The Kansas Preservation Alliance's 2022 list of the state's seven Most Endangered Buildings included two Topeka structures, the Docking State Office Building and the Security Benefit Association/Menninger Tower Building.
The Docking building has since been torn down as part of a reconstruction project.
But efforts are underway to turn the SBA/Menninger Tower building into apartments for senior citizens.
Emily Cowan, of AbandonedKS.com, hopes to likewise see a positive outcome for three aging downtown Topeka buildings once owned by early Black newspaper editor Nick Chiles at 112-114, 116 and 118 S.E. 7th.
The Chiles buildings make up the lone Topeka entry on the KPA's 2024 list of the state's seven Most Endangered Buildings, which it released Monday.
Here are the six other entries on the Most Endangered list in Kansas
In addition to the Chiles buildings, following are the other entries on this year's list of Most Endangered Buildings in Kansas, with information from the preservation alliance.
• As many as 185 "Fort Leavenworth Garrison Homes" threatened with demolition on that Army post at Leavenworth in Leavenworth County in northeast Kansas. The properties include "grand, gabled homes and multi-family barrack housing for soldiers," which were built as early as 1919.
• The "Girl Scout Little House," built as a church between 1872 and 1874 at Independence in Montgomery County in southeast Kansas. The building was later moved from downtown to the east side of the city, where it was used by the Girl Scouts. It was abandoned after being devastated by flooding in 2007.
• The former Santa Fe Railway Depot at Stafford in Stafford County south-central Kansas. It was built in 1911 and abandoned in the 1980s.
• The former City Hall at Elmdale in Chase County in east-central Kansas. It was built in 1936 or 1937 and has been sitting vacant since being damaged by flooding in 1998.
• The former home of Dr. W.B. Jones in a remote area near Florence in Marion County in central Kansas. The abandoned stone building was constructed in 1878.
• The two-story Pospishil Building, a commercial structure built out of native stone in 1898 to 1899 at Luray in north-central Kansas. The building is "ruined internally" after rain pooled on the roof and caused it to fall in.
No Topeka buildings were on 2023 'Most Endangered' list
The KPA, a statewide, nonprofit corporation dedicated to preserving historic places in Kansas, from 1993 to 2014 created a "Most Endangered" list to raise awareness of historically and architecturally significant properties facing threats such as demolition, deterioration and insensitive development.
The KPA discontinued the list in 2015, its website says.
But Cowan, a native of the Topeka area whose Abandoned Kansas organization is part of another preservation group, the Abandoned Atlas Foundation, convinced the KPA to reactivate the list in 2022.
The KPA has since solicited nominations for the list from individuals and groups throughout the state, with Cowan choosing the buildings that go on it.
After the 2023 list included no Topeka buildings, Cowan said she chose the Chiles buildings to be on the 2024 list with an eye toward letting potential investors know they are available for purchase.
What's been happening with the Nick Chiles buildings?
The future of the Chiles buildings remains uncertain.
They are owned by Topeka developer and Advisors Excel co-owner Cody Foster, who said Tuesday that the buildings are in bad shape, but he was looking at potentially acquiring tax credits to help finance restoration work.
Foster said Monday he hadn't heard for "years" from family members of Chiles who had hoped to buy the buildings.
Opera singer David Brewer, a relative of Chiles who was vocal instructor for international singing superstar Beyonce during her childhood, told The Capital-Journal in March 2022 that he and two of his cousins planned to buy the buildings and make them part of a Topeka-based school they hoped to create to enable gifted youngsters to realize their potential.
Foster took the properties off the market to give Brewer and his cousins time to make purchase arrangements.
He then put them back on the market in December 2022 after not hearing from the men for several months.
Who was Nick Chiles?
Chiles edited and published the Topeka Plaindealer from 1899 until he died at age 61 in 1929.
The Plaindealer had the largest circulation of any Black newspaper west of the Mississippi River. It was published from 1899 to 1958, making it the longest-running Black newspaper in the U.S.
The three Chiles buildings on this year's Most Endangered list are part of the South Kansas Avenue Commercial Historic District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2015.
Two were constructed in about 1880 and the other in about 1888, according to the application submitted to gain that distinction.
Cowan said she often hears people express the misconception that buildings in historic districts or on registers of historic places cannot be torn down, which is not the case.
A building's presence on such listings merely places additional hurdles in the path of those who would tear it down, she said.
Contact Tim Hrenchir at threnchir@gannett.com or 785-213-5934.
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