Buckingham Hotel, later the Ambassador Hotel, was an upmarket hotel which existed in

St. Louis, Missouri St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi River, Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the Greater St. Louis, ...

, United States, in the early 20th century. It was located on the northeast corner of North Kingshighway and West Pine boulevards. Built in 1904 to accommodate

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visitors, it was subsequently known as the Ambassador Hotel, which was gutted by fire in 1971 and razed in 1973.

Architecture

The building was a U-shaped hotel, seven stories high, with bay windows around the wings. The hotel and annex originally offered 450 rooms, 300 of which had baths.

History

Over the years, the hotel was popular with baseball players, commonly providing accommodation for visiting players and as a hang out for drinking and socialising. It was at the hotel's bar that the

Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), ...

career of

Larry McLean Larry is a masculine given name in English, derived from Lawrence or Laurence. It can be a shortened form of those names. Larry may refer to the following: People Arts and entertainment * Larry D. Alexander, American artist/writer *Larry Boone ...

ended during a drunken encounter with his manager,

John McGraw John Joseph McGraw (April 7, 1873 – February 25, 1934) was an American Major League Baseball (MLB) player and manager who was for almost thirty years manager of the New York Giants. He was also the third baseman of the pennant-winning 1890 ...

. After the St. Louis Society of the Archaeological Institute of America was founded on February 8, 1906, the organizational meetings and many early lectures were held at the hotel. It also hosted meetings of the

American Philological Association The Society for Classical Studies (SCS), formerly known as the American Philological Association (APA) is a non-profit North American scholarly organization devoted to all aspects of Greek and Roman civilization founded in 1869. It is the preemine ...

. In addition, it was a meeting place for other societies, conventions and demonstrations, from a Violinist's Guild's Convention in June 1912 to art galleries and weddings. On January 4, 1917, the notorious hotel master thief

Ernest Le Ford Ernest is a given name derived from Germanic word ''ernst'', meaning "serious". Notable people and fictional characters with the name include: People * Archduke Ernest of Austria (1553–1595), son of Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor * Ernest, ...

was arrested at the Buckingham Hotel after successfully robbing over $50,000 (US$ in dollars) worth of jewels from lavish hotels in

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It was common for guests to live permanently at the hotel, including the hotel's president, Walter James Holbrook. The capitalist

Ellis Wainwright Ellis Wainwright (August 3, 1850 – November 6, 1924) was an American capitalist, brewer, art collector and socialite from St. Louis, Missouri. He was President of the St. Louis Brewing Company and Director of the St. Louis and Suburban Company ...

died in the hotel in 1924 after living there as a recluse. After 1920, the hotel faced stiff competition from the Chase Hotel, just a block north, and declined in significance. In December 1927, a fire in the hotel's annex led to the death of seven people. The Buckingham Realty Company, which operated the hotel, fell into bankruptcy in 1928, and it sealed the fate of the Buckingham Hotel; the intermingled accounts of the Buckingham Hotel Property and the Buckingham Annex constituted part of the problem. Eventually acquired by the Royale Investment Company, the hotel was sold to attorney

Morris Shenker Morris A. Shenker (January 10, 1907 – August 9, 1989) was an American lawyer best known for his connections to labor leader Jimmy Hoffa and Teamster funding of Las Vegas in the 1960s. Shenker was a Russian Jewish immigrant who arrived in St. L ...

in 1965. It was known as the Ambassador for many years until it was demolished in 1973, after a devastating fire two years earlier.

References

{{Reflist, 33em Hotel buildings completed in 1904 Hotels in St. Louis Defunct hotels in the United States Demolished buildings and structures in St. Louis Demolished hotels in the United States Buildings and structures demolished in 1973