Collyer, Kansas Downtown Survey Report, March 2009

Davis Preservation

From "Survey Boundaries": "Davis Preservation surveyed a total of twenty (20) commercial properties in Collyer. Nineteen (19) of these were surveyed on February 3, 2009. A twentieth property, the Union Pacific Blacksmith Shop (#20), was added in March, 2009. The survey documented all of Collyer's known commercial buildings, stretching from US Highway 40 on the south to 2nd Street on the north. The survey area includes one property that faces US Highway 40, two properties (grain elevators) that fall within the Union Pacific right-of-way, one property that faces 4th Street, and one property that faces 3rd Street. The rest of the surveyed properties face Ainslie Avenue, Collyer's principal north-south thoroughfare. Also included were two structures, the city water tower north of the city building and a masonry water tower west of the Zeman Dance Hall (#6). The dance hall is included in a concentration of buildings on the west side of Ainslie Avenue between 3rd and 4th Streets. Six of these seven (#1-#6) buildings were constructed as a group in 1926-27. This block historically represented the core of Collyer's commercial district. By the early Twentieth Century, the east side of Ainslie between 3rd and 4th Streets was filled with false-front wood buildings. These impermanent buildings were extant in 1925 but had been removed by mid-Twentieth Century. Today, the east side of this block houses a concrete-block building and the Union Pacific depot, which was moved from its original location in the railroad right-of-way. Four buildings and a structure, four of which date to the 1920s, are located north of the 3rd Street on the east side of Ainslie Avenue." Funding for this project was provided in part through a 2008 Historic Preservation Fund grant to the Collyer Community Alliance (project number KS-08-004) administered by the Kansas State Historic Preservation Office (grant number 20-08-21721) and the State, Tribal, and Local Plans and Grants Division, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior.

Collyer, Kansas Downtown Survey Report, March 2009

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