Historic Hotels & Inns in Missouri

Ways in

Themes in Missouri

St. Louis: a rail terminal, banks and 1920s hotels

St. Louis Union Station opened in 1894 as the terminal for 22 railroads, with a hotel in its headhouse from the start; it is now a National Historic Landmark and a Historic Hotels of America member. Near the Arch, two bank buildings and a fur exchange became hotels: Hilton Pennywell St. Louis in the Merchants-Laclede Building, Hotel Saint Louis in Adler & Sullivan’s 1893 Union Trust Building, and Drury Plaza Hotel at the Arch in the 1920 International Fur Exchange. Downtown also has hotels built as hotels: the Statler of 1917, now the Marriott St. Louis Grand, and three by Preston J. Bradshaw, the Chase (1922), the Mayfair (1925, now the Magnolia) and the 25-story Lennox (1929, now a Courtyard), the last downtown hotel built before the Depression.

Kansas City’s 1920s towers

Four of Kansas City’s seven historic hotels are downtown buildings from 1920 to 1931. The President opened in 1926 and was headquarters of the 1928 Republican convention that nominated Herbert Hoover; the Kansas City Club finished its 14-story Gothic Revival clubhouse in 1922, now Hotel Kansas City; and the 20-story Hotel Phillips opened in 1931 as the city’s tallest hotel. The Ambassador fills the 1920 Gate City National Bank, and on the Country Club Plaza, Alonzo H. Gentry’s 1928 Villa Serena apartments became The Raphael in 1975. Hotel Savoy is older than all of them, and its 1903 west wing still holds the Savoy Grill.

Route 66 motor courts

Missouri’s four historic Route 66 stays are 1920s and ’30s tourist courts, not hotels. In Springfield, Rockwood Motor Court opened in 1929, was faced in giraffe-style stone in 1948, joined Historic Hotels of America in 2025 and bills itself as the oldest operating motel on Route 66; Rail Haven began in 1938 as double cabins with garages and now runs as a Best Western. The Wagon Wheel in Cuba has taken guests in Ozark sandstone cottages since 1938, and Boots Court in Carthage, a 1939 Streamline Moderne motel at Route 66 and US 71, advertised ‘a radio in every room’ and reopened to overnight guests in 2022.

River towns and a spa

Hermann, in the Missouri River wine country, has four inns in its National Register district, among them the White House Hotel, built on Wharf Street in 1868–69, and the Wharf Street Riverfront Inn, whose brick building the district inventory identifies as Herman or Leimer’s Hotel. On the Mississippi, Hannibal’s Garth Woodside Mansion was built as a summer home by John H. Garth, a friend of Samuel Clemens, and Ste. Genevieve’s Main Street Inn opened in 1882 as the Meyer Hotel, inside a National Historic Landmark district. In Excelsior Springs, The Elms is the third spa hotel on its site, built of stone in 1912 after fires destroyed the 1888 and 1909 hotels.

Road trip

St. Louis to Kansas City, inn to inn

St. Louis

Start with two nights: St. Louis Union Station Hotel in the 1894 terminal, the Chase Park Plaza in the Central West End, or a former bank by the Arch. Pick one from our St. Louis guide.

Hermann

Stay on Wharf Street, facing the Missouri River, at the White House Hotel, which has three period rooms, or the Wharf Street Riverfront Inn. Old Vine Bed & Breakfast, within walking distance of the wineries and the Amtrak station, and The Inn at Hermannhof on First Street are in the same historic district.

Rocheport and Boonville

Stop near the Katy Trail: the School House Bed & Breakfast in Rocheport has eleven rooms in the village’s former school, and Hotel Frederick in Boonville is a 1905 Romanesque Revival hotel.

Kansas City

Finish downtown at Hotel Phillips or the Savoy, or by the Plaza at The Raphael; the free streetcar runs between downtown and the Plaza. Pick one from our Kansas City guide, or end at The Elms, the 1912 spa hotel in Excelsior Springs.

Context

History and architecture

Missouri became the 24th state in 1821, and its oldest historic stays are in its river towns. On Hermann’s Missouri River front, the building the district inventory names Herman or Leimer’s Hotel dates to about 1853-55 and the White House Hotel to 1868–69; on the Mississippi, Ste. Genevieve’s Meyer Hotel was built in 1882. The railroads made St. Louis Union Station, opened in 1894 for 22 railroads with a hotel in its headhouse, and visitors to the mineral waters of Excelsior Springs brought The Elms, first opened in 1888 and rebuilt in stone in 1912. St. Louis and Kansas City built their big downtown hotels between the Statler of 1917 and the Phillips of 1931, and smaller cities followed with the Bothwell in Sedalia in 1927 and the Tiger in Columbia in 1928. Route 66 brought motor courts, from Rockwood in Springfield in 1929 to Boots Court in Carthage in 1939. Many of the state’s historic hotels began as something else: banks, offices, a private club, a YMCA, a Masonic temple, a brewery depot and, at The Raphael, a 1928 apartment building that became a hotel in 1975.