1. HURON BUILDING, 907-909 N. yth St., 12 stories in height, is the city's tallest building. Built in 1923 by the Elks Club, with a ballroom and roof garden, it is now devoted to offices.
2. WYANDOTTE COUNTY COURTHOUSE, 7 th St. between Ann and Barrett Aves., built in 1927, was designed in the neoclassic style by Wight & Wight of Kansas City, Mo., and constructed of Bedford stone and reinforced concrete. The front is decorated with a frieze of Greek plaques symbolizing the leading industries of Kansas, fluted Doric columns, and carved inscriptions. Interior walls of the first floor are of Italian travertine with floors of terrazzo, bordered with tile and Tennessee marble. On the third floor, the main hall, with its barrel-vaulted ceiling, forms the beautiful Hall of Courts.
3. SOLDIERS' AND SAILORS' MEMORIAL BUILDING (open), yth St. between Barnett and Tauromee Aves., of neoclassic design somewhat freely adapted was erected in 1924 as a monument to Wyandotte County's World War heroes and is really two buildings, combining a civic auditorium with the Memorial Hall, which contains military trophies, memorial tablets, and photographs. Rose and Peterson of Kansas City were the architects.
4. The WALLER RESIDENCE (private), 524 Ann Ave., a one-story frame structure, was brought by boat from Cincinnati in 1858, and is one of the oldest in the city. Governor Charles Robinson is believed to have once used the front room for his office.
5. ST. MARY'S CHURCH, NW. corner 5th St. and Ann Ave., the city's first Catholic church, was founded by Father Anton Kuhls, who also founded the first hospital. The site of three acres was purchased in 1865 from Mathias Splitlog, a Wyandot, for $800, and the first building was erected on the SE. corner of 6th and Ann Ave. that year. The present building of gray limestone, designed in the English Gothic style, was dedicated in 1903. Three altars of white oak, brought from Louisville, Ky., were temporarily lost in the 1903 flood, but arrived in the city on Saturday morning before the dedication on Sunday. At noon 25 men were set to work, completing the installation at midnight.
6. The OLD WATER TOWER (not open), Fowler St., 100 yards S. of Ann Ave., 40 feet high, suggesting the lookout of a feudal castle, was erected in 19051906 as a part of the old Kansas City, Mo., water plant. Prior to the 1903 flood, the connection was a pipeline bridged over the Kansas River. The bridge was washed out in the flood, and a tunnel was then made under the river and the tower erected. During the World War a guard station was maintained in the tower to prevent dynamiting or other possible destruction.
The PANORAMIC VIEW, from the end of Missouri Pacific Bridge, Minnesota Ave. and 2nd St., is sweeping and comprehensive. Directly in the foreground is the junction of the Missouri and Kansas Rivers, forming Kaw Point, where Lewis and Clark landed in 1804. To the right is the overhead span of the Intercity Viaduct and the James St. Bridge. Across the Kansas River SE. is the hill described by Clark as advantageous for a trading house or fort. At the foot of this hill is the strip of ground where the Wyandot camped and 60 died while their leaders negotiated land from the Delaware. Directly ahead, on the left side of the Missouri River, is the Municipal Airport, with planes flying above waters where once chugged slow-moving steamboats; and beyond it are the elevators and towers of North Kansas City. On the left, back across the Missouri, is the Fairfax industrial district, with the cone-topped tanks of the Phillips Petroleum Company, and the floorlike fields of Fairfax Airport, and immediately to the left is the site of the business block of old Wyandot, with the new terminal elevator and dock directly in front.
7. SITE OF CONSTITUTIONAL HALL, 2nd St. and Nebraska Ave., is occupied by the Chicago & Great Western Elevator. Constitutional Hall, built in 1858 by Lipman Meyer at a cost of $4,000, was a four-story brick building poorly constructed and never finished, although the constitutional convention assembled there in July 1859, and framed the constitution of Kansas. Undermined by water, it collapsed in May 1861.
8. FIRST COURTHOUSE OF WYANDOTTE COUNTY (private), 328 Nebraska Ave., a weathered, two-story frame building on a high terrace, was purchased from Isaiah Walker, a Wyandot, on July n, 1860, for $1,800. It then stood on the back of the lot and was used as Wyandotte's first post office. The county commissioners moved it to the front of the lot and erected a log jail at the back. The jail has been demolished, but the old courthouse is occupied as a residence by its present owner.
