The Other Spa City

Excelsior Springs is not too far northwest of Kansas City, Missouri, where I grew up. I visited there only once in the mid-1960s when my grandfather was there taking the waters for his arthritis. He was probably staying at The Elms. Where, the Chamber of Commerce tells us, Al Capone used to hang out! How's that for a connection?! And it's where Truman spent the "night of his victory over Thomas Dewey." That is, the night before the famous photo.

My mother, just to get rid of us kids, told my brothers and me to "go find the Hall of Waters." Her only clarifying directions were that it's a small town and the building "looked like a municipal building." That made sense to us, coming from Kansas City, where all the municipal buildings were some version of Art Deco.

The Hall of Waters; photo by pnoeric. More of his photos of the Hall of Waters here.

Interior photo by FotoEdge. More of his photos of the Hall of Waters here.

Here TravelLady tells us that the special claim to fame in Excelsior Springs is that it "has more types of naturally occurring mineral water than anywhere else in the world". In Desert Hot Springs we have just two: hot and cold, but both are simply the best. It's quality versus quantity. The Hall of Waters was built directly over the only iron-manganese spring in the United States.

A Wikipedia article about the history of Excelsior Springs.

The present city hall, The Hall of Waters, was constructed between 1936 and 1938 by architects Keene & Simpson above the Siloam and Sulpho-Saline Springs.

Present at the dedication was movie star Brenda Joyce who played Jane in several Tarzan movies, including Tarzan's Magic Fountain. "Oh, Tarzan! That was magic! Make your fountain spray again!"

Damage was caused by flooding in 1955. Bottling operations were shut down in 1967.

Weird U.S. paid a visit "recently" and got shown some of the closed-down parts of the hall. Including, probably, this abandoned pool:

You can see in this set of photos by Hypno+Raygun that some of the interior is in excellent condition.

One of the exterior lights photographed by iluvlilsugar.

The Hall of Waters in the 1940s.

Here's a 1957 photo of folks relaxing outside the Hall of Waters from this set of photos by leefk.

And finally, the first movie to feature Michael Douglas in a starring role was Adam at Six A.M. filmed on location in Excelsior Springs.