Four of the five rooms are lit in this photograph.

The fifth is behind the house, over the carriage drive, and is not in the picture at all.

We have five rooms and no two of them are the same room. Different beds, different stairs, different bathrooms, and different things outside the window at six in the morning. Everything below is written so you can pick one before you telephone rather than after.

Open all year. Two night minimum on Friday and Saturday. Telephone booking only.

The west face, 6.40 in the evening, mid October

The front of a three storey 1888 Queen Anne house at dusk, seen straight on from the sidewalk across the boulevard. Dark brick below, shingled gables above, a corner turret and a deep wraparound porch. Four windows are lit warm from inside and a red and gold leaded glass panel glows over the front door. — The red and gold panel over the door is the original 1888 glass. It is the only piece of coloured glass left in the house and it is the reason the entrance hall is never quite dark.

1The Porch RoomGround floor, behind the porch rail$165
2The Arch RoomSecond floor, centre, under the loggia$185
3The East RoomSecond floor, right of the arch$140
4The TurretSecond floor, the corner tower$175
5The LoftOver the carriage drive, not in the photograph$195

Window 1

The Porch Room

The window faces the porch, not the street. You are looking through the rail and the honeysuckle at the boulevard about forty feet away.

The only room on the ground floor and the only one you can reach without touching a stair. It is also the room people walk past on the porch, so the curtains are heavy and they stay drawn at the front. The ceiling is twelve feet and the fireplace works, though we do not light it.

Bed: One queen, walnut, high
Bath: Private, in the room, shower over a claw foot tub
Stairs from the front door: None
Noise: Porch boards overhead until about ten
Rate: $165 a night, two people

Window 2

The Arch Room

The window faces straight down the boulevard into the elms. The streetlamp opposite is on all night and it does reach the ceiling.

The largest room in the house and the one with the bay. It sits directly over the porch under the arched loggia you can see in the photograph, which means it gets the morning sun first and holds it until about eleven. If you want the room the house was built around, this is it.

Bed: One king, iron
Bath: Private, in the room
Stairs from the front door: Sixteen, one flight, oak
Noise: Quiet. The street is wide and it is not a through road
Rate: $185 a night, two people

A bedroom with a high walnut bed and white linen. Three tall sash windows in a bay throw hard rectangles of morning sun across a worn oak floor. Plain pale plaster walls and a marble topped washstand.

Window 3

The East Room

The window faces the gravel drive and the roof of the carriage house. There is no view and we price it that way.

The plainest room we have. It is a good size, the bed is new, and the wall it shares with the back stair means you hear anyone going up to the turret after eleven. People who are in Kansas City for one night and out early take this one and are happy with it.

Bed: One queen
Bath: Private, across the landing, four steps away
Stairs from the front door: Sixteen, one flight
Noise: The back stair, and the kitchen extractor below it
Rate: $140 a night, two people

Window 4

The Turret

Five windows in an arc, facing into the crowns of the elms. When the leaves come down in November you can see the bluff from the bed.

The room everybody telephones about and the one we have to talk people out of most often. It is round, which sounds better than it lives: there is one wall you can put a wardrobe against and the rest is window. It is beautiful at four in the afternoon and it is cold in January until the radiator catches up.

Bed: One double, brass. Not a queen
Bath: Private, in the room, shower only
Stairs from the front door: Sixteen, then eleven more up the back stair
Noise: Wind on the tower in a storm
Rate: $175 a night, two people

A small round tower bedroom. Five narrow windows curve around the outer wall looking into the tops of elm trees in late afternoon light. A brass bed stands against the one straight wall above bare floorboards.

Window 5, behind the house

The Loft

The window faces down onto the gravel drive and the back of the house. You cannot see the boulevard from it at all.

A flat over the carriage house with its own door, its own key and a small kitchen, which is the only room here where you can make your own supper. It is the room for a week rather than a night, and it is the only one that does not include breakfast in the dining room unless you ask us the evening before.