9. SITE OF WYANDOT COUNCIL HOUSE, 4 th St. at alley between Nebraska and State Aves., is designated by a wooden marker with the inscription, "Site of Wyandotte Indian Council House 1843-1861." The one-story, frame building that stood on the site was the first free school in Kansas and the council house of the Wyandot nation.
10. HURON PARK, Minnesota Ave. between 6th and yth Sts., heart of the downtown district, was "permanently reserved and appropriated" as a burial ground by the Wyandot in the treaty of 1855. In 1859, when the Wyandotte City Town Company plat was filed, it was designated as public grounds under the title of "Huron Place," with 150 square feet on each of its four corners dedicated to church sites. Churches were erected but have since been removed. Within the park are the Carnegie Library, Municipal Rose Garden, and the Indian Cemetery.
The CARNEGIE LIBRARY (open 9-9 daily), an elaborate version of Italian Renaissance architecture, was designed by W. W. Rose of Kansas City and erected in 1920-1924. It contains among other paintings: The Pioneer Woman by G. M. Stone of Topeka; Cherubs, ascribed by local critics to Rubens ; and two large canvases, Rebecca at the Well and Ishmael and Hagar, by Giobe Montine. The latter two were owned by Elizabeth Patterson of Baltimore, wife of Jerome Bonaparte and hence sister-in-law to the Emperor. They are supposed to have been the gift of the Emperor himself. After the marriage was dissolved by Napoleon, the paintings were placed on the market and purchased by Mrs. Mary E. Craddock, widow of a former mayor, who presented them to the library.
The MUNICIPAL ROSE GARDEN (open daily and evenings), developed in 1935, contains between 8,000 and 9,000 plants.
The INDIAN CEMETERY (Wyandot National Cemetery, locally called Huron Cemetery), a scant two acres joining the library grounds on the west, contains the remains of such Wyandot chiefs as Warpole, Tauromee, George I. Clark, Big Tree, Serrahas, Squeendchtee, and Esquire Grey Eyes, the Wyandot preacher. On the family stones are the names of the Northrups, Zanes, Garrets, and others. The oldest stone is dated 1844. After removal of the Wyandot from Kansas, obliteration threatened the cemetery. In 1906, business men, with an eye to its commercial value, caused a bill to be slipped through Congress, authorizing the sale of the site and removal of the bodies to the second Wyandot cemetery at Quindaro. Wyandot descendants remaining in the city resisted the measure, because in the 1850's, when they sold most of their property, it was stipulated that their burial ground should be preserved. Litigation was carried through all the courts in the country, reaching the United States Supreme Court in 1910. That body upheld the decisions of the lower courts, which had ruled in favor of the bill; but because of aroused public sentiment, Congress, in 1913, repealed the statute and converted the cemetery into a city park, extending sepulchral rights to the Wyandot. Closely associated with the cemetery is the name of Lydia B. Conley, a member of the Zane family, who led the fight to keep it intact. When removal of the bodies was attempted, she padlocked the gates, erected a temporary shelter known as "Fort Conley," and mounted guard with a warning that it would be "peril to trespass." As a qualified lawyer, she pleaded the case before the Supreme Court, being the first woman to appear before the court. In the winter of 1936-1937 Miss Conley obtained a restraining order to prevent a proposed parking lot at the east side of the burial grounds; and on June 7, 1937, she threatened bodily harm to park department employees who were cutting grass and trimming trees in the cemetery proper. For this she was arrested and given a 10-day jail sentence.
11. SEVENTH STREET METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, SOUTH, NE. corner 7th St. and State Ave., erected in 1888, is a red brick building with a square tower and steeple. The church was founded in 1848, when 65 members of the Wyandot "Church in the Wilderness," espousing the cause of the South, followed the example set by the Georgia conference and seceded from the mother church.
12. WASHINGTON AVENUE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, NW. corner 7th St. and Washington Blvd., erected in 1924, is a three-story building, constructed of native stone, and designed in the English Gothic style, with exceptionally beautiful mullioned windows of cherry red and royal blue glass. Charles E. Keyser of Kansas City was the architect. The church organization dates back to 1844, when the Wyandot built "The Church in the Wilderness." Bronze plaques in the vestibule commemorate John Stewart, Negro missionary who first brought the Methodist Church to the Wyandot in Ohio; and Lucy B. Armstrong, daughter of a succeeding missionary and wife of a prominent Wyandot.
