Hotel Baltimore

This was probably Kansas City's finest hotel during the time Truman was a young and middle aged man. He and Bess Wallace sometimes dined here during their courtship in the 1910s. Truman and several others founded the Reserve Officers Club during lunch here in 1921. Truman probably played no role in bringing a steer up the elevator to the sixth floor of the Baltimore Hotel during the American Legion convention in Kansas City in 1921, but some of his friends probably did and he certainly enjoyed hearing the stories about what happened during this infamous convention. "...We took the Hotel Baltimore to pieces," Truman's friend and fellow legionnaire, Harry Vaughan, remembered. (Quoted in Jonathan Daniels, The Man of Independence (Philadelphia, 1950).)

The Hotel Baltimore was also the scene of a frightening experience for Truman during the time when he was county judge. "He got a mysterious call over there one day," Truman's friend Edgar G. Hinde remembered. "Somebody wanted to see him over at the [Hotel Baltimore], and I happened in and he wanted to know if I'd ride over with him, which I did. We went up in this hotel and knocked on this door and there was some beautiful blonde opened the door in a negligee, and [Truman] took off down the hall; that's the last I saw of him until he got back down to the lobby.... I think some bird framed that on him--thought they would get him in a compromising position." (Edgar G. Hinde oral history interview, Truman Library, 1963.)

The Hotel Baltimore is located at 11th Street and Baltimore Avenue.