Kansas Visitor's Guide 2007/2008 - (Page 44) For couples Company in Lawrence. Glassware in a downtown Lawrence shop. A cinnamon roll at WheatFields Bakery. PHOTOGRAPHS, CLOCKWISE FROM FAR LEFT: JOHN NOLTNER (2), MICHAEL C. SNELL (2), JOHN NOLTNER, BOB STEFKO LAWRENCE /TOPEKA (Clockwise) Free State Brewing L AWRENCE STARTED OUT serious You can learn the rest of that grim history at the Watkins Community and then got downright dangerous before Museum of History, several blocks south of the brewpub on it evolved into the laid-back college town Massachusetts. Along the way, though, you’re liable to be distracted that welcomes visitors today. Oh sure, drop by the appealing present, which includes more than into WheatFields Bakery or Signs of Life 60 shops and galleries, from Phoenix Gallery, with coffeehouse in this lovingly tended community its shelves of blown glass, ceramics and jewelry, to of 80,000 (35 miles west of Kansas City, 26 The Bay Leaf, with kitchen gear. miles east of Topeka), and you’ll hear heated And there’s a lot of competition downtown discussions: politics or the fortunes of the beloved for visitors’ taste buds. You can choose Rudy’s Pizzeria with University of Kansas (KU) Jayhawks basketball team. $2.50 slices, Zen Zero’s Pan-Asian noodle dishes or Teller’s Consider the local history, though. Lawrence was Mediterranean entrees in an elegant old bank building. founded in 1854 by Massachusetts abolitionists who At the hilltop university, a campus of big stone buildings were determined that Kansas would not enter the union under century-old shade trees, the Spencer Museum of as a slave-holding state. At the Free State Brewing Art houses a nationally renowned collection of more Company, which draws its name than 25,000 works of art. KU also is home to the from the motto of those founders, you Dole Institute of Politics. The institute, opened in can sip a beer on the front porch 2003, honors former U.S. Senator and presidential overlooking Massachusetts Street, candidate Bob Dole, a Kansan and a KU alumnus. downtown’s bustling, tree-lined main Art and politics mix in Topeka at the Kansas thoroughfare. Across the street and down State Capitol. One giant mural depicting the the block, the view includes the swank little “Bleeding Kansas” era shows glaring abolitionist red-brick Eldridge Hotel, which was John Brown with a rifle in one hand and a Bible destroyed during the pre-Civil War “Bleeding in the other. In southeastern Topeka, the Kansas” conflict between abolitionists and proBrown v. Board of Education National Historic slavery forces. In August 1863, the hotel was Site occupies the former Monroe School. A burned, along with much of the rest of the town, lawsuit challenging racial segregation led by Quantrill’s Raiders. More than 150 Lawrence to a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision citizens were killed during the raid. ending school segregation in America. Official Kansas Visitors Guide 44
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