commerce Tower is a Miesian office tower — a concrete-clad steel frame with glazed curtain walls, stripped of the ornament that characterized Kansas City’s 1930s Art Deco towers.²³ The facade combines precast stone and glass, which was a distinctive treatment for Kansas City at the time.¹²

Height: 421 ft (128.3 m) to roof¹
Floors: 32 (some sources, including the building’s own marketing and several listing sites, say 30)¹⁸
Floor area: 438,070 sq ft per Wikipedia; 463,495 sq ft per the 2013 redevelopment announcement; 558,760 sq ft per the renovation contractor¹⁴⁵
Architect: Keene, Simpson & Murphy¹³
Rank: described by Wikipedia as the ninth-tallest habitable structure in the Kansas City metropolitan area¹

Ryan Companies states that the building carried the first glass curtain wall west of the Mississippi River; no second source for that claim was located.⁵

Occupants

Since the conversion the tower has functioned as a stacked mix of uses:

Use	Note
Commerce Tower Apartments	355 market-rate studio, one- and two-bedroom units, up to 2,108 sq ft; managed by Maxus Properties⁵⁸
Park University Downtown Campus	Park University’s downtown Kansas City campus operates in the building¹⁸
Early childhood learning center / daycare	Part of the delivered program⁵
Office and retail	Lower and upper floors⁴⁵

Crossroads Preparatory Academy, a Kansas City charter high school, opened in fall 2017 in a temporary home inside the Park University Downtown Campus at Commerce Tower before moving to its permanent building at 816 Broadway.⁹ Whether any school occupies the tower today is not established by a source located for this page.

Significance to Kansas City

Commerce Tower marks the point where Kansas City’s skyline switched idioms. The towers that preceded it — the Power and Light Building, 909 Walnut, City Hall — are stepped Art Deco masonry from the early 1930s. Commerce Tower is a flat-topped glass-and-precast slab, and it was the first skyscraper designed by a Kansas City firm since City Hall three decades earlier.¹² Its 2014 National Register listing is itself notable: it recognized a 1960s building as historic, an unusually recent vintage for the register at the time.³

The conversion matters for a second reason. Commerce Tower is one of the largest examples of downtown Kansas City’s office-to-residential wave — the same move made at the Power and Light Building and 909 Walnut — and it did so as a mixed-use stack rather than a straight apartment conversion, keeping offices, a university and childcare in the building.⁵ Its front door sits on the KC Streetcar line, which was part of the redevelopment case.¹

Visiting

Address: 911 Main St, Kansas City, MO 64105¹
Public access: Private residential and office building; ground-floor retail and restaurant space open to the public⁵
Transit: On the KC Streetcar Main Street line¹

Neighborhood context

Neighborhood: Downtown KC, Main Street at Ninth Street
Adjacent landmarks: Power and Light Building, Town Pavilion, One Kansas City Place, Kansas City City Hall

