Another end-of-an-era moment for Wichita: retail center to close, but store to live on

In another end-of-an-era moment for Wichita, what’s left of the Green Elephant Village is going to be going away, but a popular business there will live on.

A 1992 Wichita Eagle article said the center at 505 N. Lorraine, near Central and Hillside, “with shops set up in renovated 1900s-era homes and well-tended flower gardens all around,” was “more mellow than mall.”

Founder Nancy Farrow started the center in 1984 when she moved her pottery business there, which she started in her home in 1972. She named the center for an empty green house on the property and then purchased some adjacent homes to create a cluster of businesses.

Her Green Elephant by Nancy shop grew into much more than a pottery shop before closing late last year. Within months of closing, Farrow died.

“She felt like a mentor,” said Tara Castillo, whose Violet Closet upscale consignment store is at the center.

Castillo’s store, which was known as Christiane’s Closet under two different owners, has been at the center for a quarter century.

“I’ve always loved the Green Elephant Village,” Castillo said. “It’s just charming.”

Though her store’s story is going to have a happy ending, Castillo is still sad.

“I feel so connected to the place. . . . It’s heartbreaking.”

The new owners of the center are demolishing it for parking, but Castillo said they’ve graciously agreed to let her stay through the end of February so she can sell her winter inventory.

If it weren’t for that, she said, “I would have been closed now.”

‘The biggest way’

Within weeks of her shop closing in February, Castillo said it will reopen in its new home at 117 N. Chautauqua, which is near Douglas and Hillside.

Like the Violet Closet’s current home, the new one also is in a bungalow. Castillo said her husband, Jerrome Castillo of Titan Realty and Construction, found the 1925 house for her, helped get it rezoned and is overseeing its remodeling.

“He has come through in the biggest way,” Tara Castillo said. “I wasn’t going to continue if I had to be in a strip mall.”

Castillo said she plans to keep the French decor that has helped elevate her current space. In fact, so many people like her fixtures, she said, she’s going to start selling some “little treasures” she finds on her twice-yearly shopping trips to France.

Look for more information on that when Castillo celebrates a grand reopening in her new space in March.

Also, check back to Kansas.com soon for news on what will happen with the Hibachi Boy restaurant that’s still at the Green Elephant Village. The Pushy Goat Holistic & Therapeutic Massage already moved to new space at 241 S. Lulu St.

At Castillo’s new place, she said that “ideally it would be so cool if we could create another Green Elephant Village.”

She said she’d likely call it the Violet Village.

That’s a bit down the road, though. First, Castillo has to finish transforming her new bungalow, which she said “looked like the weeds were coming out of the earth and were going to pull it into the ground.”

“It’s like we’re saving it,” she said of the house.

She said there’s some symmetry there since she’s all about recycling and reusing items.

“That’s the heart of my business.”

Though she still would not have chosen to move, Castillo said, “It all feels very meant to be in my heart.”

Even with Green Elephant Village going away, she said a part of Farrow will live on through the Violet Closet, where the two would have picnics during the pandemic.

Castillo called Farrow a “strong and uplifting person” who “always had this way to make you think of forward motion.”

She said she will remember that as she’s renovating her new space and “making this little corner look pretty again.”

This story was originally published August 26, 2025 at 2:18 PM.