Riverside jewel is ‘one of the important preservation projects’ currently for Wichita

The oldest building in Riverside Park has inspired a lot of questions through the decades, with the main one being: “Why is there a pagoda sitting in Riverside Park?”

So said Zadi Owens, who technically is programming director for the Friends of the Kansas Wildlife Exhibit, though she prefers “to tell people that I’m the unofficial cruise director of Riverside.”

For years, the 1911 pagoda also has had the distinction — though it’s not exactly an attribute — of being one of the most stunning storage facilities in the city, if not the state.

“I always tell people it’s an underappreciated Wichita architectural icon,” Owens said.

The Friends group along with the Riverside Citizens Association, of which Owens is vice president, and the North Riverside Citizens Association are raising money to restore the pagoda and convert it to an indoor teaching space for the outdoor Kansas Wildlife Exhibit next door.

“Really, it’s just the right size for a classroom,” said Todd Volkmann, the exhibit caretaker, who, like Owens, prefers another moniker: beast master.

He plans to take the exhibit’s 50 or so creatures, covering 22 species, to the pagoda one animal at a time for lessons.

Last year, about 40,000 visitors stopped by the exhibit, most of them schoolchildren. With the pagoda’s restoration, visitors will be able to have shelter from the sun, rain and wind.

“And the building itself is rather fascinating,” Volkmann said. “It’s older than anybody’s memory of the park.”

Once it’s ready to step into, he said, “It’ll be kind of exciting.”

Volkmann said he gets a lot of questions about the building, assuming people even see it.

A lot of visitors to the popular nearby splash pad haven’t even noticed the pagoda tucked among some trees to the east of the Wildlife Exhibit.

Once restored, the pagoda will be available to rent for events along with a new covered pavilion that the groups also plan to build with the money they raise.

The Friends group, a 501(c)(3) organization, has collected $130,000 of the $210,000 it needs.

There will be an ice cream social with jazz from 3 to 5 p.m. on July 12 to raise more money and awareness for the project.

Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers is donating the ice cream.

Riverside resident Don Vaughn, a mechanical contractor, is donating an HVAC system for the approximately 600-square-foot pagoda.

“We’ve had some big donations, but we’ve also had just a lot of neighbors that have stepped up, people that remember the park and remember the zoo,” said former Lt. Gov. and Kansas Treasurer Lynn Rogers, who is spearheading the effort.

“It’s about the whole community coming together.”

Lost history

Originally, the city planned three Riverside Park pagodas.

“I really wonder what the plan was,” said Rogers, who also is president of the Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum and the Friends group.

“That history kind of got lost.”

The first, and the only one to actually be built, was a concession stand.

According to a May 1911 article in The Wichita Beacon, “The new concession stand at the park entrance will be of the quaint Japanese style.”

It briefly described the plan for the three cement pagodas, which were to have “a semi-circular arrangement and a design peculiar to the Japanese.”

Corresponding gardens were to follow.

The secondary headline of the article also referenced Japan as “the Land of Cherry Blossoms.”

Rogers said the 1893 world’s fair in Chicago featured a large Japanese temple, “and so there was a ton of pagodas built all over the country.”

“And what we found from our historical consultant is that there are very few of these pagodas left.”

From the period of 1893 to 1915, there is the Riverside Park pagoda and one in Pennsylvania from 1908.

“Our historical consultant hasn’t been able to find any others,” Rogers said. “So really, in a way, Wichita is really kind of sitting on a jewel that they don’t even know is there.”

The pagoda cost $1,058 to build and was an immediate money-maker, at least for one concessionaire.

Coca-Cola was the first concessionaire and made $1,011 in its first summer selling bottles at 10 cents apiece, Rogers said.

The concession stand lasted only two years and then was converted to restrooms. Around 1936, it became storage.

“The holes are still in the floor where the stools used to be,” said local historian Jim Mason, who was with the Wichita Park & Recreation department for almost four decades.

For another couple of years in the 1960s, the pagoda was home to the Wichita Zoological Society as the group campaigned to create the Sedgwick County Zoo.

During that time, it was known as the Children’s Pagoda.

“They built some sort of installation in it that . . . kids would pay (about) a quarter and go through and see all of these animals and then somehow exit through a slide,” Owens said.

Then it reverted to storage again and has been that ever since.

Though the building is in fairly good shape, Rogers said, it still needs renovation and updating, including being brought up to code.

Volkmann said park visitors who have noticed the pagoda have various ideas for it.

Some have suggested a teahouse and others a venue.

“A lot of people want to have concessions back.”

‘Little bits of history’

Rogers has found “all kinds of little bits of history” about the pagoda, but he’d like some help.

“If people have pictures of the pagoda from years ago or anything like that, that would be great.”

There aren’t known photos from when it was a concession stand, but there are a few from when it was the Children’s Pagoda.

There also is one where the pagoda is in the background of a former alligator pit at the park that was featured more prominently.

“People’s memories have shifted over the years,” Owens said.

Some people tell her things they saw at the pagoda with absolute conviction, such as it used to be home to monkeys or the alligators or was an aviary, all of which existed but none of which were at the pagoda.

The space will be able to hold about 40 people or so after it’s renovated, and the new pavilion will be able to accommodate another 30 or 40.

Construction should start by late this summer and be ready by July Fourth next year.

Anyone who wants to donate can check out ways to do it at www.kwefriends.org/pagoda-project/.

So if they collect enough money, is it possible the groups could keep going and raise enough to build the other two pagodas that didn’t get built?

Rogers and Owens laughed — and laughed.

“We probably can’t turn the park back to what it was originally because we’d have to bring back the buffalo and the elk, and the neighbors wouldn’t like that,” Rogers joked.

There’s a lot of agreement that the pagoda should be saved, Mason said.

“People have been trying for a long time . . . to hold onto physical reminders of our past.”

Claire Willenberg, who helped lead the effort to save the Fresh Air Baby Camp, which is now another venue in Riverside, said the park “belongs to everybody in the city, so you can’t have enough history and venues.”

“I’d love to get the whole Riverside Park system on the National Register.”

Rogers said “anything we can do to kind of improve Riverside — in essence, Wichita — we’re wanting to do that.”

Eric Cale, executive director of the history museum, said in the early decades of Wichita, “The community was really focused on creating a really nice public park system, and they did.”

He said it was well funded and “it set Wichita apart from a lot of other cities.”

The pagoda in particular was something special for the city, and Cale said residents were intrigued by Japanese design in general.

“It was quite different than the European style, the Victorian architecture so prevalent in those days.”

Cale said the pagoda has “been in the community so long, and it is unique and certainly worth preserving.”

“It’s probably one of the important preservation projects of the moment for our community.”