October 2007

Hi, I’m Alice Tice,

Twenty years ago when my husband was thinking of retiring from Goodyear, we looked all over Topeka for our “retirement’ home and fell in love with the Valley Park area.  Lovely clean streets & beautiful shade trees.  Plus the convenience of grocery stores, fast food restaurants, gas stations and hospitals.  So we moved here!

As you may or may not know--we are living on an old “cow pasture”!  Yep!  This whole area at one time was “Romig’s Dairy” farm.  In the mid 1940’s, after World War II, Mr. Romig sold all this land.  Half was purchased by developers, the area from Randolph to Gage was bought by “Uncle Sam”.  The government used the land that we’re on now to build our first Veteran’s hospital.  They built dozens of barracks and built roads, just west of where K.N.I. now stands.  Their barracks served as our first Veterans hospital until the new V.A. Hospital was built in the 50’s.  The old barracks were auctioned off.  Some were bought and converted into “homes”.  Many were bought by a Mr. Peterson -- who moved them up north of 46th and it was called “Petersonville”.  It was okay at first, but became quite “trashy” in the years to come.

Washburn University was the first 4th or 5th building in the center of a large field, (my husband went there in 1948).  There was a long but smallish building, near the corner of 21st & Washburn.  It housed married students who rented them quite cheaply, while they attended W.U.

One such student was a young man named Bill Curtis.  Some of you may recall him from W.I.B.W.  He was a newscaster on TV on the day in 1966 when Topeka had a terrible tornado.   He made himself quite a reputation when, as he was watching and describing the track of the tornado -- over Burnett’s Mound, down Gage -- skipping over the V.A. and dropping down again on Washburn University.  Very excited (knowing his family was in the path) he shouted out, “For Gods’ sake take cover”.  He went far in the broadcasting business and he had his own hour long news documentary on TV.

Our area was developed in 1950.  Our homes were built by Sargent’s Home Builders.  At the time Washburn Street was only a gravel road and so was 29th Street.  Stout School was built about the same time.  Most of the homes sold for $8-9 thousand dollars.  This area was a neighborhood of rather “affluent” business people.  For example: our double long block of houses had 3 Fidelity State Bank bankers: 1 secretary (same bank), 2 doctors (both psychiatrists from Menninger’s), 2 SW Bell executives, and the owner of Kansas Sand Co.

They were not only affluent but young and quite prolific.  Most homes had 2 children, several had 3, and one had 4, between them all there were 65 to 70 children -- all attending Stout School!  And that’s just families in 2 blocks - think about the whole area.  Lovely, upper middle class family people!

At that time Washburn Avenue wasn’t paved and there was not any business.  There was a grocery store at 21st and Randolph -- Joe’s Whites I.G.A., also a drug store and I believe there was a barber shop.

    The Mount Vernon apartments were built during the same time period.  It was considered quite “upper scale” with its Southern motif.

The red brick Sargent Apartments were also built in the early 50’s.  

When Sargent built our homes one of the designs was “quite unique” for the part of the country.  They are the flat roofed Californian inspired houses.  These same houses were the first homes in Topeka to be built with bathrooms located in the center of the houses, rather than on the outside wall area as was traditionally done; according to J. Griffith who worked for the architectural firm that designed them.

The “Expo Center” sits on what was in 1950, the Kansas State Fairgrounds.  It was the southern “edge of town”.  Folks came with their cattle, jellies, jams & prized quilts from all over Kansas -- to participate in the free fair!  Carnival rides, freak shows, candy apples!  It was fantastic every year in September.

Shunga Creek has always been notorious for flooding.  I remember anyone who ever lived on Shunga Drive was in danger of flooding.  After the 1951 flood -- they built a dam (at 37th & Gage) that was supposed to stop future flooding.  Unfortunately we all found out on May 7th, 2007 that they didn’t stop it!

I hope this tells you a wee history of our lovely area.  Thank you.

Alice Tice, Valley Park Resident