724-room hotel at 1 East Pershing Road within the Crown Center complex; a 20-story Brutalist tower designed by Harry Weese and opened in May 1973 as the Crown Center Hotel; connected via the enclosed Link walkway to Crown Center Shops and Union Station; operates today under the Westin brand (Marriott International).
History
The hotel grew directly out of Hallmark Cards founder Joyce C. Hall’s vision for Crown Center — an 85-acre mixed-use redevelopment on land surrounding the Hallmark headquarters that Hall conceived in the early 1960s as a model for private-sector urban renewal. Hall spent much of that decade consulting architects, designers, and real-estate advisors, including advice from his friend Walt Disney, before ground was broken on the larger Crown Center complex in September 1968.
Construction on the hotel began in 1971. Hallmark commissioned Chicago architect Harry Weese — later known for designing the Washington, D.C., Metro system — to design the building in a Brutalist idiom. The hotel opened in May 1973 as the Crown Center Hotel, managed by Western International Hotels, making it one of the first major facilities to open within the Crown Center development.
Western International Hotels rebranded as Westin Hotels in 1981, and the property was renamed The Westin Crown Center shortly thereafter. It has operated under the Westin name — now part of Marriott International — continuously since.
A renovation was completed in 2013. The hotel’s sister property across the complex, the Hyatt Regency Crown Center (now Sheraton Kansas City Hotel at Crown Center), opened in 1980; the two hotels together anchored Crown Center’s convention and business hospitality offering from the outset.
The hotel
The Westin Crown Center rises 20 stories and offers 724 guest rooms, including club-level accommodations and top-floor suites equipped with grand pianos, skylights, and full kitchens. The building is constructed against a natural limestone escarpment, which Weese incorporated into the interior: a 60-foot waterfall and five-story tropical rock garden carved from the exposed limestone cliff forms the lobby’s centerpiece and remains one of the most-photographed interior spaces in Kansas City.
Amenities include Kansas City’s largest heated outdoor pool (open year-round with indoor access), a fitness center with whirlpool, sauna, steam room, and jogging track, and tennis courts on the fourth floor. The hotel’s restaurant, One East Urban Kitchen + Bar, serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Meeting and event facilities total 53,873 square feet across 31 flexible rooms.
Location and connections
The hotel sits at the northeastern edge of the Crown Center complex at 1 East Pershing Road, adjacent to the Crown Center Shops and within walking distance of the Liberty Memorial. Its most distinctive geographic feature is The Link — an 880-foot enclosed, climate-controlled elevated walkway that threads through the Westin lobby, crosses above Main Street, Pershing Road, and Grand Boulevard, and connects the hotel to Crown Center Shops and, since 2000, to Union Station. The Link also connects the Westin to the Sheraton Kansas City Hotel at Crown Center (formerly Hyatt Regency Crown Center), allowing guests to move between all three major facilities without going outdoors.
See also
crown-center, hallmark-cards-corporate-headquarters, hyatt-regency-crown-center, union-station-kc, liberty-memorial