Sources

Wikipedia — “Commerce Tower.” — asserts: 911 Main Street, Kansas City, MO; completed 1965; 421 ft (128.3 m) roof height; 32 floors (article elsewhere says 30-story); 438,070 sq ft (40,698 m²); architect Keene, Simpson & Murphy, who moved their offices into the building; precast stone and glass curtain wall; ninth-tallest habitable structure in the Kansas City metropolitan area; first locally designed skyscraper in Kansas City since City Hall; “Top of the Tower” restaurant on the top two floors serving five ethnic cuisines in separate dining areas; final beam signed by 18,000 people including Harry S. Truman; originally housed Commerce Bancshares headquarters; Commerce Bank relocated to 1000 Walnut Street in 1985; hosts Park University’s downtown campus; ownership change expected 2013 and a $90 million mix of office, residential and educational uses, partly due to KC Streetcar construction at the main entrance. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷ ↩¹⁸ ↩¹⁹
Clio — “Commerce Tower” (entry 182936) — asserts: 30-story Commerce Tower built 1965 at Ninth and Main as part of Commerce Trust Company’s expansion; designed by local firm Keene, Simpson & Murphy; design drawn from the Modernist movement; final steel beam signed by 180,000 residents including former president Harry S. Truman; completed 2 April 1965 with a 500-person grand opening in the lobby; Top of the Tower restaurant on the top two floors serving five ethnic cuisines in themed rooms including the French Tour d’Argent and German Salzburg Haus on the 30th floor; precast stone and glass curtain-wall facade. (Accessed via search-result summary; direct fetch returned HTTP 403.) ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸
Missouri State Parks — “Jackson County National Register Listings.” — asserts: “Commerce Tower, 911 Main St., Kansas City (4/11/14)”; “Commerce Trust Company Historic District, bounded by East Ninth, Walnut, East 10th and Main streets, Kansas City (11/9/15).” Related nomination: Missouri SHPO — “Commerce Trust Company Historic District, National Register of Historic Places Registration Form.” mostateparks.com — describes Commerce Tower (1964) as a 32-story Miesian office tower with concrete-clad steel structural system and glazed curtain walls. (PDF is a scanned image file; text not machine-extractable on fetch — figures above taken from indexed search text and should be re-verified against the printed form.) ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶
REBusinessOnline — “Commerce Tower in Kansas City to Undergo $70M Redevelopment.” — asserts: Commerce Tower Group LLC (CTG) plans to convert 911 Main St. to mixed use at an estimated $70 million; 160,000 sq ft of office space and approximately 265 Class A apartment units; first-floor retail; fitness facility, conference rooms, rooftop green space and pool; floor 1 retail, floors 2-14 and 24-30 offices, floors 15-23 apartments; total building 463,495 sq ft; office space completion summer 2014, full delivery spring 2015; Cassidy Turley engaged for leasing and management (Michael Lanning, Thomas Houts, Jeffrey Winters). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
Ryan Companies — “Commerce Tower” (project page) — asserts: 558,760 sq ft across 32 stories; 355 market-rate apartments; mixed residential, commercial and retail with educational facilities, childcare, dining, entertainment and recreation; early childhood learning center, undergraduate/graduate university space, indoor dog park, theater, restaurants, greenspace; LEED Gold certified; participates in Kansas City energy benchmarking and HUD green initiative; architecture and construction management by Ryan; 1964 Miesian structure described as carrying the first glass curtain wall west of the Mississippi River; $10 million of asbestos abatement; historic tax credits and National Register compliance; ties into the new streetcar system. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹
KC History (Missouri Valley Special Collections, Kansas City Public Library) — “Top of the Tower Restaurant - Tour D’Argent.” — asserts: French-themed Tour d’Argent portion of the Top of the Tower restaurant on the 30th floor of Commerce Tower. ↩ ↩²
KC History (Missouri Valley Special Collections, Kansas City Public Library) — “Top of the Tower Restaurant - Salzburg Haus.” — asserts: German-themed Salzburg Haus portion of the Top of the Tower restaurant on the 30th floor, described as a Viennese rathskeller thirty stories above the city. ↩ ↩²
Commerce Tower Apartments (official leasing site) — asserts: “clean, Miesian-style architecture”; studio, one- and two-bedroom apartments up to 2,108 sq ft; rooftop pool and terrace, 24-hour fitness center and yoga room, indoor dog park, theatre room, garage parking; located at 911 Main Street; Park University listed among nearby institutions. See also Maxus Properties — “Commerce Tower Apartments.” maxusprop.com ↩ ↩² ↩³
Crossroads Charter Schools — “Preparatory Academy.” — asserts: Crossroads Preparatory Academy (originally Crossroads High School) began courses in fall 2017 in a temporary home in the Park University Downtown Campus within Commerce Tower; permanent home is the Thayer building at 816 Broadway. (Accessed via search-result summary; direct fetch returned HTTP 403.) ↩