Lawrence, Kansas keeps rising from the ashes

Lawrence, Kansas — 

You’d be hard-pressed to discover a nicer downtown avenue in the Midwest, however don’t be fooled by the boutiques, eating places, bars, music venues, vintage markets or ice cream parlors that line it, nor the comfortable mixture of locals and college students going about their day.

Massachusetts Street — nicely, really, the whole surrounding city of Lawrence, on the jap fringe of Kansas — is a battleground.

Mass, because it’s recognized regionally, is Main Street perfection. It’s a walkable stretch that’s nonetheless a group point of interest — a spot the place consumers can discover the form of impartial shops that, in different cities and cities, have lengthy since vanished, and one which bustles throughout the day and stays full of life nicely into the night.

On a heat day in late spring or early summer time, Lawrence is a type of cities that appears like heaven. Everyone appears on the proper aspect of pleasant and there’s an air of anticipation, as if one thing good or fascinating is about to occur. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that Hallmark Cards makes most of its greeting playing cards proper right here.

But Lawrence can also be a spot that has witnessed the very conflicts that got here to outline America. At instances this peaceable, and barely hippyish vacation spot, has echoed with the sounds of gunshots and screams, whereas smoke or tear fuel crammed the air. In some methods, it’s nonetheless a entrance line. Today, nevertheless, the battle is all about preserving the soul of a traditional American city.

Trouble and hope have at all times gone hand in hand in Lawrence.

Within months of the city’s 1854 institution by abolitionists, it was underneath siege from pro-slavery militias. Two years later, it was violently ransacked and its lodge burned to the floor. Yet the city bounced again, turning into a significant cease on the Underground Railroad, serving to enslaved folks escape to freedom.

Then, in 1863, as the Civil War raged round the free state that Kansas had develop into, Confederate raiders led by a person referred to as William Quantrill attacked the city, slaughtering 150 males and boys.

Once once more Lawrence rose from the ashes like the phoenix that has develop into its official image. It dusted itself down and received on with it. The coronary heart of the metropolis was rebuilt with sturdy brick buildings — like the Eldridge Hotel, resurrected on the website of its twice-destroyed predecessor and nonetheless in use as we speak (this summer time it’s internet hosting the Algerian nationwide soccer group for the World Cup).

Up on Mount Oread, overlooking the city and the surrounding plains, the University of Kansas was established.

Despite setting out its progressive credentials from the starting, Lawrence confronted additional soul-searching in 1970, when years of simmering racial tensions and anti-war sentiment erupted right into a summer time of violence centered on the college.

Again, Lawrence emerged stronger. The college established a groundbreaking African and African-American Studies division and the metropolis turned a haven for pioneering activist teams — together with early LGBT liberation actions — that may champion the battle for equality.

To make amends for all this tumult, the superb place to begin is the Watkins Museum of History, housed in a good-looking Nineteenth-century former financial institution HQ at the southern finish of Massachusetts Street’s downtown run. Helpfully, it’s additionally helpful for Sylas & Maddie’s Homemade Ice Cream parlor, a frequent advice from locals.

The museum charts more moderen battles which have made the city the place it’s as we speak, with a number of displays concentrate on Mass itself, highlighting the road’s important significance and the industrial conflict that erupted there in the twentieth century.

In the Eighties, at a time when enclosed procuring malls had been bobbing up throughout America, Lawrence dug its heels in, resisting each a proposed out-of-town “cornfield” improvement and a large downtown mission that may have demolished historic buildings, swallowing up a bit of Massachusetts in a large, coated retail house.

A protest button badge declaring “Closing Massachusetts is a dead end” bears witness to these days from a show case at the Watkins. Living witnesses to the wrestle may be discovered just some doorways down.

In the Eighties, Sarah Fayman was greater than a decade into her profession as the proprietor of Sarah’s Fabrics, when the mall risk emerged. Fayman and a tight-knit group of impartial retailers fashioned Downtown Lawrence Inc. to withstand the plans, efficiently rallying public assist round defending the metropolis’s cultural and industrial coronary heart.

It was, she says, a “very Lawrencian kind of thing.”

Today her double-wide store, which she nonetheless runs at the age of 78 with the assist of a devoted group, stays a fixture on Mass alongside different impartial companies which have stood the check of time. Even for window consumers with no real interest in quilting, tailoring or crafting, its cabinets ranked with rainbow bolts of textiles are a bedazzling sight.

