From June 12 to June 15, 1928, the Republican Party held its national convention at Convention Hall in downtown Kansas City, nominating Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover for president and Kansas Senator Charles Curtis for vice president.12 It was Kansas City’s second major-party national convention after the 1900 Democratic meeting in the same hall, and the last national convention the hall would host.34

Background — why Kansas City

Kansas City’s Chamber of Commerce treated a 1928 national convention as boosterism rather than a sure thing. By early 1927 the Democrats had already chosen Houston, and chamber minutes recorded a belief that Republicans were “all fixed to go to Cleveland”; members decided “as a matter of policy and publicity” to volunteer anyway.5 Local Republicans and Democrats worked the bid together. Republican Mayor Albert I. Beach and former Democratic mayor Frank Cromwell sat on the general executive committee with then–city manager Henry F. McElroy and Harry S. Truman; Democratic operative Jouett Shouse headed publicity. Civic leader Conrad Mann served as general chairman of the local convention committee.5

National politics favored a Midwestern site. After President Calvin Coolidge announced in August 1927 that he did not “choose to run” in 1928, farm discontent made a purely coastal ratification meeting look unwise. A New York Times Magazine piece, quoted in later Kansas City scholarship, argued that if the convention were a mere ratification of the sort held in Cleveland four years earlier, “San Francisco or some city on either ocean would be suitable,” but that current conditions called for a gathering in “Kansas City … on the very edge of the great open spaces where men are men and Republican farmers are discontents.”5

KCUR later recorded that Kansas City also reused the 1900 fire-and-rebuild story (the 1900 Convention Hall fire) when it pitched the Republicans — the “Kansas City Spirit” of rebuilding the hall in ninety days for the 1900 Democratic convention.3

The Pendergast organization is documented as a background presence, not as the public face of the bid. Historian Dustin Gann writes that multiple people and groups who backed the convention had established machine ties, and that the machine “clandestinely endorsed the effort and ensured itself a portion of the economic benefits” once Kansas City was chosen. The same account stresses civic boosterism and commercial self-interest as the stated motive, not a Republican machine takeover of a Republican convention.5 The fuller machine story belongs on pendergast-era.

The hall

The convention met at Convention Hall, 13th and Central, the rebuilt 1899–1900 civic arena — not at Municipal Auditorium, which opened December 1, 1935, and has hosted no major-party national convention in sources located for this page.436 The hall was demolished in 1936 for parking that later became Barney Allis Plaza, across from the new auditorium.46

A first-day New York Times dispatch from Kansas City (June 12) described a listless opening: Hoover’s nomination already looked settled, the floor was well filled with delegates and alternates, and the galleries had empty seats.7 A precise seating-capacity figure for the 1928 setup is not pinned here. Contemporary and later accounts disagree, and a single number is not restated.

The convention (June 12–15, 1928)

The convention opened on June 12. Temporary chairman and keynote speaker was Ohio Senator Simeon D. Fess; permanent chairman was New Hampshire Senator George H. Moses.8 Each of the four days opened with an invocation by a different Kansas City–area clergyman — Episcopal, Catholic, Jewish, and Methodist.1

Hoover was not in Kansas City. The Herbert Hoover Presidential Library notes that he remained in Washington as Secretary of Commerce; appearing as the apparent nominee would have been read as presumptuous. After the nomination vote, Moses telegraphed him; Hoover replied with a brief acknowledgment. The nomination was formally delivered, and Hoover accepted, at a staged ceremony on August 11, 1928, at Stanford University — not from the Convention Hall platform.2

The platform praised Coolidge-era prosperity and rejected the principles of the McNary–Haugen farm-relief bill. Former Illinois governor Frank O. Lowden withdrew from presidential consideration after that agricultural plank was adopted.1

Nominations

Hoover was nominated for president on the first ballot with 837 votes out of 1,089 delegates (545 needed to nominate), per the Hoover Presidential Library. Wikipedia’s ballot table lists Lowden 74, Curtis 64, and smaller totals for James E. Watson, George W. Norris, Guy D. Goff, Coolidge, Charles G. Dawes, and Charles Evans Hughes; the same Wikipedia article’s prose gives Lowden 72. Those rival totals are not restated as settled figures here.21

Kansas Senator Charles Curtis — Senate majority leader, a “favorite son” with farm-bloc standing, and a critic of Hoover in the days before the convention — was nominated for vice president on the first ballot on June 15 with 1,052 votes, a ticket meant to shore up Hoover’s weakness in the Midwest. He had said he would not take the vice presidency on a Hoover ticket; he accepted and campaigned that fall.21 The convention adjourned sine die the same day.1

Kansas City color

Local organizers built a civic show around the meeting: flags and bunting around Convention Hall, hosts and hostesses in downtown hotels, auto tours of the parks-and-boulevards system, and booster pamphlets including The Book of the Republican National Convention.5 Henry F. Pringle, writing in The Outlook and quoted by KCUR, described a city of clanging streetcars and traffic police scolding visitors unused to the jaywalking ban; KCUR adds that the week had nearly perfect weather.3

The meeting also enforced Kansas City’s color line. Unlike the Chicago and Cleveland conventions, which had seated Black delegates with white attendees and housed them in the same hotels, Kansas City segregated Black delegates. The Call condemned the arrangement, especially Conrad Mann; Mann called it consistent local policy. Organizers added three Black members to the executive committee and set up a separate Negro Entertainment Committee with a venue at 13th and Paseo. Gann notes that the Hoover campaign treated the arrangement as useful with Southern voters, and that national coverage in outlets from the New York Times to the Chicago Defender undercut the city’s unity pitch.5

