Buildings that shaped Hutchinson's future, business, housing and transportation
Olivia Bergmeier
Since the turn of the century, Hutchinson began to grow through three key factors: salt, railroads and grain production.
Reno County Museum chief curator David Reed said those three factors caused Hutchinson's success in the early 1900s, with dozens of residents building large commercial spaces.
"There's a reason why things are here in Reno County," Reed said. "There's a reason why Hutchinson had three railroad lines at one time — I want people to have that sense of community, and that we're all here because these guys were doing something 100 years ago."
The following five buildings are the ones Reed considered some of Hutchinson's most important historic sites due to their impact on the community, economy and the future of the rural town.
More:Celebrate Hutchinson's 150th birthday at the mile-long block party downtown on Aug. 18
The Larabee Mill
The Larabee Mill, constructed in July 1908, has stood in Hutchinson for more than a century.
Initially, Frederick D. Larabee, president of the Larabee Mills company in the early 1900s, aimed to make a state-of-the-art facility for its time.
According to Sheridan Ploughe's 1917 work titled "History of Reno County, Kansas. Its People, Industries and Institutions," the mill included 100-foot-tall wheat tanks that could store more than 50,000 bushels.
In 2022, Anthony and Julie Brawner, owners of Hardcore Fab, purchased the building to expand their business and plan to utilize all six floors of the century-old building.
More:Hutchinson's century-old Larabee Mill has new tenants: HardCore Fab of Hutchinson
The Hoke
According to the National and State Registers of Historic Places on the Kansas Historical Society website, The Hoke Building on East First Avenue was built in 1910 by James S. Hoke, an Illinois native who looked to Hutchinson to begin agricultural business ventures.
Hoke built the downtown office space for grain businesses and agriculture traders as wheat became a cash crop in Hutchinson at the turn of the century.
He moved to Hutchinson around the same time as construction was completed on the Hoke Building and later built more than 20 homes along Main Street.
Today, Mark and Phoebe Davenport, owners of Hoke Hotel, LLC, purchased the building last summer to renovate it into a boutique hotel. It sits across from the Fox Theater.
The business partners from Kansas City chose the Hoke due to its location and historical attributes.
"There's a lot that we're keeping," Mark Davenport said. "There's a lot of updating of code and requirements, but for the whole project, we want to leave what we can leave."
Arkansas Valley Interurban Terminal
This small building on East Second Avenue was a station on the Arkansas Valley Interurban Electric Railway, an electric-powered rail line between Wichita and Hutchinson.
According to the Reno County Museum, the original builders of the line looked to connect the two large populations so residents and business people could travel between the cities faster.
This did not last long due to Hutchinson businesses viewing it as a deterrent for Hutchinson residents to shop in town and visit Wichita instead for shopping and business needs.
More:Hutchinson residents can be part of the city's 150th birthday photo in downtown this month
International Harvester
In January 1904, the International Harvester building was nearing completion after only two months of construction. The 45,000-square-foot building housed International Harvester, an agricultural manufacturing company.
"It symbolized at its time how spectacularly important the grain and production, all that stuff, was in Reno County," Reed said. "This was the largest building in Hutch at the time, and it was centered around creating farm implements."
In a 1904 Hutchinson News article found by the Reno County Museum, it took 62 train cars of bricks, 40 train cars of stone and 26 train cars of lumber to build the enormous building.
Today, the building is utilized as storage on Washington Street and Avenue D. More than a century later, the building remains downtown.
Colladay Hardware Company
More than 130 years ago, in 1885, Frank Colladay began the Colladay Hardware Company.
According to Colladay Hardware's website, the company started in storefronts on Main Street but eventually purchased the building on Second Avenue and Plum Street in the mid-1910s.
The company continues at 2516 E. 14th Ave. as Colladay Hardware Co. after Western Supply Company, Inc. acquired the century-old business in 2002.