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| THE KANSAS BUILDING - This structure was on
the northern circle of State houses, at the northwest, and touched
the Esquimaux village and the northwestern
pond. In tone it
responded to the Spanish influences that have marked the heated zones
of America, and showed a relationship to the mission house of
California, further south. It was designed by
Seymour Davis, an
architect of high repute west of the Missouri River, and was finished
and dedicated promptly on time, and while that region of the park was
still a seemingly hopeless switch-yard and drainage district. It
must be rembered that this manner of architecture is the product of
the climate - the result of experience with great heats, drought and
high gales. The great central skylight surmounted a fine rotunda
dressed with grains, about the circumference of which there traveled
a toy railroad train of many cars and an engine. This spectacle was
a source of delight to the children, and their interest thus aroused
was intensified by a panorama of rocks occupying an entire side of
the interior, in which were placed the stuffed animals of the State
University, with Custer's horse, the only survivor (on the side of
the United States) of the battle of the Little Big Horn. Here wolves
gnawed at the bones of their fallen prey, and buffalo, goats, deer,
wildcats, prairie-dogs and all the "natural history" of Kansas held
their various stations, and were guarded by Dr. Dyche, their
superintendent and manipulator. Cost, $25,000. |
