Ambassador Hotel (Gate City National Bank)

 Ambassador Hotel, Gate City National Bank, Argyle Building, Women’s Club of Kansas City, Milk Station, Club Chemical
 
 

In 1920, when Gate City National Bank outgrew the Argyle Building, its home since 1906, it built and relocated to 1111 Grand Boulevard.  The new location attracted the Women’s Club of Kansas City to tenant 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,” which, in 1920, 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 and its present-day incarnation as the sleek and welcoming Hotel Ambassador prove that every place certainly has a story to tell.