How Municipal Auditorium shaped Kansas City and where it goes from here

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) - In a downtown area now dominated by the T-Mobile Center, Power & Light District and other businesses and developments, Municipal Auditorium is all but forgotten in hosting professional and major college sporting events.

But for 30 years, it was the top basketball arena in the entire country.

“Athletes loved to play there, fans loved to go there, downtown was magic,” said former director of the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship Bill Hancock, who was in charge of the NCAA Tournament for 14 years.

Hancock said the Municipal Auditorium stands alone.

“We talk about The Palestra, we talk about Madison Square Garden, Boston Garden,” Hancock said. “They didn’t hold a candle to good old Kansas City’s Municipal Auditorium.”

For decades, Municipal Auditorium hosted NCAA Tournament games and Final Fours as often as any venue in the country. Despite not playing host to an NCAA Tournament game since 1964, Municipal Auditorium still ranks second in total NCAA Tournament games hosted (81) by a venue, only trailing Dayton’s UD Arena.

Even as college basketball has moved on from arenas to football domes to host Final Fours, Municipal still stands at the top of the all-time Final Four host rankings, having hosted the event nine times between 1940 and 1964.

Still, the building’s history hasn’t completely resonated with the players -- and some coaches -- of today.

“I’ve been at Texas for four years and I’ve been fighting to get this tournament in this building ever since I took the job,” Texas women’s basketball head coach Vic Schaefer said after his Longhorns won the first-ever Big 12 Women’s Tournament to be played in the T-Mobile Center in 2024. “It’s so unjust for our kids to have to be playing over in Municipal for all those years while the guys were over here. This is where our kids deserve to play.”

Schaefer acknowledged Municipal’s standing in the history of the game but said times have changed.

“That was in the 60s,” Schaefer said. “Our kids deserve to be in (T-Mobile Center.)”

At least one former player is a fan of the old building.

“I love Municipal,” said UMKC women’s basketball coach Dionnah Jackson-Durrett, who won Big 12 Tournament titles as a Texas assistant coach and an Oklahoma player. “It’s an old-school feel about Municipal. Trust me, there’s some dead spots in the court.

“It makes you feel like the tradition’s there. The old school basketball, it’s like the one thing left from way back when.”

Municipal Auditorium opened in 1935 as part of the federal government’s Works Progress istration.

“A lot of jobs were created when they built that building during the depression,” said Hancock.

At the time of its opening, The Kansas City Star’s Austin Latchaw, a local drama critic, described the building as “almost too good to believe.”

It had what was at the time of construction modern, elegant decor and was multi-purposeful. The WPA was President Franklin Roosevelt’s idea, and he spoke to a sellout crowd at the venue in 1936. But it was basketball that put the building on the map.

“John Wooden won his first NCAA Championship in that building,” points out Kansas City Star writer Blair Kerkhoff. The UCLA head coach went on to win nine more national titles.

Legendary Kansas coach Phog Allen’s grandson Rob Allen has special memories of the auditorium.

“My father (Robert Allen) actually played in the Final Four in that facility in 1940,” Allen said, citing the first of nine Final Fours hosted at Municipal Auditorium.

But a game that neither his dad nor grandfather played in stands out the most when Allen recalls old games in the old Kansas City facility. The 1957 NCAA Championship Game between Wilt Chamberlain’s Kansas Jayhawks and the North Carolina Tar Heels. The Tar Heels won the game, 54-53 in a triple overtime thriller.

“Oh, I cried like a baby,” Rob said. “It was devastating.”

Former K-State player and Kansas assistant coach Tim Jankovich also re Municipal Auditorium fondly because he got to see his boyhood idol Pistol Pete Maravich.

“I’ve never seen before -- or since seen -- an opposing player take the crowd over,” Jankovich said of Maravich. “The electricity he would create, the whole place wanted him to do something else.”

The building has hosted RV shows, religious conferences and car shows to name a few events. And while the arena took center stage, the Music Hall and Little Theater have both hosted numerous major events including hundreds of Broadway touring productions. In short, the building has played a major role in shaping the Kansas City community.

“We should be really proud of that structure,” said Hancock, a Kansas Citian who will soon wrap up his collegiate sports career when he retires from his role as the Executive Director of the College Football Playoff.

So each year as the calendar turns to March and college basketball returns to T-Mobile Center time and time again, down the street sits Municipal, which remains alive hosting the MIAA Tournament and NAIA Tournament, which this year celebrated its 78th year in the building.

It might be old and lacking glamor, but it’s a classic. Kansas City’s classic.

Copyright 2024 KCTV. All rights reserved.