Union Station, like many across the country, once was bustling with train traffic and passengers. Now, it’s little more than a venue for shows and and couple restaurants.Electric baggage wagon and cart from 1914.Kansas City Massacre 1933 story.Bullet hole from the shootout.Another one.
The Community Christian Church was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and build in 1942. The angular façade and rhombus-shaped plan conform to the irregularities of the sloping site. Gunite was sprayed over sheets of corrugated steel that were then sandwiched together to form the walls. The innovative material allowed Wright to reduce the thickness of the walls to a mere 2.75 inches.
Kansas City skyline from the National World War I Museum.Kansas City skyline from the National World War I Museum, later the same day!Western Auto used to be a hardware store chain.Broadway BoulevardI thought this was funny.We thought this was for a suspension bridge, but it is actually for the Kansas City Convention Center.Hallmark Cards’ headquarters are in Kansas City, across the street from our hotel.The World’s Largest Shuttlecock, at the The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.Also at the art museum, Rush Hour sculpture by George Segal, 1995. Evokes “the deep isolation that can occur even when we are surrounded by others.”
C. H. Lebold Mansion. This is the site of Abilene’s first settlers’ home, the log cabin of Mr. and Mrs. Timothy Hersey, in 1858. Also the birthplace of Abilene’s first white child. Mrs. Hersey named the town Abilene. This house was built in 1880.The Seelye Mansion was built in 1905 for Dr. A. B. Seelye, who made his fortune in patent medicine. The Patent Medicine Museum occupies a former Seelye laboratory which has been moved to the rear of the mansion.
The mansion is like a time capsule. Most of the home’s furnishings were purchased at the 1904 St Louis World’s Fair. The furnishings cost more than the $55,000 that was spent building the 11,000 square feet home.
Dr. Seelye’s daughters, Helen and Marion, were little girls when the home was built. They never married and lived in the home into their 90s – leaving almost everything right where their mother had placed it.
Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered ice to the Seelye Mansion when he was a young boy. The Seelye sisters recounted stories of Ike as a man from the “other side of the tracks”.
The home was featured on the History Channel’s “Mysteries at the Mansion”.
Dwight David Eisenhower was born in Denison TX October 14, 1891. His family moved to Abilene KS when he was a young child. He was one of six sons.This was Eisenhower’s high school desk.This museum is very well organized and laid out, and is extremely detailed. Rather than me explaining the different stages in Eisenhower’s life and career, I will let the display signs do the job in chronological order. You can see how step-by-step he was prepared for the job he did in World War II.Map of the world during World War II, showing the daunting challenge the US and Allies faced.War bonds poster.This the actual table General Eisenhower used to plan the Normandy invasion.This 1942 Cadillac Fleetwood was used by General Eisenhower during and after the war.Ike’s leather map case, 5-star general’s automobile flag, map case full of maps, binoculars, General of the Army Commission, and his General of the Army uniform.Ike ran for president and won in 1952. As our 34th president, he served two terms, 1953-1961. (He was president when I was born).First Lady Mamie Eisenhower set American fashion trends in the 1950s, the “Mamie Look”.The Eisenhowers’ White House china.As president, Eisenhower faced critical new issues.President Eisenhower meeting Soviet Union Premier Nikita Kruschev.ARPA (predecessor to DARPA) was established by President Eisenhower.Civil Rights for African-Americans advanced during President Eisenhower’s term. The Supreme Court invalidated segregation in the schools in 1954, and the Civil Rights Act of 1957 was enacted. He also sent the National Guard to enforce desegregation at Central High School in Little Rock AR in 1957, in direct opposition to Arkansas governor Orval Faubus, who tried to keep the African-American students out of the school.American lifestyle in the 1950s.A most prescient warning from President Eisenhower in his farewell. Too bad the country didn’t heed his advice.President Eisenhower died March 28, 1969 in Washington DC. He had been living at his farm in Gettysburg PA.President Dwight and First Lady Mamie Eisenhower are buried in Abilene KS in the Meditation Chapel on the museum grounds.
