From a small
and comparatively obscure city, only a
score of years ago, Kansas City has
forged her way to the very front of the
cities of America. Her wonderful strides
in a business way and her importance as
a railway and jobbing center have been
quite generally heralded for a number of
years. But wonderful as has been the
growth of her
jobbing and wholesale interests, even
more noticeable has been the evolution
of her fine
homes and boulevards and business
blocks. Office and business buildings
that compare
favorably with those of any city in the
United States have been erected in the
last few years.
Commensurate in every way with the growth and
development of Kansas City has
been the growth of the Baltimore Hotel.
For many years a hotel of but little
over 300 rooms, the excellence of her
service and the general high character
of her cuisine and furnishings had
caused her to be well and favorably
known from coast to coast. As she now
stands, more than double her original
size, impressive of design, rich and
magnificent in appointments, every
department numbering all that is modern
in equipment, she takes rank among the
very best and most beautiful hotels in
America.
This beautiful structure was erected by Mr. Bernard
Corrigan in conjunction with the
Corrigan estate, on the accepted plans
and largely from the suggestions of
Messrs. Dean Brothers and was designed
in detail by Mr. Louis Curtis, an
architect of international repute. The
building fronts on Eleventh street,
Baltimore avenue and Twelfth street,
while its remaining side gains light and
ventilation from an extremely wide alley
which parallels Main street, thus
constituting a building an entire block
long and one-half city block wide, having splendid light on the four sides.
The building comprises eleven stories and basement. The
portion of the basement fronting on
Eleventh street and embracing one-half
the area is devoted to the Rathskeller,
the main buffet and grill while the
remaining basement area, equaling
one-quarter of an entire city block, is
given over to the purposes of the
principal kitchen, refrigerating plant,
lighting, heating and ventilating
systems, together with the vacuum and
plenum systems. Here also is located the
apparatus for the combustion of refuse,
and in fact all other mechanical
adjuncts necessary in the scientific
construction in modern hotel economics.
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