St. Regis Hotel in Kansas City

Built in 1914, the St. Regis Hotel represents a boom in apartment hotel construction during the early twentieth century, as well as the increased popularity of the Italian Renaissance Revival Style in urban architecture. The elaborate style speaks to the nature of the hotel, which catered to the middle and upper-middle class in addition to some of the wealthiest residents and guests to the city. For example, steel magnate Theodore Gary lived in the largest hotel suite at the St. Regis Hotel. After World War II, when people flocked to the suburbs and purchased homes, St. Regis transitioned into a low-income complex and now serves as a senior living center.

The nine-story St. Regis Hotel, constructed in 1914, survives as an example of the luxury apartment boom in Kansas City and the prevalence of the Italian Renaissance Revival Style during the late nineteenth century and continued through the 1910s. The St. Regis Hotel also represents a boom in luxurious multi-family structures along Kansas City's landscaped boulevards. The hotel amenities and Italian Renaissance Revival Style with its elaborate details catered to the wealthy middle class.

The St. Regis Hotel emerged as one of Kansas City's first apartment hotels. Initially, apartment hotels like St. Regis appealed mainly to the wealthy, but they eventually catered to upwardly moving middle-class residents. Regardless, both subsets of the middle class enjoyed the apartments for their amenities and their location away from the downtown yet close to streetcars and boulevards (easy access to business centers). Located at the prominent intersection of Linwood Boulevard and The Paseo, its narrow urban lot required the builders to think vertically instead of horizontally, hence its nine-story height -- an uncommon feature as most Italian Renaissance Revival apartment buildings in Kansas City rose between three and seven stories. Indeed, when completed, the roof on the 9th-floor ballroom was the highest point in Kansas City. In addition to its aesthetics, technological advances helped make the St. Regist unique. For instance, the hotel included a 22' air compression tank used to pump water to the upper stories, and wooden transoms to shut out the light from the halls when closed. The building also contained a ventilation system with a 125' high steel smokestack; the system connected to the billiards room so that people could smoke without the room getting cloudy.

To present a feeling of luxury to apartment buildings and apartment hotels, Kansas City architects employed the Italian Renaissance Revival style. The style emerged slowly during the late nineteenth century when architects began to shift away from styles associated with the Victorian period to styles that reflected urbanization, construction growth, new technology, and a changing economy. Prior to the 1910s, in Kansas City, the Italian Renaissance Revival style was most often applied to architect-designed commercial or institutional buildings such as the Kansas City Public Library {1897), Federal Courts and Post Office {1900), and the R. A. Long Building (1906), a fourteen-story steel-framed skyscraper. By the 1910s and 1920s, Kansas City architects and builders applied the Italian Renaissance Revival Style to hotels, apartments, and single-family residences.

The development of the St. Regis Hotel occurred shortly after the city developed its innovative parks and boulevards system. By 1911, property values along the city's major boulevards, including Linwood and The Paseo (where St. Regis is located), had increased between 200% and 500%. Private developments included apartment hotels, which efficiently housed the nation's growing urban population during the early twentieth century with their combination of the luxury and service of hotels and the permanency of apartment living (but without signing leases, which allowed for easy mobility if one's career path took them elsewhere). St. Regis attracted its share of prominent Kansas City residents such as millionaire entrepreneur and steel magnate Theodore Gary, who occupied a suite there in the 1920s. 

Like many places of lodging during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the St. Regis Hotel provided a business opportunity for women. Edith Cupit served as the hotel's first proprietor from the time of its opening in 1914 until roughly 1922. Cupit was succeeded by Elizabeth Searcy, who had a long career in the hospitality business, followed by Amy Evena in 1935. 

After World War II, apartment hotels lost favor with the middle and upper classes as suburban living and home ownership became even more popular, a trend that was exacerbated by dwindling resources for urban schools. As a result, buildings in the urban core like St. Regis changed to reflect the housing market, often transitioning into senior living and low-income housing, especially by the last few decades of the twentieth century. Today, St. Regis is, as stated on its website, "an apartment community for those 62 and older, handicapped, or disabled."

Davidson, Lisa Pfueller. "A Service Machine": Hotel Guests and the Development of an Early-Twentieth-Century Building Type." Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture 10 (2005): 113-29. 

Davis, Christy. "Nomination Form: St. Regis Hotel." National Register of Historic Places. nps.gov. 2013. https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/247957a8-de0d-49f8-8ad0-88cccfff643b.

Kansas City Library. "St. Regis Hotel." kchistory.org. Accessed October 4, 2021. https://kchistory.org/image/st-regis-hotel-1.