United States · Missouri · Kansas City
West Bottoms, Kansas City — Area Guide & Where to Stay
West Bottoms is the brick warehouse flat west of downtown Kansas City, where the Kansas River joins the Missouri River.
About West Bottoms
Where to stay in West Bottoms
Each area has its own feel; here's who each one suits.
Quality Hill takes the beds, not the flats, and the 21c Museum Hotel Kansas City sits up on that rise, minutes from the warehouse blocks below and inside the downtown grid. Stay there if you want a short walk down into the West Bottoms and a short walk back out. The Kansas River side stays industrial.
Travelers who would rather be near the rail hall and the plaza can look toward Union Station and Barney Allis Plaza instead, where the downtown blocks carry hotels the warehouse flats never had.
About West Bottoms
What are the main landmarks in West Bottoms?
West Bottoms keeps warehouses, not museums. Science City at Union Station fills part of the old railway hall on the terrace above, and the Kansas City Garment District Museum and Barney Allis Plaza sit on that same downtown rise. The Arabia Steamboat Museum keeps to the levee, north of the flats.
Above the valley the National World War I Memorial rises on its own hill, and the National Airline History Museum sits out by the airfield across the water.
What is the history of West Bottoms?
François Chouteau settled the flats permanently in the early 1800s as part of French Bottoms, trading with the native tribes already on this ground and with the American pioneers who followed the rivers west. Kaw Point sits across the water. That point had served the Lewis and Clark Expedition as an early campsite, and the tribes had worked the whole bottomland long before either party arrived.
Along with Westport, this is among the oldest ground in the metro, and neighboring Quality Hill grew as the center of the pioneer Town of Kansas that became Kansas City, Missouri.
Where is West Bottoms?
The flats lie immediately west of downtown, straddling the border of Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas, with Kaw Point across the water.
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Updated September 2026