Carrie Rengersv – The Wichita Eagle
Mar. 6—An unusual building is up for auction in Riverside this month.
The 2,112-square-foot property at 901 N. Porter Ave., which is at the northwest corner of Franklin and Porter, was built as Wichita’s Firehouse No. 7 in 1922.
“That’s really got a lot of history to it,” said auctioneer Rick Brock of McCurdy Real Estate & Auction.
According to the Kansas Firefighters Museum archives, the $25,000 station initially had four firefighters assigned there.
Though it was Wichita’s seventh firefighting station, it was only the sixth actual firehouse since two stations shared the same downtown building.
Since 1973, the building has been home to the Civitan Club of Wichita, an international volunteer organization that in particular helps people with physical and developmental disabilities.
The group has used the building as the Civitan Community House for itself and others to hold meetings.
“They’re a very neat organization,” Brock said.
He said the club is donating all proceeds from the auction to various charities that align with its own principles and goals of service.
The chapter is not closing.
“They really don’t have a need for a building anymore,” Brock said.
The online auction opens at 2 p.m. March 14 and closes at 2:10 p.m. March 23.
There is an open house at the building from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. Tuesday.
There is not a minimum bid for the auction.
The property is zoned for multifamily use.
“There’s actually a lot things that fall under that zoning classification,” Brock said.
In addition to a variety of residential uses, there are public and civic uses — such as churches, hospitals and schools — along with some commercial uses. A nightclub or event center would not be allowed.
Historian Jay Price is watching what happens.
He said the building was built at a time when things like firehouses and gas stations were built to look like little cottages so they’d fit in with their residential surroundings.
That means the building is “a hallmark of what’s there.”
“The building is certainly part of a landscape,” Price said.
He often describes a landscape as being like a smile.
“If the building is gone, it’s like a gap in the teeth.”
Price said that history is what survives.
“What survives is what we remember,” he said. “When the building is gone, it sort of distorts our memory.”
When neighborhoods change, Price said, “What do you do with buildings that no longer have the original use? . . . How do you maintain the integrity of a neighborhood while at the same time maintaining the usability of the space?”
Preservationists won’t want the building dramatically altered, Price said.
He said he likes the possibility of it becoming a house, noting that “people live in all sorts of weird and unusual spaces.”
“It would be a really fun, quirky house.”
Visit the auction listing here.
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