Bed: One queen, under the roof slope
Bath: Private, shower only, low ceiling at the door
Stairs from the front door: Out of the house, across the drive, then fourteen outside steps
Noise: Gravel under tyres, and the alley bins on Thursday
Rate: $195 a night. $1,050 the week

A small apartment under painted rafters above a carriage house. A wide dormer window looks down onto a gravel drive, a compact kitchen runs along one wall and a bed sits at the far end under the roof slope.

A red and gold leaded glass panel above a heavy oak front door, seen from inside a dark hall at dusk. The coloured glass throws faint red and gold patches onto the newel post and the first treads of a carved oak staircase.

The hall, from the foot of the stair

Every room above is reached from this one staircase except the Loft. The treads are original and the fourth one from the bottom announces itself, which is worth knowing if you are coming in late and someone else is not.

Breakfast is at half past eight, at one table.

One sitting, everybody together, in the dining room off the hall. It is a hot plate and not a buffet, so we cook what there is and we cook it once. If you tell us the night before we will hold something back for a later start, and if you are leaving before seven we will leave coffee, fruit and bread out for you instead.

Tell us at booking about anything you cannot eat. We will not ask again at the table, which some people mind and some people are relieved by.

Served: 8.30, one sitting
Where: The dining room. Not in the rooms
Included: Every room except the Loft, unless asked for
Coffee: From half past six, in the hall

Breakfast laid on a scratched oak table in a bay window. Mismatched white plates, a cast iron pan of baked eggs, a cut loaf on a board, a jug of milk and a pot of coffee, with four places set and nobody down yet.

The house, and what happened to it

1888
Built on what was then the edge of the bluff, in the first years of the boulevard, when this street was laid out as part of Kansas City's parks and parkways plan and the ground fell away into what is now Cliff Drive.
1931
The third owner enclosed the east end of the porch as a sun room. It is the only alteration to the front of the house anybody made, and you can still find the seam in the porch floor.
1954
Cut into six apartments. Four fireplaces bricked up, the back stair boxed in, and a second kitchen put where the East Room is now.
1977
Condemned, boarded, and left standing mostly because taking it down would have cost more than leaving it.
2004
Bought back to one house. Twelve years of it. The plaster is original where it could be saved and new where it could not, and we do not pretend otherwise.
2019
Opened with five rooms. It has been five ever since and there is no plan to make it six.

The boulevard runs above the bluff at the north edge of the neighbourhood. Cliff Drive and the wooded park below it start four blocks east, the Kansas City Museum is a fifteen minute walk west along the same street, and downtown is about seven minutes by car when the river bridge is behaving.

A wide historic boulevard at night lined with mature elms and large 1890s houses. Cast iron street lamps throw pools of warm light onto wet pavement, windows are lit in the houses, and a low limestone retaining wall runs along one side.

Arriving after nine

Somebody is up until ten. After that the porch light stays on and there is a key box on the left hand post, and we will have given you the number when you booked. Park on the street outside the house. The drive is for the Loft and for the bins.

Rates, and how to actually get a room

There is no booking button on this page and there is not going to be one. Five rooms is a number one person can hold in their head, so you telephone and we tell you what is free. It takes about four minutes and you get to ask which room, which is the question this whole page exists to answer.

If nobody picks up we are making breakfast or changing beds. Leave a number and you will be called back the same day.

Call (816) 555-0142

Telephone answered 7am to 9pm, seven days.

Nightly, two people, breakfast included
The Porch Room	$165
The Arch Room	$185
The East Room	$140
The Turret	$175
The Loft	$195

Two night minimum Friday and Saturday, and the first weekend in June.
Third person in the Arch Room or the Loft, $30.
Cancel seven days out and it costs nothing. Inside seven days it is one night.
No dogs in the house. The Loft takes one, $25, tell us first.
Children over ten in the Loft and the Arch Room. Not in the Turret, the stairs are wrong for it.