Well-known downtown Wichita building added to historic registry on way to renovation

Another downtown building has been added to the Register of Historic Kansas Places , and it’s not a coincidence that it’s one across from where the new Wichita Biomedical Campus is locating.

The five-story McClellan Hotel building at the southwest corner of William and Broadway, better known to some as the former O’Rourke Title Building, was added this summer.

“It’s just a beautiful exterior, and it’s right on the corner — has a lot of style from the past on it,” said developer Marv Schellenberg.

He and apartment specialist Graham Crain purchased that building, the Petroleum building across the parking lot from it and the Kress Energy Center just up the street at the northwest corner of Douglas and Broadway late last year with intentions to redevelop the sparsely occupied buildings.

All three are now empty as Schellenberg and Crain contemplate how to use the buildings, which could be for a variety of things, such as medical office space or apartments.

“We’re looking at all the options that we have,” Schellenberg said.

He and Crain also were looking for historic tax credits to help with renovations at all three buildings. The Petroleum and Kress buildings already are on state and national historic registries.

Though the McClellan building is now on the state registry, it did not qualify for the federal one.

“Some of the interior finishes have been lost to (a) 1980s remodel,” said Lauren Jones of the Kansas State Historic Preservation Office.

The building was built in 1923.

Wamego historic preservation consultant Brenda Spencer, who worked on the project, said one “claim to fame on this hotel is it operated as a hotel until the 1980s.”

Spencer said the coolest thing to her is “this was the first property built . . . on South Broadway off of Douglas and really spurred the development of the shifting of the community center from Main to Broadway.”

She said this was the first major building of many to quickly come south of Douglas.

“There were frame buildings everywhere.”

That included a two-story wooden hotel and a whole lot of garages where people kept their newly acquired vehicles.

Hand-cranked Model T cars couldn’t be left outside, Spencer said, and most people didn’t yet have their own garages. She said they would take trolleys downtown to pick up their cars and drive to work.

“Isn’t that wild?” she said.

That quickly changed, though. Spencer said by 1935, most of those frame buildings had been replaced with more substantial ones, such as the 17-story Allis Hotel built across from the McClellan in 1930.

“To me, that was one of the most fascinating things about the history of this.”

The former Allis site is where the biomedical campus is going.

Like the McClellan before it, the campus is now spurring other development at buildings throughout the area.

“The impact in that area is going to be significant,” Schellenberg said.

Though much of the original interior of the McClellan vanished when the building was remodeled for offices in the early 1980s, Spencer said another fun fact from its origins is that it was furnished and finished mostly with goods from the nearby Innes Department Store , where the Kansas College of Osteopathic Medicine is now.

With the exception of the first-floor storefronts, including where Cafe Bel Ami was for a long time, and the upper windows, the exterior of the McClellan hasn’t changed much.

“It’s a really nicely detailed 1920s concrete building,” Spencer said.

“There’s some really nice details on the exterior of the building that clearly . . . convey that original design and character that is pretty typical of a 1920s hotel.”

Even with mahogany finishes inside, Spencer said the hotel was not known for high-end luxury.

“This wasn’t a fancy hotel,” she said. “It was really designed to be an affordable-yet-quality hotel.”

The building could once again be a hotel.

Schellenberg said he and Crain are in talks with a hospitality group for the former hotel space or the Petroleum building, though nothing has been decided.

“We just have to evaluate what’s best for that area.”