Historic Hotels & Inns in Kansas City

The neighborhoods

Where to stay, by area

Downtown & the Power & Light District

Downtown is Kansas City’s walkable core of skyscrapers and Art Deco towers, with the eight-block Power & Light District, more than 50 bars, restaurants and shops around the covered KC Live! courtyard, across the street from T-Mobile Center. Five of the seven hotels are here: the Hilton President and Hotel Kansas City, in the 1922 Kansas City Club Building, on the district’s Baltimore Avenue side; Hotel Phillips on 12th Street, across from the old Muehlebach; the Ambassador in the 1920 Gate City National Bank Building on Grand Boulevard; and Hotel Savoy at the north end of downtown in the Library District, where its 1903 west wing holds the Savoy Grill. The free streetcar runs along Main Street, and Visit KC places the Savoy between the North Loop and Metro Center stops. A short ride north, the City Market in the River Market runs every Saturday and Sunday year-round.

Crossroads Arts District

The Crossroads is a 20-block district of former warehouses that now hold galleries, studios, breweries, restaurants and jazz bars, along with the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. Visit KC calls its First Fridays one of the nation’s largest free art crawls, with more than 70 shops and galleries open late, and the streetcar stops on Main Street. The Crossroads Hotel has 131 rooms in two buildings, including the 1911 Pabst Brewing depot, a contributing building in the Crossroads Historic Freight District, and it is valet-only. South of the district on the streetcar line, Union Station (opened 1914) stands next to Crown Center, with the National WWI Museum and Memorial steps away.

Country Club Plaza

J.C. Nichols planned the Country Club Plaza in 1922 and opened it in 1923: 15 blocks of Seville-inspired architecture with dozens of fountains and a half-size copy of Seville’s Giralda Tower, considered the first planned large outdoor suburban shopping center in the U.S. built for shoppers arriving by car. The streetcar has stopped here since its Main Street extension opened on October 24, 2025. The Raphael, built in 1928 as the Villa Serena Apartment Hotel and a hotel since 1975, puts the Plaza 0.2 mile away and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, which is free, 0.7 mile. Visit KC says the Plaza’s own garages are free; The Raphael charges $35 a night to self-park and $45 for valet.

18th & Vine Jazz District

The 18th & Vine district is internationally recognized as one of the places jazz began and was a hub of African American business. The American Jazz Museum, opened on September 5, 1997, and its working club, The Blue Room, share a building with the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, two blocks from the Paseo YMCA, where Rube Foster founded the Negro National League in 1920. None of the historic hotels we verified is in the district, and the streetcar doesn’t reach it. The Blue Room has live jazz on Monday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, the museum itself closes on Mondays until May 31, 2027, and it warns that construction in the district may affect parking and street access.

Before you book

Planning your stay

Getting around

Kansas City International is about 19.5 miles from downtown, per the Ambassador, and a 20- to 25-minute drive, per Visit KC. Uber, Lyft and other app rides pick up at the Arrivals commercial curb (purple signposts 2K-N), and taxis charge $2.50 plus $2.10 a mile. RideKC’s 229 Boardwalk-KCI bus runs hourly every day and takes about an hour to the East Village Transit Center, with downtown stops on 12th Street between Grand and McGee; bus fares returned on June 1, 2026 at $2 a ride with a $4 daily cap, paid by contactless card or phone with no cash on board, so guides that call the buses free are out of date. The KC Streetcar is still free: since the Main Street extension (October 24, 2025) and the Riverfront extension (May 18, 2026), it runs from the Berkley Riverfront through the River Market, downtown, the Crossroads, Union Station and the Plaza to UMKC at 51st Street and Brookside Boulevard, every 10 to 15 minutes at weekday peaks, from 5 a.m. to midnight Sunday to Thursday and to 1 a.m. on Friday and Saturday. It doesn’t reach the Truman Sports Complex (Chiefs and Royals), 18th & Vine or the airport.

Parking

Downtown has roughly 40,000 parking spaces. Street meters are paid through the City’s Park KC app, and the 7th & Main lots (601 and 711 Main St.) give at least 150 free spaces on weekends, except during KC Current home games. Where hotels publish a rate, valet runs $42 to $45 a night: the Ambassador $42, the valet-only Crossroads Hotel $45, and The Raphael $45 for valet or $35 to self-park, while the Plaza’s own garages are free. Hotel Phillips, the Hilton President, Hotel Kansas City and Hotel Savoy publish no rate on any page we could read, so ask when you book. On arena nights, T-Mobile Center’s Yellow Lot is the KC Live! garage at 151 E. 13th St. and its Red Lot is at 1120 Oak St., and the Chiefs and the Royals both require parking to be bought in advance.

When to go

Spring and fall are the comfortable seasons: normal daily highs at the Downtown Airport (1991-2020) are 66.8°F in April, 76.2°F in May, 80.4°F in September and 68.2°F in October, against 90.2°F in July, and the city averages 47 days a year at 90°F or more; spring is also storm season. The Chiefs’ remaining 2026 home games at Arrowhead are November 8 and 22 and December 21 and 27, and the Royals are scheduled to open 2027 at Kauffman Stadium on Thursday, March 25, though MLB’s labor talks could change the schedule. Crossroads First Fridays fall on the first Friday of every month (November 6 and December 4, 2026), with Art Alleys and the Food Truck Plaza from April through October, 5-9 p.m. The Plaza Lights go on at an annual lighting ceremony, traditionally on Thanksgiving night, and start coming down in mid-January; the 2026 ceremony’s date and time hadn’t been posted when we checked.

Accessibility

The KC Streetcar has level boarding at every stop, and riders with wheelchairs, strollers or bikes use the middle doors; the airport’s free parking-lot shuttles are wheelchair-accessible with kneeling capability. The Ambassador offers accessible rooms in both of its towers, the Crossroads Hotel sells ADA versions of three room types, and The Raphael lists ‘Accessible’ among its amenities without detail. We couldn’t read access details for Hotel Phillips, the Hilton President, Hotel Kansas City or Hotel Savoy, so ask before you book.

Before you book

Book early around arena, convention and game dates: T-Mobile Center hosts an NCAA men’s basketball regional on March 26 and 28, 2027, the Convention Center has the United Soccer Coaches Convention on January 20-23, 2027, and the Chiefs’ remaining 2026 home games are November 8 and 22 and December 21 and 27. Check house rules as well: the Ambassador requires guests to be 21 to check in and takes dogs for a $50 fee, and the Crossroads Hotel takes dogs and cats for $50 a stay. At the Ambassador, ask whether your room is in the 1920 bank building rather than the newer south tower the hotel mentions.