Prohibition in Kansas City, Missouri: Highballs, Spooners & Crooked Dice

by John Simonson

Overview

Like most cities during Prohibition, Kansas City had illegal alcohol, bootleggers, speakeasies, cops on the take, corrupt politicians and moralizing reformers. But by the time the Eighteenth Amendment was repealed, Kansas City had been singled out by one observer as one of the wettest cities, as well as the wickedest. A grocer managed a still in the basement of his store. A raid on the Tingle Oil Company found two hundred drums of oil and the largest illegal brewery ever found in the state. This seedy underworld transformed the Heart of America into the Paris of the Plains. Author John Simonson resurrects forgotten stories by revisiting places where they occurred and telling the salacious history of booze in Kansas City.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781467138710
Publisher:	Arcadia Publishing SC
Publication date:	03/05/2018
Series:	American Palate
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

John Simonson is the author of two other books published by The History Press: Paris of the Plains: Kansas City from Doughboys to Expressways (2010) and Kansas City 1940: A Watershed Year (2013). He lives in Kansas City, Missouri.

Table of Contents

Preface 11

Acknowledgements 15

1 John Barleycorn Is (Not Quite) Dead 17

2 King of the Bootleggers 20

816 East Armour Boulevard 21

2101 Central Avenue 23

520 Gillis Street 25

1321 Virginia Avenue 28

1205 Independence Avenue 30

2932 Fairmount Avenue 32

1141 East Fifth Street 35

823 Walnut Street 36

1913 Broadway 38

803 Walnut Street 40

3 Four Highballs 43

1131 East Thirty-First Street 44

423 Southwest Boulevard 46

818 Baltimore Avenue 48

3403 West Fifty-Third Street 50

618 West Forty-Eighth Street 53

927 McGee Street 55

6151 Paseo Boulevard 56

4 Greed, Vice and Sensuality 59

205 East Ninth Street 60

104 West Ninth Street 63

500 Walnut Street 66

525 Gillis Street 68

122 West Eighteenth Street 70

3504 Troost Avenue 72

523 West Twelfth Street 74

30 West Pershing Road 76

416 East Fifth Street 78

5907 Main Street 80

429 Walnut Street 82

1516 East Eighteenth Street 84

5 Yokels and High Rollers 87

2020 Main Street 88

1922 Main Street 90

1900 Main Street 92

1114 Baltimore Avenue 93

100 West Twelfth Street 96

1210 Baltimore Avenue 98

1228 Baltimore Avenue 101

6 Let Us Dare to Do Our Duty 104

207 Southwest Boulevard 105

315 Cherry Street 106

1519 Main Street 108

1311 East Thirteenth Street 111

103 West Nineteenth Street 114

1016 West Twenty-Fourth Street 117

1809 Grand Boulevard 119

1608 Main Street 121

406 East Eighteenth Street 123

2860 Southwest Boulevard 126

Third and Locust Streets 128

7 Something More Than Beer 131

109 West Eighteenth Street 132

1717 West Ninth Street 133

7321 East Fifteenth Street 136

1822 Vine Street 138

1414 East Fifteenth Street 140

1706 Baltimore Avenue 142

8 Wet and Wicked 144

A Few Postscripts 145

Selected Bibliography 151

Index 153

About the Author 157