By Barry Owens
The streets are 80 feet wide in places—the better for curbside parking—punctuated here and there by landscaped roundabouts at the intersections. There are few sidewalks. The lots are larger than you’ll find in most quarters of the old neighborhood and the sprawling lawns are, of course, impeccably kept. If College Hill has a suburb, it is Lincoln Heights—that subdivision of large and larger homes bordered by Crestway, Oliver, Douglas and Kellogg in the southeast corner of the neighborhood where it was once imagined by developer Walter Morris that “golden gates” marked the entrance.
“No home will be allowed that costs less than $7,500,” the Wichita Eagle reported during the early development of the subdivision in the late 1920s. Indeed, most went for around $10,000.
Walter Morris and son, William, purchased the 80-acre tract in 1927—later naming it Lincoln Heights after the 16th president—for $110,000 from a prominent family in St. Louis, the Knights. The Knights went on to fund Charles Lindberg’s trans-Atlantic flight and William was fond of saying that the Morris’ money made that flight possible.
Development was slowed by a housing bust and for a time William and his family took up residence in the first speculative home, built in Italian Villa style, near the corner of Douglas and Pershing. It still stands, as do the other mini-mansions that followed in the Tudor style, Dutch Colonial, Spanish Revival and other styles meant to signify that someone of high status lived there (working-class bungalows are still no where to be found).
Those first residents moved into a neighborhood with few mature trees, but there was a fountain, a Greek cathedral and no less than 12 parks. Today, the homes stand in fine shape and are worth many times what Morris sold them for, but it is rare to find a for sale sign anywhere near them.
The houses, though, are only half the story of Lincoln Heights. Lincoln Heights Village, a strip mall at the corner of Douglas and Oliver, was the first of its kind in the city. Walter Morris considered the ‘Village’ shopping mall to be the heart of the neighborhood, and the crowning jewel of his long development career.
“It is not merely the best in the Middle West,” Morris, then 90-years-old, said at its opening in 1949. “It is the nicest shopping center in the world.”
There was certainly nothing else like it in Wichita. There were more than a dozen retail shops, all with storefront parking: Mueller’s Village Flower Shop, Flo Brooks women’s wear, Carlton Salon of Beauty, Myers Paint Shop, Allen’s 5-cent to $1 store, Village Barber Shop, Hotsy’s Village Inn, Strohmeier’s Village Shoe Service, Vollbracht Market, Heads Village Shoes, Welch Cleaners, dentists, doctors and a drugstore, Gesslers.
Until then, most shopping was done downtown, a far more bustling and cramped destination than it is today. But here was a gleaming “Village” on the city’s east side where local residents could not only park, but walk, for necessities. And it was air conditioned “for your comfort,” as one advertisement noted.
The account from the opening ceremonies was breathless.
“Just like Coney Island,” wrote an Eagle correspondent, “there were throngs of people, a big searchlight, a band and music—everybody milling around and streaming in and out of the brightly-lighted shops along the L-shaped ‘midway.’
Today, the mall remains fully leased, and busy as ever. And Walter Morris & Son still keep an office in back of the building.
