The Muehlebach Hotel is a historic hotel building in Downtown Kansas City that was visited by every President from Theodore Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan. It is currently operated as one of three wings of the Kansas City Marriott Downtown.
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The original 12-story building was constructed in 1915. It was designed by Holabird & Roche and was 144 feet (44m) high and owned by George E. Muehlebach whose father, George E. Muehlebach Sr. founded Muehlebach Beer. The younger Muehlebach also built Muehlebach Field. It achieved its greatest prominannce under ownership of Barney Allis.
In 1952 a 17-story western annex and parking lot were added . The entire hotel was restored in the mid-1970s and operated for a time as the Radisson Muehlebach Hotel before closing in the 1980s.
In 1996 Marriott Hotels bought the Muehlebach and made it into an extension of the Kansas City Marriott Downtown', a huge adjacent hotel built in 1985 as the Vista International Hotel. They imploded the 1952 Muehlebach annex and built a new modern tower in its place in 1998. The original Muehlebach building was carefully restored, including the original lobby on 12th and Baltimore St.
The Barbershop Harmony Society (SPEBSQSA, Inc.) traces its beginnings to a chance meeting in the lobby of the Muehlebach between two businessmen from Tulsa, OK, in 1938. The two found two other men and sang their way through a snowstorm that had marooned them there. A few weeks later, they convened several like-minded singers at a meeting in Tulsa and the 25,000 member International organization was founded. The original meeting is commemorated on a plaque in the restored original lobby of the hotel.
The Muehlebach was the White House headquarters for Harry S. Truman during his frequent visits to his home in nearby Independence, Missouri.
Truman stayed in Independence but conducted business in the Presidential Suite in the hotel's penthouse. Truman predicted his upset victory to staffers at the hotel during election night 1948 (although he spent the night out of the media spotlight at the Elms Hotel in Excelsior Springs, Missouri). The Presidential Suite was later renamed the Harry S. Truman Presidential Suite following his terms of office.
Truman signed the Truman Doctrine legislation aid for Turkey and Greece at the hotel on May 22, 1947.
During the 1976 Republican National Convention both Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan made pitches for delegates at the hotel.
Immediately following the 1976 Republican Convention, Robert A. Heinlein was the Guest of Honor at the 34th World Science Fiction Convention held at the hotel. He was booked in the Harry S. Truman Presidential Suite for the convention.
During the 1928 Republican National Convention held across the street at Convention Hall. Herbert Hoover frequented the hotel.
Among its other celebrity guests of the hotel were Babe Ruth, the Beatles and Elvis Presley.