Free Admission Sundays at the Historical Museum

John Jones tried a Wichita-built alternative

The Jones Six is the only Wichita-built automobile the museum identifies as being on public exhibit. Jones, a Ford dealer, went on to produce an estimated 3,000 cars and trucks in Wichita. The museum presents the 1916 car in a recreated garage, linking one maker’s ambition to the city’s early manufacturing history.

The fourth-floor exhibition “The Spirit of Wichita” broadens that industrial story. Its 1912–39 timeline takes in aviation and oil, World War I, the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, as well as local arts, entertainment and technology. Among the aviation pioneers it features are Clyde Cessna, Walter Beech and Lloyd Stearman.

Further reading: Feature Exhibits – Wichita Sedgwick County Historical Museum ↗ · Wichita-Sedgwick Co. Historical Museum ↗

Follow the city through homes, shops and civic rooms

“Wichita – The Magic City” traces the city’s first 50 years, from its early inhabitants and settlement through buffalo hunting, river trade and cattle drives to the beginnings of flight in 1911. The exhibit notes that Wichita took its name from the Wichita people.

The third-floor “A Wichita Cottage” recreates a late-19th-century middle-class home in seven rooms. Details such as a wooden icebox and a gas-and-electric ceiling fixture show household technology changing alongside domestic life. Nearby, the Civics and Government display includes a mayor’s office developed with the help of a 1917 photograph of the City Hall office.

Other galleries offer shorter routes into everyday history. The second-floor displays include a recreated neighborhood drugstore and soda fountain, “A Child’s World” and a collection of Victorian silver-plated service ware. On the first floor, the Hall Collection presents cut and engraved glass; the welcome gallery introduces the museum’s work and includes exhibits made by its Young Historians Club.

Further reading: Feature Exhibits – Wichita Sedgwick County Historical Museum ↗

Temporary exhibitions add a November layer

On the first floor, “Windows on Collection – The Orpheum” is scheduled to remain on view through Nov. 14. It looks back to the Orpheum Theatre’s 1922 opening and its vaudeville history, making Nov. 8 a chance to see the display before its listed closing date.

On the fourth floor, “Being Modern” continues the museum’s art timeline from its earlier “Art Deco on the Plains” exhibition. The third-floor “Why History Museums Collect Art” brings works by C.A. Seward, John Noble, Edmund Davison and Bruce McGrew into a local-history setting: the exhibition considers how art can help explain the time and place in which it was made.

The fourth floor also has “The Gage Brewer Guitar – First Electric Guitar,” which explores Wichita’s connection to electric-guitar history. The seasonal “Victorian Cottage Christmas” and “Miniature Christmas Trees” exhibitions are listed to begin Nov. 19, so they are not part of the Nov. 8 visit.

Further reading: Special Exhibits – Wichita Sedgwick County Historical Museum ↗ · Exhibit: "Why History Museum's Collect Art" ↗

The former City Hall is part of the story

The museum occupies Wichita’s original City Hall, a civic building that once held city offices, the police and fire departments, and the city’s first public library. Its 170-foot clock tower belongs to the building’s history: the tower clock and a 1,000-pound bell were added in 1917, and a carillon followed in the 1950s.

The City Building was preserved for community use after plans for a new City Hall raised questions about its future. The museum moved from its East Douglas location in 1979 and opened in the building in 1981. That history makes the venue more than a container for the exhibits: the former municipal rooms are another way to consider how Wichita’s civic life changed.

Further reading: Wichita-Sedgwick Co. Historical Museum ↗ · Our Building – Wichita Sedgwick County Historical Museum ↗