Kansas City Museum Soda Fountain Redux

Forgive another peek at local nostalgia . . . And hopeful news of a return trip . . .

The Kirby’s drugstore was open fourteen hours a day, six days a week and a half-day on Sundays. The family, who lived upstairs, also ran an outdoor “movie theater” with weekly screenings on the side of the building. The Kirbys closed shop in the 1970s. In 1977, the Kirby children donated the entire contents of the drugstore, including original fixtures purchased from a St. Joseph company, to the Kansas City Museum.

With the donation, the museum recreated an old-fashioned soda fountain, the “1910 Drug Store and Soda Fountain.” It was an interactive exhibit that included a working soda fountain and also served phosphates and ice cream.

When the museum, which is housed in a Beaux Arts mansion on a three-and-half-acre estate in the city’s historic northeast neighborhood, shut down around 2008 for renovations, so did the soda fountain.

Along with the entire property, the soda fountain was also revamped. Now known as Elixir, it has been given a modern twist.

Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com link . . .

How a small-town soda fountain was transported to the basement of a KC museum

More than sixty years after it shuttered its doors, a small-town soda fountain lives on underneath the main floor of Kansas City Museum.