Abandoned Kansas City castle goes up for sale near 18th and Vine District
A 126-year-old limestone castle near the 18th & Vine Jazz District that was once a city jail is for sale as part of a package of property ripe for redevelopment.
UrbanAmerica, a minority-owned development firm with Miami and Texas addresses, recently listed the Kansas City Workhouse Castle, a historic yellow limestone structure at 2001 Vine St., plus about 17.4 acres of surrounding land, for sale through Clemons Real Estate.
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The Workhouse Castle was built in 1897 and was a city jail through 1924. Afterward, the castle was repurposed more than a dozen times, including for city storage, Marine training and dog euthanasia, before its abandonment in 1972.
The castle was listed on the Kansas City Register of Historic Places in 2007 and in recent years has deteriorated. It now sits across from Vine Street Brewing Co., which in June opened as Missouri’s first Black-owned brewery in a limestone former public works building.
UrbanAmerica in early 2022 sought to advance a rehabilitation of the Workhouse Castle with event and retail space attached to a new-build 60-room boutique hotel.
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The project, along with 60 for-sale net-zero homes along Woodland Avenue, made up the first phase of Enterprise Village Ecosystem (EVE), a roughly 21.5-acre master planned development UrbanAmerica had contemplated alongside businessman Vewiser Dixon, president of the Eighteenth and Vine Redevelopment Corp.
That same land now is part of the new Clemons listing, spanning seven blocks in the Wendell Phillips neighborhood. The blocks range between 0.72 acres and 9.4 acres. Counting the castle, they altogether total 21.2 acres, composed mostly of vacant residential-platted lots.
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