Kansas

The Sumner High School, now the Sumner Academy of Arts and Sciences, has played a significant role in the saga of the desegregation of Kansas schools. This building also illustrates the evolving stylistic trends of the 1930s and is a representative of the work of local architect Joseph Radotinsky.

Of the many Classical Revival courthouses in Kansas, the Wyandotte County Courthouse is the largest and most confidently composed. After nearly a century, the building continues to serve one of the state’s most populous counties. It is the work of Wight and Wight, a highly skilled, early-twentieth-century architectural firm based in Kansas City, Missouri.

The Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Building is handsome example of a hybrid building type: a war memorial and municipal auditorium. Designed by the architectural firm of Rose and Peterson, the building occupies a prominent site in downtown Kansas City’s civic district, opposite from St. Anthony’s church to the east and across from the imposing Wyandotte County Courthouse to the north.

Westheight Manor is a distinctive early-twentieth-century residential development in northwestern Kansas City, Kansas, whose image is closely tied to houses designed by Louis Singleton Curtiss, one of the area’s most talented and idiosyncratic architects. The three remaining houses in the district known to have been designed by Curtiss are the Jesse A. Hoel Residence (1915–1916), the William C. Rickel Residence (1919), and the Harry G. Miller Residence (1920–1921).

Built as the residence of a ferry operator, Grinter Place is a proud building that sits near the crest of a gently sloping hill overlooking the Kansas River to the south. In 1831, Moses Grinter (1809–1878), one of the earliest European-American settlers in Kansas, began operating the ferry at the crossing of the military highway between Fort Leavenworth to the north and Fort Dodge to the south.

The Hollenberg Pony Express Station is a way station at the place on the Oregon Trail where the access trails from the Missouri towns of Independence and St. Joseph converge before heading west through Nebraska and on to Oregon. Erected in 1857 and 1858 by Gerat Henry Hollenberg and his wife Sophia Brockmeyer, the station was a place where travelers on the Oregon–California trail could stop for a meal, a night’s accommodation, or to buy provisions or draft animals. The walnut-clad building began as a single-room log cabin but was gradually expanded to include six rooms.

The Old Oxford Mill is a rare reminder of a once ubiquitous Kansas building type. The survival and continuing use of the building is a testament to the fortitude and ingenuity of the citizens of the town of Oxford. In 1874, three years after the town’s founding, construction began on a gristmill in a heavily wooded valley to the north of town. Investor John M. Hewett and his partner D. N. Cook spearheaded the project, but its completion depended on the support of the townspeople.

The Stafford United Methodist Church is a distinctive Prairie Style structure. From the exterior it looks more like a municipal auditorium than a church, but the interior features a unique and stunning worship space. The church is representative of the work of architect Don Buel Schuler (1888–1972), a protégé of Frank Lloyd Wright who helped to extend Wright’s influence on Kansas architecture.

The John Fenton Pratt Ranch is a remarkably well-preserved and well-documented example of the kind of family-operated farming and ranching operations that began to appear in western Kansas in the 1880s. Abraham Pratt first came to Sheridan County in 1878, drawn in by relatively inexpensive rich agricultural land. After buying 160 acres of land from the Kansas Pacific Railroad, Abraham returned to England, where he persuaded his sons, John Fenton (known as Fenton) and Tom, along with their half-brother and several acquaintances, to return with him to Kansas.

The Kansas History Center comprises three different buildings: the Potawatomie Baptist Mission, the Kansas History Museum, and the Kansas Center for Historical Research. The buildings support the memory, preservation, and interpretation of Kansas history—and Kansas architecture. While each of the buildings has its own history and character, together they form a unified complex that illustrates the evolution of architectural concerns in the state from the mid-nineteenth through the late twentieth centuries.