Price Candy Building; Tom's Town Distillery

Now known as Tom Town's Distillery, named after Kansas City's infamous "Boss" mayor, Tom Pendergast, the building was built in 1908 and became the headquarter for the Price Candy Company. The wealth gained from the candy and chocolate business allowed them to live among the social elites. Charles Price II, son of the company's founder, married the heir to a food empire, befriended a future U.S. President, and enjoyed immense success in the private sector and as a U.S. diplomat.

Charles Price arrived in Kansas City in 1911 and worked as a salesman for the National Candy Company prior to starting a soda and candy concession stand at the one-prominent Jones Store. He founded Price's Fine Chocolates in 1913. In addition to this building, the company built a second candy factory at 2 West 39th Street, which opened in 1929, shortly before the onset of the Great Depression. 

His son, Charles H Price II, worked at the family candy company from 1955 to 1981 (and managed it from 1973 until 1982), when the family sold the business. In 1969, Price II married Carol Ann Swanson, an heir to the Swanson food empire. Charles Price II met and befriended future President Ronald Reagan through his network of family and friends in 1970. In the spring of 1981, President Ronald Reagan appointed Price as the United States Ambassador to Belgium. Two years later, Price left Belgium to become U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom, where he proved instrumental in handling one of the United States' first foreign-terrorist attack tragedies: the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. 

The Price family sold the company to Minnesota Twins (Major League Baseball) owner Carl Pohlad in 1982, and then the ownership changed several times before Sweet Shop USA acquired Price's Fine Chocolates in 2000. Meanwhile, in addition to serving as the home to the Price Chocolates, the building housed a sewing company, a heavy-machinery company, and a wholesaler of industrial sewing machines. Today, it's the home to Tom's Town Distilling Co., named, according to the company, "after the country's most corrupt political boss, Tom Pendergast. Pendergast started as a saloon keeper and the founder of a wholesale liquor company."

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"Sneak Peek: Tom's Town Distilling Co. Opens in Kansas City This Month." Feast Magazine. December 18, 2015. https://www.feastmagazine.com/kansas-city/article_6fad325c-a4f0-11e5-841d-8b4cf722938b.html.

Vergara, Jenny. Tom’s Town Distilling Co. Plans to Open in the Crossroads This Year, Feast Magazine. March 23rd, 2015. Accessed August 30th, 2022. https://www.feastmagazine.com/kansas-city/article_275dd83e-cf13-11e4-b224-1f63b1f7225f.html.