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Kaufman Building Placed on the Register of Historic Kansas Places 2006 |
(The following is quoted from the Kansas Preservation newsletter, Kansas State Historical Society, Nov.-Dec. 2006, Vol 28, No. 6, p. 32)
"Built in 1924, Wichita’s Kaufman Building is significant for its association with Wichita’s role as a wholesale wheat trading center during the 1920s and as an example of architect-designed early twentieth-century fireproof commercial construction. Local entrepreneur Hilbert Kaufman commissioned the building in 1922 and hired the Chicago-based architecture firm of Eberson and Weaver to design his building.
"When it opened in 1924, the Kaufman Building provided office space for a growing number of wheat-related organizations and businesses that flocked to the community. In addition to Kaufman’s offices, 1925 occupants included the Kansas Co-op Wheat Marketing Association, the Kansas Wheat Growers Association, and the
Wheat Growers’ Journal. The Great Depression hit the Kansas wheat industry hard and by all of the wheat and grain-related businesses had moved out. Throughout the mid-twentieth century, the building continued to house a variety of business types, many of them related to oil production, insurance, and credit industries."It has been vacant since 1996. The exterior of the Kaufman Building represents the early twentieth-century Commercial Style. This style is most often seen in downtown commercial buildings from the 1910s and 1920s."