Saving Century II: The Irreplaceable Saucer of the Midwest

When I moved to New York City twenty years ago, I promised my family that I would try to return home at least once a year. As my work responsibilities grew and my personal life expanded, coordinating these trips became more complicated, but I kept my vow for the most part. Save the half dozen times I chose to fly straight through to Kansas City, renting a car to complete the trip to Wichita, I primarily flew out of LaGuardia at the crack of dawn with connecting flights to tinier airplanes through Atlanta or Chicago, finally landing sometime around noon Central Standard Time at the old Wichita Midcontinent airport. No matter how tired or frazzled I might feel from the hustle and jumble of air travel, I always looked forward to driving the flyover span of US 400 toward my mother’s home on the east side of town. Past the flat boxes of retail, through old neighborhoods thick with trees, the proud spire of the Friends University clocktower, then a curve, a sweep upward, and suddenly, to the north, the singular skyscape of downtown Wichita.

It has always been a comfort and a thrill to see it, the color wheel cross-section of light, bright blues, the monolithic flight control tower of the Garvey building, the black glass hulk of the former Bank 4, the improbable brutalist Lego transformer that is the old library, and that bodacious saucer, somehow futuristic yet still mid-century modern and forever too cool for school, the Century II Performing Arts and Convention Center.

The old, brutalist library at night.

The first, informal whispers that the old library and Century II might be leveled for downtown redevelopment was met by many Wichita natives as far-fetched and, frankly, unthinkable. Buildings are not paper cups to be tossed after use, and buildings as architecturally significant as Century II and the old library are certainly far beyond mere "structures." This wouldn’t be like tearing down an old Costco or Wal-Mart. These buildings are works of art. With a little refurbishment and a bit of repurposing, they have decades of life still left in them. Unfortunately (and completely unsurprisingly), the same minds that shoehorned the uninspired Intrust Arena downtown--with little regard to aesthetics or parking, it seems--are at it again. Populous, as part of the deceptively named Riverfront Legacy Master Plan coalition, promoted a rigged “community outreach” by means of a push poll, and initially proposed a selection of five plans for redevelopment on the river, only one of which kept Century II. It is clear that little to no effort was put into using the buildings we already have. Why refurbish, repurpose, and rebrand solid works of art that were built to last when you can build new, prefab, cheaply constructed boxes that will be ready to tear down in less than thirty years for yet another money grab?

Back in her library glory, full of stacks.

The corruption at the root of Century II’s possible demise has been remarkably slow and unabashedly deliberate. While Wichitans lived their lives, paid their bills, grew their gardens, and raised their kids, the city’s plan for Century II was to simply let it go to seed. Instead of caring for this remarkable building, an irreplaceable piece of architecture, the city manager decided to just let it rot. Paint and power washing was put aside, improvements were not made, and only the most critical of broken things were fixed. The plan, it seems, was to let it slowly deteriorate, allowing the facilities to become so rundown, outdated, and under resourced that the city manager could finally point to it and say, See, it is “no longer viable.” The citizens would look upon the faded, dirty structure and think “yes, we deserve something better.” Something shiny and new. They would forget that Century II was properly maintained for decades, a lovely, strange, one-of-a-kind centerpiece to Wichita’s skyline and treated thusly. Not all of us have forgotten.

Rendering 1. Screenshot from the Downtown Wichita website.

Using the word “legacy” to describe the pre-fab, mini-mall village the Riverfront Legacy Master Plan coalition has in mind is particularly galling. Unless, of course, the lowest bid, aesthetically inconsequential strip mall mediocrity littered across the country is anyone’s idea of a suitable “legacy” for their beloved town. There is a reason that the three “concept” images featured on the RLMP website are vague and almost comically misleading. The first focuses the Arkansas River, depicting it in a decidedly bluer hue that it has ever been this century (or last, or ever, maybe). There is an inset swimming area that should run chills of horror down the spine of anyone who learned canoeing at North High, or has ever braved the river in a kayak, or has ever just walked by the river and caught a heady punch of its aroma. Even in this rendering, the “dream” river dominates, and the rest is obscured by trees and mobs of Wichitans, apparently wild to get up close and personal to the dank and dirty in the proposed river pool. What great works of architectural genius are slated to replace our beloved Century II and library? What daring design is just over the horizon?

