The Bryant Building in downtown Kansas City built as an office building is now a 'carrier hotel'

The Bryant Building, downtown Kansas City, Missouri.Charvex, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Bryant Building is a skyscraper with 26 stories. It was used as an office building near 11th Street and Grand Boulevard in downtown Kansas City, Missouri. On September 27, 1979, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It's also known as 1102 Grand now.

The construction

This building contains Art Deco features and was completed in 1931. The building is one of two buildings in Kansas City designed by Graham, Anderson, Probst & White out of Chicago.

Interestingly, the land the building is on was given to Dr. John Bryant and his wife, Henrietta. The land represented a wedding gift from Henrietta's father in 1866.

The first Bryant Building was constructed in 1891 at Petticoat Lane and Grand Boulevard. In 1931, it was razed and rebuilt. Also interesting is the fact that it's now used to house web servers that helps to power the fiber-optic internet in the city. A $7 million renovation was performed on the building to improve systems associated with power and cooling. It's referred to as a carrier hotel.

A carrier hotel is like a data center.

A Carrier Hotel is a strategic building based in a downtown location that houses networks and cloud services. An enterprise can colocate or connect to these providers and cloud services fromthis building. (Source.)

On May 3, 1930, once a building permit was issued to build the new skyscraper, construction began in the following month. The heirs of Dr. Bryant placed their family records in the cornerstone of the building so local papers began calling it the Bryant tower. Once it was completed it was the fourth tallest building in the city and the tallest on Grand Boulevard (previously known as Grand Avenue).

The building now serves as a major hub for voice and data traffic in the region by providing a facility with the necessary infrastructure for carriers, service providers, and enterprise customers to do business together reliably and cost effectively. (Source.)

In 1931, the building won awards from the Kansas City Business League and the American Institute of Architects.

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