Fayman says that lots of her clients journey from out of city, pulled in by the enchantment of what’s on supply in Lawrence. “There are people who like the way it feels, the way it operates. They love downtown Lawrence and shop here by choice.”

But, she warns, the battle continues, with Lawrence no safer from the risk of web commerce than every other group. Today, a number of storefronts stand empty on the road.

“The fight is very much still going on,” Fayman provides, noting her adopted hometown nonetheless compares favorably with close by cities which are struggling to breathe life again into depleted facilities. “Lawrence is fortunate to be blessed with lots of people who understand they need a vibrant downtown, as a result of there are examples of cities throughout them that don’t have that.

“You can’t successfully create a historic downtown like we have once it starts to fall apart — it isn’t just about opening any store, it’s got to have a uniqueness to it, a reason for it.”

Thankfully, Lawrence has retained loads of these distinctive causes alongside extra conventional outlets, as a stroll down Mass rapidly makes obvious.

First there are the classics. There are two indie ebook distributors: the warren-like Dusty Bookshelf with a genuinely wonderful choice of second-hand tomes; and the Raven Book Store, a correct group hub that hosts common regional literary occasions. Sunflower Outdoor & Bike Shop and Great Blue Heron each cater to followers of contemporary air. Lucky Dog Pet Grocery & Bakery has animals coated. Further down, the Lawrence Antique Mall affords a multi-story maze of treasures and trinkets.

There are quite a few clothes boutiques, each retro and trendy — the Weavers Department Store has achieved over 165 years of steady operation on the block. Footprints Shoes, positioned simply south of the most important downtown run, has been promoting Birkenstocks for 45 years, after the former bike retailer tactically pivoted to comfortable, countercultural footwear throughout Lawrence’s hippy heyday.

If you’ll be able to consider it, there’s a reasonably good likelihood it’s obtainable someplace on Massachusetts Street, with impartial outlets promoting every little thing from jewellery and mid-century furnishings to vinyl data and native artwork.

These retail spots are interspersed with locations to eat, drink and be entertained. Local favorites embody the Free State Brewing Company — which opened in 1989 as the first authorized post-prohibition brewery in Kansas — the traditional, pie-purveying Ladybird Diner, and the Italian-leaning 715 Restaurant. Nearby, the Granada Theater, a former cinema the place John Wayne as soon as moseyed up for a film premiere, now hosts a broad lineup of hip touring bands, stay acts and celebration nights.

There’s simply a complete lengthy weekend of retail and leisure packed into these blocks.

And then there are the actually totally different locations. Secure Attachments, positioned just a few strides off Mass and near the scrumptious Wheatfields Bakery, is a retailer devoted totally to the “fasten-ating” world of clips, clasps, staples, and industrial ties. Wonder Fair, “the print palace of the Great Plains” is a Louvre of whimsical stickers. The cabinets of Mass Street Soda carry greater than 1,000 kinds of soda from round the world.

At the north finish of Massachusetts, close to the place the highway meets the Kansas River, stands Waxman Candles — one other storied Lawrence retail outlet that has stood the check of time. After establishing in a makeshift shack in 1970, entrepreneur Bob Werts bluffed his manner into touchdown big-time industrial orders and efficiently constructed a enterprise that he nonetheless runs as we speak, alongside his son and daughter.

Selling each conceivable form, scent, and measurement of candle, as we speak’s ethereal, trendy Waxman storefront is backed by a well-worn workshop that’s half science lab, half artwork studio, with pungent vats of molten wax and drawers full of instruments and templates. It’s a really emblematic Lawrencian institution.

Curtis “Candlepants” McCoy has labored at Waxman for 26 years, having initially been drawn to what he calls the “Berkeley of the Midwest” to check in the Nineties. Like so many others, he fell in love with the city’s progressive vibe and stayed for good.

“It’s got a real charm,” he says. “It’s a top quality of residing with an actual sense of group and lots of actually good people who find themselves dedicated to residing a sure manner — being form, having enjoyable, turning into artistic, and taking good care of one another.

“With Lawrence there’s always something new; it’s always attracting interesting people.”

The University of Kansas performs a key function in that fixed renewal of individuals and concepts. There isn’t any escaping the faculty’s function in shaping the city’s trendy identification. The leafy residential streets to the east of Massachusetts are crammed with historic fraternity and sorority homes. Its soccer group is widely known citywide — the well-known Jayhawks take their identify from the very anti-slavery militias energetic when Lawrence was based. And up on Mount Oread, the imposing limestone campus buildings look down over the plains, asserting the city’s hard-won place in American historical past.