13. BIG ELEVEN LAKE, N. 11th St. from Washington Blvd. to State Ave., was, according to local legend, the haunt by night of sinister characters and the scene of many diabolical murders, the bodies supposedly committed to its muggy waters. In 1934 it was drained, the bottom sanded, and the banks sodded and decorated with a scalloped rock design. After being refilled by the springs that feed it, it was stocked with fish from the State Hatchery. The draining took place before a large and curious audience, but when it was emptied, no human skeletons were found, only a gold watch, an automobile tire, an assortment of tin cans, and some fish.
14 . KANSAS STATE SCHOOL FOR THE BLIND (visitors by appointment),1100 State Ave., a unit of the State educational system, is on an oak-studded hillside of 9.6 acres. Curving drives lead to the 12 red brick buildings, the first of which was erected in 1866 as an asylum for the blind.
15. OAK GROVE CEMETERY, N. end of 3rd St., 12l/ 2 acres, over looking the Missouri River, one of the oldest in the city, was purchased from Sophia Walker Clement, daughter of Gov. William Walker, in 1868. Many pioneer families and notables connected with the city's history are buried here, prominent among whom were Mary Tenney Gray (1833-1904), "Mother of the Women's Club Movement," so called because she initiated the Kansas Federation of Women's Clubs; William Walker (1800-1874), Wyandot chief; and Mary A. Sturges (1809-1892), Union Army nurse.
16. WESTERN UNIVERSITY (Black), NW. corner 27 th and Grant Sts., a co-educational institution, maintained by the African Methodist Episcopal Church with State aid, was begun about 1862 as the Blatchely School by the Reverend Eben Blatchely, a Presbyterian. Later it became the Freedman's University and was converted into a normal school in 1872, when the first State aid was provided. From Blatchely's death in 1877, the school made little progress until 1896, when the Reverend W. T. Vernon took charge. Under his management it has achieved a junior college rating. The six red brick buildings are closely assembled on a hill overlooking the Missouri River. On the campus is a statue of John Brown, sculptured in Italy and unveiled June 9, 1911. (Editors Note: This University is now Defunct)
17. QUINDARO CEMETERY, NE. corner Smith and Parallel Rds., second Wyandot cemetery, was founded in 1852. The first interment was that of Eliza S. Whitten, wife of the missionary, whose crumbling headstone is dated January 3, 1852. Beside it is the stone of Lucy B. Armstrong (1818-1892). Nearby was the grave (unmarked) of Katie Sage, alias Sally-Between-the-Logs, who as a child in Virginia, was stolen from her white parents by the Wyandot, brought up as a member of the tribe, and married successively to three Wyandot chiefs.
18. ST. AUGUSTIN SEMINARY (open by appointment), Parallel Rd., between 33rd and 34th Sts., was founded as the Kansas City University in 1895 by Dr. Samuel F. Mather, descendant of Cotton Mather,, with the assistance of the Methodist Protestant Church. Dr. Mather, 84 years old, passed away a few hours after the plans were consummated without seeing the realization of a life-long dream. The university attained a standard rating, but was never liberally patronized. On January 10, 1935, it was taken over by the Recollect Augustinian Fathers and converted into a mission seminary for priests. Three widely spaced brick buildings on a shaded hilltop form the seminary group.
19. WYANDOTTE HIGH SCHOOL, SE. corner N. Washington Blvd. and Minnesota Ave. covering three acres, is designed in the Lombardic Romanesque style, with an "H" shaped plan. Plans were drawn by Hamilton, Nedved & Fellows of Chicago, assisted by the firm of Joseph W. Radotinsky of Kansas City. The construction of this brick and stone building required the largest piece of fabricated steel ever produced by the Kansas City Structural Steel Company an "I" beam, 100 feet long, weighing more than one ton to the foot.
20. KANSAS CITY BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, Roach Rd. between Armstrong and Barnett Aves., was opened in October 1902 as a training school for ministers, ministers' wives, women church workers, and home missionaries. A feature of the institution is the Pratt-Journeycake Library, 11,000 volumes of theological and general references and other books. The library was founded by Nannie, daughter of the Delaware chief, Charles Journeycake, who married Lucius Pratt, son of John G. Pratt, Delaware Baptist missionary, as a memorial to her father and father-in-law. (Editors Note: This Seminary is now in Kansas City, Missouri)
21. KANSAS CITY CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC (open 8:30 to 5 daily), 40 S. i8th St., although a branch of the Kansas City Conservatory of Music, Kansas City, Mo., has its own board of trustees and is independently managed and financed. It is fully accredited with the National Association of Schools of Music and offers a Bachelor of Music degree. In 1937, it had an enrollment of 586 and during the first semester furnished talent for more than 150 outside programs. Josephine Jirak, winner of the Sembrich fellowship and a radio soloist, is one of its alumni. It is housed in a brick and frame building on a terraced corner lot.
