One of KC’s oldest buildings, haunted and full of history, is up for sale
Bill Nigro can point to a few documents that suggest the building he owns at 4112 Pennsylvania Ave. was erected in 1843, which would make it the oldest still standing in Kansas City.
The obituary of a gentleman who owned the property in the early years of the 20th century says it was built that year, and the Missouri Valley Special Collection, home to some of the region’s historical archives, acknowledges that Nigro’s building (once known as Mabry Hall) is “arguably” the oldest in Kansas City.
But there’s no smoking gun, no official designation, no bronze plaque.
“We’re not on the historic register,” Nigro said, “so we can’t claim to be the oldest like Kelly’s.”
The three-story brick structure is certainly among the oldest in the city, though — constructed at the latest in the 1850s.
It is also, now, for sale.
The building is listed at $2.49 million, a drop from its original price of $2.9 million. It spans 10,000 square feet across three floors. The first floor houses two active businesses: Fidel’s Cigar Shop and the Latin American restaurant Brix. Nigro says the latter space has never looked better.
The upper floors are less polished: a mix of office suites, unfinished space and old buildouts that haven’t been touched in years. The building has a functioning elevator and a fairly new roof, but no dedicated parking, and no meaningful updates to the top floors since Nigro bought it.
“You’d probably want to gut all of the second floor and half of the third floor,” said Laurie Ingram, the real estate agent handling the listing. “But there is a nice loft, about 1,600 square feet, on the third floor. The manager of Buzzard Beach lives there. (Nigro) owns that building as well.”
Ingram was blunt about another feature of 4112 Pennsylvania.
“It’s haunted,” she said.
The Odd Fellows, a charitable fraternal group, used the building in the mid- to late 1880s as a kind of waystation for children orphaned on the trail west. Later, it became a doctor’s office with rooms for recovering patients. Over the decades, tenants have reported unexplained footsteps, children’s laughter and orbs captured on camera — sights and sounds believed to be connected to the building’s earliest use.
Nigro confirms. He lived upstairs part-time throughout the 1990s when he owned Torre’s Pizza downstairs — the space currently home to Brix and later occupied by a succession of bars including A.C.’s Garage, Dark Horse Tavern and Westport Saloon.
“Lots of creaks and noises,” he said. “A lot of bumps in the night.”
A longtime landlord, advocate, gadfly and sometime antagonist in the business of running Westport, Nigro said he’s looking to exit the neighborhood. Among other things, he feels that more resources should be put toward security to patrol the perimeter of the district rather than pay for civil rights monitors at the entrances on weekends.
In addition to the adjacent Buzzard Beach building, Nigro still owns a few other properties nearby. But he intends to sell those soon, too.
“I think I’ll probably be completely out of Westport in the next few years,” he said. “It’s been interesting, I’ll say that, dealing with the city and the neighborhood these past several years. But I’ve been here 40 years. I think it’s probably time.”
This story was originally published June 30, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
