DescriptionKeen Kutter Building - Old Town - Wichita, Kansas.jpg
English: The old Keen Kutter Warehouse in Old Town of Wichita, Kansas was built in 1906 for the Morton-Simmons Hardware Company based in St. Louis.
Completed in 1906 for about $250,000, the 80,000 square foot, 4-story structure was the largest warehouse in the city and held over 79,000 pieces of merchandise.
It was also considered one of the "strongest" buildings in the city. Fire-proof construction and rather advanced fire-prevention features engineered into the structure helped protect it from disaster. The tower once held a 20,000-gallon water tank connected to water sprinklers throughout the building so that any fire could be quickly extinguished.
It was gutted in the late 1990s and converted into the upscale Hotel at Old Town that you see here.
comment from photographer
As for the background info, I primarily used the National Register nomination for the "Wichita Historic Warehouse and Jobbers District." It can accessed via the Kansas Historical Society's website at ... www.kshs.org/natreg/natreg_listings/search/page:13/county:SG ... where you can download the .pdf. In that document, look for the listing on Morton-Simmons, Listing 17 (Section 7, p. 23) and for some additional description in Section 8, p. 11. For more on the history and its current use as a hotel, the Hotel at Old Town website at ... www.hotelatoldtown.com might be useful. Thanks for asking and hope this helps!
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