Ambassador Hotel

Gate City National Bank outgrew itself in the Argyle Building and built and relocated to 1111 Grand Boulevard in 1920, attracting the Women’s Club of Kansas City as tenants for its upper floors. The club, founded by Mrs. James M. Coburn, began with an effort to provide women a place to meet weekly and effect philanthropic, civic and cultural activites in Kansas City. For decades, the club leased the upper floors from the bank.
The powerful ingenuity of the ladies of the Women’s Club led to the development of a “Milk Station” in 1920, which saved 500 babies with 24,895 ounces of donated breastmilk.
Although the building saw years of abandonment followed by a heinous nightclub, Club Chemical–said to have such a “nasty reputation that Kansas City police weren’t even allowed to work there off-duty as security guards”–its distant past as a beacon of feminist and civic duty.