Rendering 2. Screenshot from the Downtown Wichita website.

The second concept image features more Wichitans enjoying the expansive park space that would stand in place of where Century II is now. The park layout is flat, plain, and uninteresting. It is, for all intents and purposes, a glorified suburban lawn. We already have a glorified suburban lawn downtown in the desperately trendy, oft-hyped Naftzger Park. Likewise, Wichita already has downtown-adjacent parks that follow the river and offer far more than bland views. The rendering primarily shows people and park space and very little of the structures that the RLMP coalition plans to make or break our city’s lasting “legacy.”

Rendering 3. Screenshot from the Downtown Wichita website.

The last concept image shows the grand design of the new structures, sort of, depicting a generalized, very preliminary version of what the new development will have to offer. There will be two separate venues to replace the one Century II—a performing arts venue and a convention center—two vague rectangles of space that beg the question that if Century II was not fulfilling the entertainment needs of Wichita, why was the Intrust Bank Arena not conceived and constructed to meet those needs back in 2010? The rest of the structures and spaces in the rendering are either park space or the grimly labeled “mixed use,” which brings to mind the fate of the once-lovely little downtown park of my childhood, the aforementioned Naftzger Park, which has now been reduced to an overrated median strip next to mass-produced, derivative commercial buildings. “Mixed use” will likely be restaurants (great) and retail (maybe great depending on what ends up there), but will also likely include office and residential space. Since existing commercial and residential areas downtown are nowhere near maximum capacity, one wonders just who will be utilizing this new, “mixed use” development in the long run? Or are these just short-term goals with no long-term plans?

Winter CII

It would appear that the coalition at least has a dark sense of humor, where their deliberate use of the word “legacy” in their name could easily be construed as petty trolling. One of the proposed parks, which appears to be right in the demolished footprint of Century II, is named “Century Park.” Why? As an homage to the beautiful structure that once stood there with its cool, curved lines, bold and stark and extraordinary? Or is this just a placeholder name some snarky designer thought appropriate, akin to dancing on the grave of ingenuity and creativity, “so long as we get paid” sort of thing? What I do see when I look at that last concept drawing is a whole lot of boxy boxes of no consequence or value replacing buildings that have history, meaning, depth, and beauty.

Night angles of the old library.

Whenever I’ve traveled to popular destinations—New York, London, Seattle, Paris, New Orleans—what always strikes me first is the heft of History all around me. The stalwart permanence of the place. There is always new mixed in—new light fixtures, buildings, parks, ideas—but the old remains. People might go to New York to see a particular show at Madison Square Garden, but they do not go to New York to visit Madison Square Garden for the sake of Madison Square Garden. They do not go to see a single glass skyscraper, though they might appreciate it in the plethora of so many glass skyscrapers. And they certainly do not go to New York to see mini-malls, Super Targets, or Applebee’s. They go to see those stately brownstones lining the old neighborhoods, the elegant spire of the Chrysler Building, the handsome art deco wonder that is the Empire State Building. They walk miles to see the city in all her grandest splendor, the remarkable craft of mason work by hands folded generations ago, the beautiful, etched grace of a city cobbled together by competing interests, compelling stories, and the wearying sweat and toil of our great-great grandfathers. The city’s structures are its legacy in this world, the mark of the human hands, and minds, and hearts who created them, and the history, the story of our human permanence, that even though we pass on, our carefully crafted structures, built ever upward and outward, remain.

Main entryway of the old library at an angle.

