Plaza, Independence Avenue

The Plaza, Kansas City, Mo., as pictured on an old post card mailed from Kansas City in 1908, was a small park in the Northeast district, not the Country Club Plaza. It was built some 20 years before the Country Club Plaza, and was part of a fine residential area on Independence Avenue.The large red brick building in the background is the old Bonaventure Hotel, built in 1886, a four-story structure with 120 rooms and a 147-foot frontage at 2301-13 Independence Avenue. The hotel was built at a time when it seemed the city would develop toward the Northeast, along the great bluff of the Missouri River. Mansions such as those of Robert Keith, furniture merchant, David Beals, banker, and those of many other prominent residents lined Independence Avenue, with spacious lawns in front and barns and gardens in the rear. When Kansas City's main development went in other directions, the old Bonaventure became a quiet little hotel in which men and women who knew the city as it once was were content to live. Excerpts from a Kansas City Star story described the hotel: In its day it was one of the most fashionable, and filled a need for a fine neighborhood hostelry. A big dining room, resplendent in immaculate linen, tuxedos, ladies wearing gowns decolette and adorned with diamonds. A large and magnificent punch bowl of cut glass served guests from a fine old sideboard, grotesquely carved. Life at the old hotel came to an end in April 1933, after the building was sold for $20,000 to B.N. Milton and was converted into kitchenettes. Now the kitchenettes are gone and since February 1973, the new Central Bank Professional Building has occupied the site. The Central Bank of Kansas City is located on the first floor and the remainder of the building is used for offices. The taller spire in the distance is that of the Independence Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church located on Independence and Olive. It too has been razed.The little Plaza Park of 1.7 acres, acquired by the city in 1898, is said to have cost more per acre than any of the other Kansas City parks, since property along Independence Avenue was at peak demand at the time. The park remains today. Kansas City Times, March 7, 1980.