KCRag Forum

Old photo showing the Fortune Club, at 39th and Main, one of the local nightspots and gambling dens controlled by the local mob. The building is north of the CVS Drugstore there.

Photo showing a billard hall at E. 15th (Truman Road) and Montgall, down the street from the First Ward Democratic Club where Charles Binaggio was gunned down. The building showing the billard hall remains.



Close up of the building showing the same shot.

https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Truman+R ... 8,,1,-0.35

The building itself.

https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Truman+R ... 1,,0,-5.61

A photo showing back when Gillis Opera House was a burlesque theater.

A Life Magazine photo of the Kansas City Star building when it had radio towers on the roof.

Life Magazine photos showing Show Club in the former Gayety Theater at 12th and Wyandotte.

Awww, to have lived in the days before fake tits.

taxi wrote:Awww, to have lived in the days before fake tits.

Careful that might be my Grandma your talking about!

Some cool 60's pix via KCMeesha.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/91019722@ ... 565574827/

It's like Mad Men: Kansas City edition.

FangKC wrote:Photo showing a billard hall at E. 15th (Truman Road) and Montgall, down the street from the First Ward Democratic Club where Charles Binaggio was gunned down. The building showing the billard hall remains.



Close up of the building showing the same shot.

https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Truman+R ... 8,,1,-0.35

The building itself.

https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Truman+R ... 1,,0,-5.61

Great stumbling on this. Thanks Fang. 1960-1970, this was known as Johnnie's Pool Room. Four tables. Three eight ball and one snooker....all were 1900 era Brunswick mahogany beauties. Ten cents a game during peak hours and a nickel off times. No raised voices, nothing on the tables, but sticks balls and hands.

It's odd the disappearance of the pool hall. When I was a kid, they were everywhere. Even small rural towns had them.

Here is a jaw dropping photo I found over in a KC thread on Skyscraperpage.com. Look at the density in the background!! This was just before the interstate was installed and mass destruction of the east side of downtown. Oh how I wish the city still looked like this!

And look at the surface lots.

Seriously, that's an impressively depressing amount of surface parking for the 1950s.

.

aknowledgeableperson wrote:And look at the surface lots.

I know, there's barely any by KC standards!

Demosthenes wrote:

Here is a jaw dropping photo I found over in a KC thread on Skyscraperpage.com. Look at the density in the background!! This was just before the interstate was installed and mass destruction of the east side of downtown. Oh how I wish the city still looked like this!

It's hard to pick out more than half a dozen buildings in that photo that are still extant. City Hall, Courthouse, PD, the Argyle, the Interstate, the Zoo Bar building. The lobotomized facade of the Jenkins Music Building is about the only other one I can pick out in the foreground. Such loss.

Fang...what's the bell tower to the east of the old Law Building? Intersection of 13th & McGee? southwest corner

The tower you see in that photo above is that of the Pantages / Tower Theater. The address was 213 E. 12th Street.
The building opened as the Pantages Theater--part of a chain of vaudeville houses, and later was the Tower Theater.
There were three theaters on that block of 12th Street. The Pantages / Tower, and the Esquire, which was a small
theater next door to the west. The Empress Theater was across the street where the parking garage for
Traders on Grand is now.

http://kchistory.org/cdm4/item_viewer.p ... OX=1&REC=2

http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/1433







Here is a photo graphic I made showing historic downtown theater locations.

AAAAAAAHHHHH! We deserve all the misery we've brought upon ourselves! What the hell were people thinking?