Guide to Kansas Architecture

Abstract

Some were designed in elaborate styles bearing elegant names Beaux-Arts, French Renaissance, Art Deco. Others were humbly handcrafted from easily accessible materials wood, stone, and sod. But whether courtly, colloquial, capricious, or curious, each of state's architectural configurations has become an aesthetic slice of Kansas. In Guide to Kansas Architecture, David Sachs and George Ehrlich spotlight hundreds of these surprisingly diverse homes, businesses, schools, churches, courthouses, theaters, bridges, and barns spread throughout all 105 counties. Encompassing historical and contemporary, vernacular and singular, this book features Victorian masterpieces, stately courthouses, and split-level suburban homes alongside likes of the world's most beautiful gas station and Big Brutus, enormous electric coal shovel turned museum. Illustrating where, how, and why Kansans assembled and altered their physical surroundings, authors have amassed information on 700 structures including descriptions, construction dates, architects, historical background, and unusual traits. They also provide maps and addresses to make them easy to find. This one-of-a-kind guide for Kansas underscores architecture's bond with state's artistic, cultural, historical, social, political, and economic attributes and idiosyncrasies. As a handy reference and traveling companion, it will be invaluable to well-versed architect, preservationist, or historian, as well as to merely inquisitive and adventurous.