Summoning spirits: A brief history of Kansas City speakeasies

John J. Lyman’s house had a secret.

Lyman was the Kansas City Chiefs’ photographer for 25 years, and after he died in 2005, at age 90, his two-story Coleman Highlands home overlooking the city fell into disrepair. The basement was full of his old junk: cameras, vinyl records, shelves with liquor bottles from the 1960s. It also had a massive, solid floor-to-ceiling closet built in front of the wall.

When new owners bought the place this past winter, workers tore it down and discovered a hidden vault. When they opened it, they found some dry goods and a shelf. When they removed the shelf, they discovered a secret room. Hidden inside: 30 moonshine jugs, 16 whiskey bottles, 13 gin bottles, 10 vermouth bottles, and five ancient champagne bottles.

The trove included a rotted piece of crate stamped “GLASS” and, underneath that, the name “T.J. PENDERGAST.” That would be the man called “Boss Tom,” the dark prince of Jackson County politics who made Prohibition a party for the locals and something of an international joke for everybody else.

The Coleman Highlands discovery is a rarity. The speakeasy, ubiquitous in the 1920s, is slowly disappearing from Kansas City’s physical history and collective memory. It has been, for instance, 20 years since Terry Sanchez (of Weird Stuff Antiques, at 901 Tracy) bought a property near 33rd Street and Troost and found a concrete-sealed stairwell leading to a secret store. “It was one of Pendergast’s beer companies,” says Sanchez, who didn’t find booze there, just a bunch of old signs dating back to the 1920s and earlier.