22. AN OLD ELM TREE, SW. corner iyth St. and Grandview Blvd., an historic landmark, once shaded the camps of Indians. More than 200 years old, topped and broken, its trunk patched with cement, it has never failed to put out leaves in the spring.
23. IRON DOOR SPRING, SW. corner nth St. and Ohio Ave., was formerly walled and equipped with an iron door hence the name but is now covered with a concrete slab. Situated in a small valley, it was one of the springs about which the Indians camped to receive their annuities.
24. ST. MARGARET'S HOSPITAL, Vermont Ave. between Harrison and 8th Sts., oldest in the city, was founded by Father Anton Kuhls. The first building was erected in 1887 at a cost of $20,000, more than $19,000 of which came from Father Kuhl's own pocket. The present three-story building is closely bordered on three sides by a church and other buildings. Owned and operated by the Sisters of St. Francis, it has accommodations for 300 patients.
25. CUDAHY PACKING PLANT (open 9-11; 1-2 Tues.-Fri., guides), SE. corner Kansas Ave. and Railroad St., is one of the "Big Four" in the meat packing industry.
26. SWIFT & COMPANY PLANT (open 9-5; Tues.-Sat., guides), corner Adams St. and Berger Ave., is also one of the "Big Four."
Both plants slaughter animals at the rate of 600 per hour, only 32 minutes being required from killing pens to refrigerated rooms.
27. COLGATE-PALMOLIVE-PEET COMPANY (open 10-12; 2-4 weekdays; guides, large parties by appointment), i4th to i7th Sts. on Kansas Ave., manufactures soap products. The company imports vegetable oils from China, Ceylon, the Philippine and Fiji Islands, Cuba, southern Europe, and Africa, and perfumes from France, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Italy, and North Africa.
28. PROCTOR & GAMBLE PLANT (visitors by appointment), Kansas Ave. between i9th St. and Kansas River, manufactures nationally known soap products.
29. The OLD SMELTER TOWER (not open), 22nd St. and Metropolitan Ave., Argentine district, 185 feet high, is a relic of the internationally known Kansas City Consolidated Smelting and Refining Company, around which Argentine was built.
30. ANTHONY SAUER CASTLE (private), 945 Shawnee Rd., is a three-story towered structure of Viennese design, built in 1871, on a 200-acre estate, by Anthony Sauer, native of Vienna, from a fortune amassed in pioneer freighting. All materials, except stone for the foundation, were shipped by water from St. Louis. Marble for mantels was brought from Italy, Vermont, and Kentucky. Stone lions at the front are the work of an Italian sculptor. Crystal chandeliers were brought from Austria, lace curtains from Brussels, and mirrors from Florence. A handsome vase painted by Madame Le Brun, was another prized possession. A solid walnut stair with rosewood rail extends from tower to basement. The estate has dwindled to three acres, but the house (occupied by a daughter of Anthony Sauer) retains much of the original furniture.
31. MOUNT MARTY AND THE ROSED ALE ARCH, Seminary and Springfield Sts., Rosedale district, designed in Ionic style by J. LeRoy Marshall, was erected in 1923. It commemorated the organization on Mount Marty, in 1917, of the ii7th Ammunition Train of the famous "Rainbow Division," which served in France under Gen. Henri Gouraud, and also honors Wyandotte County men who served in the War. Ground was broken for the arch on July 30, 1923, General Gouraud taking part in the ceremony.
32. UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS HOSPITALS (Bell Memorial Hospital), SE. corner 39th Ave. and Rainbow Blvd., were founded in 1905 as the Bell Memorial by Dr. Simeon B. Bell, pioneer physician of Rosedale, who donated to the University of Kansas land and money for the initial buildings. These buildings and grounds, now the School of Medicine, are on the NE. corner of Seminary and Broad Sts. The present site of the hospitals proper, 15 acres, was purchased in 1920 with contributions from alumni and friends and appropriations by the city and State. The buildings of brick and limestone, consist of the main hospital and administration building, nurses' home, and various wards. There are also several temporary wooden structures known as "barracks."
Also See: Kansas Facts: Wyandotte County Facts