Who are Pattie, Laura, Lulu, Ida and Fannie, and do they deserve a district?

A conversation that started as a way to kill some time is now leading to a mini movement to rename an increasingly happening part of Wichita.

Heather Siefer is the project lead for Encompas, a commercial furniture company that recently moved to 340 S. Laura, which is just east of downtown where the company used to be.

“I was just trying to figure out this area of town — what to call it,” Siefer said.

“It’s almost like everyone relates themselves to a certain district,” she said. “I’ve noticed that there’s a lot of activity and a lot more businesses opening, so I thought maybe (this area) should have a district. Why not, right?”

Marketer Bruce Rowley was shopping in the Encompas showroom, and while he and Siefer were waiting on another person, they discussed the idea of a district.

Rowley, after all, is the one working to create what he calls the Arena District downtown around Intrust Bank Arena.

“Humans communicate through shorthand, and that’s why we create things like downtown, east side, west side, right? Rowley said. “It’s much easier than saying, ‘That area over there north of Douglas,’ etc.”

The area they’re talking about is bounded by Douglas on the north, Kellogg on the south, Washington on the west and Hydraulic on the east.

“I think it would be a fun movement to make this area a district on the map,” Siefer said to Rowley.

They both started throwing out some names.

“I made the comment about her being in the Sodo District, which is south of Douglas,” Rowley said. “She started riffing on that.”

Except Siefer took her inspiration from all the streets around her that were named for females — Laura, Ida, Pattie and Lulu.

“We were like Daughters of Wichita? Daughters District?” she said.

They settled on Daughter District.

As they started telling others, Rowley said, “Everyone was like, ‘Oh, my God, that’s awesome.’ ”

He likes Daughter District better than Sodo, which hasn’t exactly caught on widely.

“Well (Daughter District) has, like, way more character to it, I think,” Rowley said. “It’s so sweet.”

Meet the daughters

So who are all these women with streets in their honor?

They were somebody’s daughters, but they weren’t all one person’s daughters.

According to the archival Tihen Notes of Wichita’s newspapers, a 1927 story said A.A. Hyde purchased land just east of downtown — which at the time was the easternmost part of the city — in 1872 and named streets after women in his life. He owned 80 acres of the 160 acres that comprise the district Siefer wants to create.

Ida was Hyde’s wife. Laura was Ida Hyde’s sister-in-law in Chicago. Pattie was Ida Hyde’s half sister who at one time lived in Wichita but then moved to Los Angeles. Lulu was named for a cousin.

There was a fifth female name as well: Fannie, who likely was a good friend of the Hydes who lived in Denver.

Fannie Avenue became Greenwood after a citizen petition requested a change from what was deemed to be an improper name for a street.

The Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum has a copy of a 1940 letter from Elizabeth Ann Watson of 237 Fannie Ave. that accompanied the petition.

“Enclosed is the petition,” Watson wrote. “There are signers from every block on Fannie Ave except the eleventh block. In many of the homes in that block, both man and wife are employed. Three women I saw were in favor of the change but wished to talk it over with their husbands.”

Ellis is another street in the area, though it’s not clear who Ellis was.

The Historical Museum also provided possible background on Ellis from “Wichita, KS Street Names over the Centuries,” which was compiled by James Mershon and Kris Swanson. The document said Ellis was “named after an anonymous Ellis to which Ida Hyde was related or friends with or most likely the famous, local architect Albert Ellis of Hyde’s cemetery Maple Grove.”

Siefer is surprised to hear about Fannie, “which is hilarious,” she said.

“It’s just funny that that was controversial,” Siefer said. “I’d be intrigued to see what people would think of that now.”

She said Fannie is fitting for the area.

“Laura is even like a little almost too, I’m going to say too normal, too standard, too typical,” Siefer said. “Fannie, it just goes. . . . Do we need to add an ‘r’ and call it Frannie? I mean, I don’t know.”

Siefer doesn’t mind that all of the females for whom streets are named weren’t all daughters of the same person.

“I look at it as those women are obviously someone’s daughters, so it still has a connection to the district.”

100% on board

Siefer now has two potential crusades: renaming the entire area and renaming Greenwood for Fannie.

“I would love to reach out to the other businesses and see what their thoughts are and see if I can get a few other people on board,” she said.

Except it would have to be more than a few people.

City spokeswoman Megan Lovely said that 100% of property owners must approve a proposed street name change.

To change a street name or name a district, there must be an application to the planning department. Then it moves on to the Subdivision and Utility Committee, then the planning commission, then the Wichita City Council.

However, that’s for official changes only, Lovely said.

An unofficial district name, meaning it’s not on city signs, can happen organically, she said.

Via e-mail, she said that “if you can get people to use the name, go forth. Bruce’s Arena district comes to mind here.”

It doesn’t look like Siefer will have luck with Fannie due to at least one prominent dissenter: Central Standard Brewing, a business at 156 S. Greenwood that in particular has helped revive that area of Wichita.

“Logistically changing our street name, we would be pretty opposed to,” said co-owner Emily Boyd. “It’s attached to so many things that we do.”

Also, she said, “There’s just so much on our plates right now. Trying to do address changes would be a nightmare to us as a business.”

Boyd said she wants to be open-minded about the Daughter District and would be willing to discuss it, but she thinks the area already has a name.

“Our perspective is that we like the Hyde Park Neighborhood and wouldn’t really see a reason to change that.”

Boyd acknowledged that not everyone uses that name or even knows about it.

“Some people would say it’s part of the Douglas Design District. Some say Hyde Park Neighborhood.”

Boyd said the naming “process always ends up more organic than forced.”

City Council member Brandon Johnson, within whose district the potential Daughter District lies, said he likes the idea of names for areas.

“It’s a driver to those areas for people to see what’s in an area and what it’s all about,” he said.

Johnson offered Dunbar, Nomar and College Hill as examples.

He said the Daughter District could fit with other names.

“It’s a pretty cool idea, and I think it would be unique . . . within Wichita to have something like that.”

Rowley said he’s “been amazed to see people who say we have too many districts or that we can’t just create districts like that that come from on high.”

“If names stick and that helps people communicate more clearly and efficiently about an area where there’s a lot of stuff going on, then that’s how districts are made. I don’t think they’re made by proclamation.”

Rowley remembers going to the area in the 1970s when he and his father would eat at the Pattie Grill at Douglas and Pattie.

He said he likes the idea of the Daughter District, “particularly with the inclusion of dear Fannie,” but Rowley said Siefer will have to take on the renaming from here.

“I was just there for an inception,” he said. “I already got a district.”