The Coates House Hotel

The Coates House Hotel was built during the Civil War, with work pausing during that conflict and resuming in 1866. When the hotel was completed in 1868, it was the premiere hotel in the growing city, welcoming public figures and former presidents in the decades that followed. The hotel was the work of Kersey and Sarah Coates, who arrived in Kansas City during the 1850s and were ardent opponents of slavery and supporters of the Union during the Civil War. Coates purchased and platted much of the Quality Hill neighborhood, and his hotel and neighboring Opera House helped to shape the direction of the city's growth towards the streets he laid out. When Kersey Coates died, Sarah Coates and her son Arthur managed the hotel, which hosted meetings of progressive organizations that supported causes like women’s suffrage. After World War II, the building was converted to apartments and slowly fell into disrepair. On January 28th, the former hotel was the site of Kansas City’s deadliest fire. The fire burned for four hours, destroying the southern side of the hotel and taking twenty lives. While the southern portion of the building was lost and later utilized as parking spaces, the rest was saved and utilized in a vast reconstruction project that restored the structure, which is now home to the Quality Hill Apartments.

The hotel was known formally as the New Coates House Hotel. The first hotel on the site was called the Broadway Hotel. It was built by the anti-slavery Colonel Shalor Winchell Eldridge, who was appointed U.S. Army Paymaster by President Abraham Lincoln. The Broadway Hotel was the Colonel’s 2nd hotel; his other hotel, The Eldridge Hotel, located on Massachusetts Street in Lawrence, Kansas, was well-known and attacked multiple times by pro-slavery advocates during the era known as Bleeding Kansas as well as the Civil War.

During the development of the Broadway Hotel, Union forces used the foundations as part of Camp Union. However, in the end, the Broadway Hotel was unsuccessful, and Kersey Coates acquired the land in 1870 and redeveloped it into the Coates House Hotel. In the hotel's earliest days, the Coates House Hotel was part of a greater struggle between Confederate and Union advocates. Kansas City was split between Confederate supporters to the east and Union supporters to the west, with the Kansas and Missouri state lines taking on greater significance than today. Post-Civil War tensions morphed into a rivalry between the eastern and western sides of the city, mainly involving political and business interests. Each side of the city included an opera house as well as many hotels.

Kersey Coates died in April 1887. Beginning in 1888, his widow, Sarah Coates, demolished the original hotel and rebuilt a larger and more luxurious building that offered a barber’s shop, florist, and Turkish baths. Throughout the early 1900s, the hotel remained one of Kansas City’s most prestigious hotels. It served as an important gathering place for parties, meetings, and guests. One of the hotel’s most famous guests was author Oscar Wilde, who spoke at the Coates Opera House. The hotel stood six stories tall and featured brick and white-painted stone, forming a rectangle around a courtyard at the center of the hotel.

By the 1970s, the hotel had lost its luster. After World War II, population movements out of downtown KCMO into the suburbs left Quality Hill devoid of middle and upper-class wealth. The hotel housed transients and the elderly, who paid a weekly rate of $12. On Saturday morning, around 4:00 am, January 28th, a fire on the 5th floor of the hotel was reported, and the KCMO fire department left to investigate the fire. When help arrived, the top floor at the south end of the hotel was engulfed in flames. The fire department was underequipped and understaffed for the scale of the fire. The wind, combined with the freezing temperatures, spread the fire faster and made fighting it much more difficult. Witnesses recall occupants climbing onto their windowsills and calling for help. When it was apparent that help would be delayed, more than a dozen occupants jumped from their windows. Eventually help did arrive, including firefighters from Bonner Springs, Kansas. The next 36 hours were spent controlling the smoldering debris. After quelling the fire, twenty residents died in total, including those who died by jumping from the burning building. Whereas the other residents were homeless and with little belongings, which were left in the rush to escape.

The Coates House Hotel was partially destroyed, and many area residents assumed that the remains were to be demolished, instead replaced by a parking lot to meet the demand of new downtown jobs. In 1979, the Historic Kansas City Foundation (HKCF) bought the ruined hotel in July of 1979, seeking to preserve the heritage and history of the building, citing many dignitaries that stayed in the past and, “The Coates House is symbolic in nature….and was ‘THE’ place in Kansas City.” The HKCF owned the building for over five years until a developer bought the building. Renovations were completed in 1987, and the former Coates House Hotel became the Quality Hill Apartments. Additionally, after the problems faced during the fire, the fire department changed many of its procedures. For example, on a “high-rise” response, the department now sends ten companies instead of the one sent the morning of. Additional changes were made to fire safety codes to keep older buildings fire-safe.

As of now, the northern part of the Coates House Hotel still stands as the Quality Hill Apartments. Thanks to the efforts of the HKCF, the exterior of the building remains largely the same. Other than the HKCF’s preservation of the appearance of the building, there is only one plaque mentioning the existence of the Coates House Hotel. Outside of the building on the corner of 10th and Broadway is a plaque that commemorates April 11, 1912, when the first Sertoma International meeting took place at the hotel. Additionally, there is a plaque dedicated to Kersey Coates, the man who developed the hotel, detailing his accomplishments and his work in developing Quality Hill.

Roe, Jason. The Worst Fire in Kansas City History, kchistory.org. Accessed November 19th 2019. https://kchistory.org/week-kansas-city-history/worst-fire-kansas-city-history.

, Historic Kansas City Foundation. Historic Coates House Marks the Survival of Demolition with Honorary Plaque and Celebration on August 14th, historickansascity.org. Accessed November 19th 2019. https://www.historickansascity.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/2011-09-2009-1-August.pdf.

, Sertoma Itnl. . Who Are We, Accessed November 19th 2019. https://sertoma.org/who-we-are/history/.

Friedman, David M. . Wilde in America: Oscar Wilde and the Invention of Modern Celebrity. W.W. Norton & Company.

Londre, Felicia Hardison. The Enchanted Years of the Stage. MO. University of Missouri.