Another sporting self-discipline — basketball — holds equal sway in Lawrence, not simply due to the common successes of its faculty group. Basketball’s inventor, Canadian James Naismith, personally introduced the recreation to Lawrence, the place he coached the faculty group and nurtured the expertise of legendary KU coach Forrest Clare “Phog” Allen.

Hoop disciples have a number of locations of pilgrimage in the metropolis: KU’s Allen Fieldhouse stadium, close to the place statues honor each Naismith and Phog (so-called due to his foghorn-like bellow), and the adjoining DeBruce Center, the place the recreation’s unique typed guidelines are enshrined on the partitions. The graves of each males — Phog’s in sprawling Oak Hill Cemetery and Naismith’s in additional formal Memorial Park — additionally entice consideration, notably earlier than and after huge video games when Jayhawks followers generally congregate to supply tributes like cash and the occasional refreshment.

“Every once in a while, I’ve been known to pour a beer out for Phog,” says McCoy, of the candle store, recounting a well-known native ritual.

Sports apart, one among KU’s best cultural contributions to the metropolis is the Spencer Museum of Art, which homes a world-class assortment with 1000’s of items from European classical works to Indigenous arts. There are work by John Singer Sargent, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Georgia O’Keeffe in addition to hanging glasswork by Dale Chihuly.

Almost hidden away on the second flooring is the museum’s huge photographic archive. Each Friday throughout time period time, guests can drop into The Stephen H. Goddard Study Center and request to view unique prints from a set wealthy with pictures by masters like Diane Arbus and Charles Moore, underneath the steerage of consultants like Luke Jordan, a KU lecturer and the museum’s pictures specialist. In a metropolis so steeped in American historical past, it’s one other alternative to delve into the previous.

You’d be forgiven for pondering so, however KU isn’t the solely faculty on the town. To the south, on East twenty third Street — previous the Fields & Ivy Brewery, one other well-liked meals and drinks spot, and never far from the former house of Beat poet William S. Burroughs — is Haskell Indian Nations University. Architecturally extra modest and missing the grand profile of Mount Oread, Haskell is nonetheless deeply Lawrencian.

Founded in 1884 as the United States Indian Industrial Training School, Haskell was a part of a darkish period of federal boarding institutes designed to systematically strip Native American youngsters of their languages, traditions and identities. Yet, out of a historical past mired in trauma, the faculty remodeled. Today, it stands as a revered intertribal college, providing real academic and sporting alternatives to Indigenous college students representing a whole bunch of federally acknowledged tribes, though funding battles loom on the horizon.

For guests, there’s a small museum recounting Haskell’s tragedies and triumphs. On the different aspect of campus, a big Medicine Wheel etched into the panorama and marked by standing stones is poignantly embellished with seemingly mundane private objects left as choices — baseballs, cash, cigarette lighters and seashells.

Sports science pupil Gaines Johnson says for him Haskell affords brighter prospects than life again house in Rolla, Missouri. His cousin, Gage Johnson, finding out liberal arts, describes it as a “special place.”

“People come here from all walks of life, not just the usual backgrounds. It used to be a place of oppression where you couldn’t express your culture — but now you can. It’s a place of celebration.”

Back in downtown, Saturdays from spring to autumn carry one other retail expertise that, for the previous 50 years, has chimed completely with the metropolis’s Birkenstock-and-battle-cry vitality: Lawrence Farmers Market. Founded in 1976, the producers-only market host stallholders from the city and surrounding countryside who peddle contemporary foodstuffs and different objects to the strains of road musicians.

Regular stallholders right here embody the well-liked Irvine’s Just Beyond Paradise Winery, northeast of the metropolis, which makes use of cold-hardy grapes to supply crimson Chambourcin, referred to as a Pinot Noir of the Midwest, and a white Vignoles. Irvine’s went viral in 2024 after producing a novelty pizza-flavored tomato wine for a Pizza Hut advertising and marketing marketing campaign that acquired decidedly blended critiques however highlighted the vineyard’s vary.

Michael Wunsch, whose T3 Farms stall sells treatments made with pure elements together with stinging nettles, is a veteran of the farmers market who now helps run it. Though from out of city, Lawrence, he says, keeps pulling him again.

“It’s just an open-minded town that really engages with the local food movement organizations over chains — I find it very inspiring.”

From Big Lick to ‘Star City’: This Virginia mountain town shines