Hall of Waters

Introduction

Text-to-speech Audio

The Hall of Waters in Excelsior Springs, Missouri is significant geographically, commercially, and medically as the site of the state’s first of many springs discovered in the 1880s and 1890s in the Excelsior Springs area. The spring, first known as Siloam Spring, is the only natural supply of ferro-manganese mineral water in the United States and one of only five known worldwide. The waters available here have long been believed to have curative and medicinal properties. The exploitation of the spring made Excelsior Springs a center of medicinal water cures in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Architecturally, the $1,000,000 Hall of Waters is significant as the most ambitious project to have been undertaken by the Federal Public Works Administration in Missouri. It is the location of the world’s longest mineral water bar, dispensing more types of water than any other single location in the world.

Images

Vegetation, Window, Plant community, Landmark

Swimming pool, Fixture, Rectangle, Leisure centre

Backstory and Context

Text-to-speech Audio

The City of Excelsior Springs, Clay County, Missouri is situated in and along the deeply cut valley of the east fork of Fishing River. The waters of this stream descend rapidly from upland, one-thousand-fifty-feet above sea level. The stream erosion has been magnificent, carving the valley of Excelsior Springs into the hard bed rock to a depth of two-hundred-feet below the adjacent rolling blue grass prairies of the upland. The geology of the region has an all-important bearing on the remarkable concentration of different types of mineral waters obtained in so small of an area. The rocks so well exposed along the valley slopes and which extend to depths of five- to six-hundred-feet below the valley floor at Excelsior Springs belong to the Pennsylvanian Series and consist chiefly of shales and sandstones, interlaced with relatively thin beds of limestone. These rocks have been found to be rich in mineral wealth, and the waters which flow from them are generally high in mineralization.

The Hall of Waters replaced both the Siloam Pavilion and the Sulpho Saline Building as a complete mineral water treatment center opening in the Fall of 1937. Prior to the construction of the Hall of Waters, each new well discovered was owned and operated privately. This resulted in many problems and it was determined that the needs of the public would be better served if the wells were brought under City under to ensure proper maintenance and the sale of water was centralized. United community action resulted in the combining of eight different business concerns into one, under the ownership and management of the City of Excelsior Springs.

The Hall of Waters was originally built as the finest and most complete health resort structure in the United States. At the time, the one-million-dollar project was the most ambitious Public Works Administration Project to take place in the State of Missouri. Waters of all the main springs and streams in Excelsior Springs were piped into it to be sold from the “longest mineral water bar in the world”, which is still in operation today.

The Hall of Waters is in a natural setting, with walks and stone terraces providing pleasant gathering places for Excelsior Springs’s ten-thousand tourists which came every day and formed the economic base for the community. In addition to the sale of mineral water, the building also contains mineral water bath facilities. At the time of construction, there was both a men’s and women’s bath department, each of which handled as many as three-hundred people at any one time. Mineral water baths were given as treatment for various ailments and were an eight-stage process. The original bath department is still in operation, serving men in the morning and women in the afternoon.

The Hall of Waters was designated as a city landmark in June 1981, and it represents the very foundation on which the town was built and then prospered. A portion of American medical history evolved through the use of the medicinal and curative properties of the spring water, as well as the hydrotherapeutic research which was carried out through the operation of the Hall of Waters.

Sources

Hall of Waters, National Register of Historic Places. Accessed December 16th 2020. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/63818611.

Hall of Waters, City of Excelsior Springs, Missouri. Accessed January 21st 2021. https://cityofesmo.com/index.php/hall-of-waters/.

Additional Information

Hall of Waters - National Register of Historic Places