It’s been suggested that the whole middle of the country suffers from a sort of vague identity crisis. We are the “flyover states,” the great, blank expanse, the parking lot to the Rocky Mountains. We are small town, small minded. Our cities are stopovers to better places, run through with train tracks, a gas station hub to anywhere but here. Compared to aged cities like London, or ancient cities like Jerusalem, our settlements are mere blips on the timeline, of no consequence, maybe just one bad drought away from ghost towns run flat to dust. We don’t have the alluring seduction of Hollywood, the primeval forests of the redwoods, the shining, dangerous lights of Las Vegas, the breathtaking awe of the Grand Canyon. We are not a destination. We have only scraps of history. And what we do have, too many of us are eager to take for granted. Why is there never room for nostalgia when we speak of public spaces? Is this not one of the ways we create a sense of home and belonging? Arguments to delegitimize nostalgia as a worthy aspect to saving Century II and the old library are disingenuous, dismissive, and critically flawed.

What the city government of Wichita seems to have forgotten (and the Riverfront Legacy Master Plan coalition could care less) is that the revitalization of downtown Wichita managed to take place using the existing structures that had been there for decades. Oldtown is called “Oldtown” for a reason. The brick streets, the old buildings, the sense of history, place—a true destination—made the revitalization of downtown what it is today. Ticky tacky, pressed board construction was never the answer. It is not the answer now. Nevertheless, the bulldozer of progress is chugging on. The old Wichita Eagle building (never a beauty contest winner, even in her youth) was replaced by the standard issue modern aesthetics of the new Cargill building, a similar mishmash of styles and “flairs” not unlike the new library (also near, but not on the river). Similarly styled buildings are rising up where the old Mead’s Corner used to stand and, most irritatingly, a new Fidelity megabank has gone up behind the quirky “Ho Ho” shaped Broadway Autopark, formerly the Knightly Parking Garage, on South Broadway, which was only just recently refurbished and repainted to now be obscured by yet another boxy box of boxness.

In a time when the world is on a precipice of survival, where we collectively seem to only half understand the need to re-use, re-source, and re-cycle, it is all the more tone deaf to tear down perfectly usable, perfectly astounding structures to replace them with stunted, cheap mediocrity. There is no time like the present to prove we are not locusts ever consuming, never building to stay, to stand, to commit, and not just to persevere but build true monuments to our audacity, our midwestern spirit to forge grain and stand into the wind, immovable and bound together. Do we leave crumbling detritus in our wake, choking the river, clogging the banks, or do we make a real effort to prove we as a people value beauty and art, and understand that we have already created something enduring to memorialize our grandest dreams in the name of our greatest virtues, institutions of learning and community? Our library, our Century II. Can we collectively say, Fly over us if you will, but we choose to leave something permanent and indelible, extraordinary and sublime. We dreamt big, wild, and limitless and shouted proudly that we loved this ground, these winding forks in the river, and wished to make our mark, leave sign of our daring, and state unequivocally that We Were Here.

Century II and the old library are worth saving. Instead of taking for granted the things that we have and striving for the banal, we could embrace a new century’s worth of science, education, arts, entertainment, work space, green space, community gathering place, and for a fraction of the cost of a hyped-up strip mall next to another bland park. We already have a sense of place, a monument to our community and generations past, but we’ve got to invest in it to make it prevail, otherwise we commit to a future of waystation grayness, the anyplace rest area in between more enticing destinations. Have your “mixed use” boxes, plan your grand monument suburban lawn maintenance—there are plenty of places around Wichita in desperate need of some investment and invigoration—but do not tear down the two buildings that make our skyline more than just vaguely memorable. Do not erase our identity—what makes us both identifiable and inscrutable—only to build nothing special at all.

All CII and old library photos are mine. If you want to see some truly gorgeous, professional photographs of these magnificent buildings, check out Mickey Shannon Photography and Drone-tography.