Downtown hotels housed the crowd. Secondary sources often name the Hotel President as convention headquarters; the National Register downtown-hotels context discusses the June 12–15 meeting without isolating that assignment, and the hotel’s Wiki page flags the headquarters claim as pending a primary seating chart. The Muehlebach is documented as one of the downtown convention hotels, not as a named headquarters.5

National outcome

On November 6, 1928, Hoover and Curtis defeated Democrat Al Smith and running mate Joseph T. Robinson in a landslide: 21,427,123 popular votes (58.1 percent) and 444 electoral votes to Smith’s 15,015,464 and 87.9 Curtis, a Kansan, became the first vice president of documented Native American ancestry.9 The Hoover “triumph over poverty” line later used against him in 1932 was delivered at the August Stanford acceptance, not in Kansas City.29

Significance to Kansas City

This was Kansas City’s second major-party national convention, after the 1900 Democratic National Convention in the same rebuilt hall, and the last national convention held at Convention Hall.34 Kansas City’s later Republican convention, August 16–19, 1976, met at Kemper Arena in the West Bottoms — a different building, a different era.3

Gann argues the 1928 meeting re-energized Chamber leadership, especially Conrad Mann, and helped set up voter support for the Ten-Year Plan public-works program of the early 1930s — the bond package that produced Municipal Auditorium, among other civic buildings — after a May 1928 bond package had mostly failed the two-thirds rule.5 The Convention Committee of that later plan argued that Kansas City had been losing national meetings for lack of adequate space, pointing to Cleveland’s 1922 municipal auditorium and St. Louis’s plans for one.5

Sites in KC associated with the event

Sources

Footnotes

  1. Wikipedia — “1928 Republican National Convention.” — asserts: Convention Hall, Kansas City, Missouri, June 12–15, 1928; Hoover nominated on the first ballot (table: 837 of 1,089 delegates; prose Lowden 72 vs. table Lowden 74); Curtis nominated for vice president (table: 1,052); Coolidge “I do not choose to run”; platform rejected McNary–Haugen and Lowden withdrew; Hoover not described as present; four daily invocations by Kansas City clergy; KCUR as the citation for dates and venue. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  2. Herbert Hoover Presidential Library & Museum / Hoover Heads — Spencer Howard, “Nominating a Candidate – the 1928 Republican National Convention,” 2016-06-15 — asserts: convention in Kansas City June 12–15; 1,089 delegates; Hoover 837 on the first ballot; Curtis 1,052 on the first vice-presidential ballot after opposing Hoover and saying he would not run with him; Hoover not present; notification and acceptance August 11 at Stanford; Hoover then campaigned in 20 states and won in a landslide. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  3. KCUR — Cody Newill, “A Look Back At The 3 Times Kansas City Hosted National Political Conventions,” 2014-06-11 — asserts: 1900 DNC, 1928 RNC, and 1976 RNC as Kansas City’s three major-party national conventions; 1928 dates June 12–15 at Convention Hall; Hoover and Curtis nominated; last national convention in Convention Hall; hall demolished when Municipal Auditorium was built in 1935 (this page prefers the 1936 demolition date in Convention Hall sources); 1976 RNC at Kemper Arena August 16–19; Pringle / Outlook streetcar and jaywalking color; nearly perfect weather. The same article’s line that Hoover and Curtis “won the election during the Great Depression” is wrong (the election was November 1928; the Depression followed the 1929 crash) and is not used. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  4. Wikipedia — “Convention Hall.” — asserts: 13th and Central, Kansas City, Missouri; opened February 22, 1899; burned April 4, 1900 and rebuilt in 90 days; hosted the 1900 DNC and the 1928 RNC; demolished 1936 for parking for Municipal Auditorium; coordinates 39.098727°N, 94.58697°W. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  5. The Pendergast Years — Dustin Gann, “Our Time to Shine: The 1928 Republican National Convention and Kansas City’s Rising Profile.” — asserts: Chamber bid vs. expected Cleveland; Beach, Cromwell, Truman, McElroy, Shouse, Conrad Mann; New York Times Magazine farm-bloc siting quote; booster apparatus and Book of the Republican National Convention; segregation of Black delegates and The Call/Mann dispute; Pendergast machine as a background beneficiary; post-convention Ten-Year Plan / Municipal Auditorium argument. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9

  6. Municipal Auditorium (KS.City Wiki) and its cited sources — asserts: opened December 1, 1935; Convention Hall demolished 1936; Municipal Auditorium itself has hosted no major-party national convention; 1900 DNC and 1928 RNC belong to Convention Hall; 1976 RNC belongs to Kemper Arena. ↩ ↩2

  7. The New York Times — Richard V. Oulahan, “Hoover Certain on First Ballot as Convention Opens…,” Kansas City, June 12, 1928 (printed June 13) — asserts: first session assembled 11 a.m. June 12; atmosphere described as listless because Hoover’s first-ballot nomination looked assured; 545 votes needed to nominate. ↩

  8. Wikipedia — “List of Republican National Conventions.” — asserts: June 12–15, 1928, Convention Hall, Kansas City, Missouri; temporary chair Simeon D. Fess of Ohio; permanent chair George H. Moses of New Hampshire; Hoover of California and Curtis of Kansas nominated on one ballot. ↩

  9. Wikipedia — “1928 United States presidential election.” — asserts: election day November 6, 1928; Hoover/Curtis 21,427,123 popular votes (58.1%) and 444 electoral votes vs. Smith/Robinson 15,015,464 and 87; Curtis as first Native American vice president; Hoover’s “triumph over poverty” line delivered in the acceptance speech eight weeks after the convention. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

See also

Categories
  • Concept
  • Event
  • Pendergast
  • Downtown Kc

On the record — ks.city/wiki/events/1928-republican-national-convention · last revised 2026-09-08