More than sixty years after it shuttered its doors, a small-town soda fountain lives on underneath the main floor of Kansas City Museum.
In 1925, C.W. and Wilma R. Kirby’s drugstore in Modena, Missouri, approximately a hundred and forty miles northwest of Kansas City, was the social hub of their rural community. For nearly fifty years, the Kirbys, with the help of their six children, ran the combined drugstore, post office and soda fountain, serving homemade ice cream and phosphates, a popular drink in the early 1900s also thought to have health benefits. Drinks like Pluto Water, Green River and Wine-sip were popular fountain offerings at the Kirby Drugstore. While the latter two were flavored drinks, Pluto Water’s catch-phrase was “America’s Laxative.”
The Kirby’s drugstore was open fourteen hours a day, six days a week and a half-day on Sundays. The family, who lived upstairs, also ran an outdoor “movie theater” with weekly screenings on the side of the building. The Kirbys closed shop in the 1970s. In 1977, the Kirby children donated the entire contents of the drugstore, including original fixtures purchased from a St. Joseph company, to the Kansas City Museum.
With the donation, the museum recreated an old-fashioned soda fountain, the “1910 Drug Store and Soda Fountain.” It was an interactive exhibit that included a working soda fountain and also served phosphates and ice cream.
When the museum, which is housed in a Beaux Arts mansion on a three-and-half-acre estate in the city’s historic northeast neighborhood, shut down around 2008 for renovations, so did the soda shop.
Along with the entire property, the soda fountain was also revamped. Now known as Elixir, it has been given a modern twist.
The white tin ceiling is still there, along with the original soda fountain counter, but sleek tables and plush booth seating has replaced much of the older decor.
For more information about the museum and the soda shop, visit kansascitymuseum.org.
