Oldest gay bar in Kansas City has closed

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Add one more death to a list that already includes the Arabian Nights, the Back Door Bar, the Cabaret, the Dixie Belle, and the Fox: the former View on the Hill (also called the View in later years) at 204 Orchard in the Strawberry Hill neighborhood of Kansas City, Kansas. The original owners of the neighborhood bar opened the venue in 1983 almost as a speakeasy. Patrons were buzzed in by the bartender for most of the run of the place.

Danny Wheat, the irascible bar owner who operated Danny’s on Broadway, at 3611 Broadway (now the Arts Bar), until it closed and then purchased the 30-year-old View on the Hill, posted the following announcement on the venue’s Facebook page on March 3. Wheat, who immediately changed the bar’s name to Danny’s Point of View, operated the bar for only eight months.

“Friends, it’s to my disappointment that I must tell you we are closing the bar we will have many bar items for sale…we tried to sell borrow or raise the funds necessary to stay open and the weather time and it just didn’t happen so we will be selling off all the assets of the bar if your interested we have bar supplies furniture art etc please let me know if you’re interested.”

The red-brick building that housed both the bar and a second-floor apartment has reportedly been sold.