USA > Kansas > Shawnee County > Topeka > Polk Topeka, Kansas, city directory, 1888-9 > Part 1
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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY ¢ 3 1833 00866 4291
REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
Gc 978.102 T62p 1888-89
5030227
1
ESTABLISHED 1869
Radges DIRECTORY
36340
OF THE
CITY OF TOPEKA
For 1888- 9
Price Three Dollars
X
-
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY. FORT WAYNE, INDIANA
717.81 Raci
Paul
. . ..
Jubographers
Engravers and Printers Blaut Book Makers 110 112 114 .EIGHT STREET EAST
---
TOPEKA, KANSAS. "OPEKA ROOM Reference
1
1
Strickler, Daniels & Pounds, 2
515 KANSAS AVENUE, 5030227 TOPEKA, KANSAS.
REAL ESTATE
DEALERS.
WE HAVE FOR SALE
Unimproved [ands Farms
In the Best Localities in the State of Kansas, ranging in price from
$5 TO $50 PER ACRE.
Many of these Properties are unexcelled as an investment or a desirable home.
City Property in Topeka a Specialty.
-
A T.'
J. N STRICKLER.
STRICKLER, DAN
515 KANSAS AVENV
GENERAL REAL E
99 % A.
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Copyright, 1888, by Rand, McNally & Co., Map Publishers, Chicago. Offer for Sale City and Suburban Property. Farms. Ra
Engraved for SAM RADCES'
: 102 LONGITUDE WEST FROM GREENWICH. 101º CHASE HAYES DUNDY Culbertson N BURLINGTON River IIITCIICOCK 400 Jerome O Achilles Kepferle RAWLINS Ludell Onu. 0 Wano BUR. Celiao , Atwoody Republican CHEYENNE Bird Cus Beaverton o Rawlins O McCloud 9 Sein ARAPAHOE O Quickvilleso THOMAS Voltaire Streator o Do Eustis Colby Q Sherman Centre SHERMAN South oakley Wallace PACIFIC AELBERTD WELD 39° A Tatitis N UNION H WALLACE RT WICHITA MICH. TOP. A GREELEY Coronado K Bonasa. Horace SCOTT MO White Lah E Coolidge ATCH Deerfield NE & Gardent o Syracuse Kendall RNE V. MULTON 100 Lakin Arkansas A A Hartland B ON F STANTON HASKELL GRANT 0 Richfield LAS MORTON Hugoton ANIMAS C O STEVENS 2 State Line SEWPARD 37 1 Scale of Statute Miles. 0 5 10 20 80 40 50 Rand, Me Nally& Co, Engr's, Chicago. , 24 0 REAL ESTATE LOANS NEGOTIATED. J.1:41st.
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TOPEKA, KANSAS, STATE DEALERS, I
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PEKA CITY DIRECTORY, 1888.
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WILL BE GLAD TO PLACE YOUR PROPERTY ON OUR LIST. C C C
AWORTH
NUCHOLLS
NJ ODA
WAY
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&&tell
THE PLACE TO BUY TOPEKA PROPERTY
Is at the Real Estate Office of
Strickler, Daniels & Pounds,
SOLE AGENTS FOR THE
Popular Additions.
Highland Park, .
Euclid Park,
Washburn Place, Veale's Addition, North Park, Daniels' Sub-Division, : and West Side Sub-Division.
ALSO AGENTS FOR Quinton Heights, : Western Land & Lot Company's Addition, Lafayette Place, Heery's Second Sub-Division.
All these Additions are convenient to Street Cars and Motor Lines. It will pay you to invest in these Additions.
515 Kansas Avenue,
-
TOPEKA, KANSAS.
PROEMIAL.
IN placing this, the tenth edition of the Topeka City Directory, before its patrons and the public generally for inspection, the fullest assurance is given that the most strenuous efforts have been made to make every detail both accurate and reliable. Each name is printed precisely as it was spelled by the person who gave the name, and every house in the city has been visited by an intelligent canvasser for the purpose of ascertaining the names of its inhabitants. If, there- fore, you fail to find a name, do not question the accuracy of the Directory until you have searched for it under every spelling it is susceptible of; and if you still fail to find it, bear in mind that the in- formation contained in a directory is obtained from nearly as many different persons as there are names in it, and that it is barely possible that some other than the publisher is responsible for the omission.
With this issue, as in the past, the undersigned has endeavored to give perfect satisfaction and a full remuneration for patronage be- stowed, and in this connection desires to impress upon the mind of every person in the city, that they are under special obligations to each and every business and professional man whose card or advertise- ment appears in this volume; they are the "roll of honor," and should be recognized and preferred in all business transactions. Their money defrays the expense of this publication, and they are justly entitled to the benefits accruing therefrom, as it is well known that the old fogies, and those too penurious to aid in this or any other legitimate enterprise for the benefit of the city, will affect to enjoy its advantages at the expense of others.
Appreciating that my former efforts have won the confidence of our citizens, I shall strive to merit a continuance of their favors for future editions of this work.
Very respectfully,
ams
MAY 20, 1888.
THE ARKANSAS VALLEY
Town Land Co.
Stormont Building, TOPEKA, KAS. Rooms 9, 11, 13 and 15.
« TOWN PROPERTIES >
ON THE GREAT ATCHISON, TOPEKA & SANTA FE RAILROAD, SOUTHERN KANSAS RAILWAY, AND
THE CHICAGO, KANSAS & WESTERN RY.
One Hundred and Fifty Towns and Cities in Kansas under one Management.
Unsurpassed Opportunities for Business Men and Speculators.
CORRESPONDENCE INVITED.
Address R. M. SPIVEY,
W. A. COATS,
Gen'l Agent.
Sec'y and Treas.
Feo. W. Watson's Real Estate Agency
Is located at 601; Kansas Avenue, on Southwest Cor. of Sixth, have.
HISTORY OF TOPEKA.
INTRODUCTION.
Like all mortals born with a tormenting ambition, I have ever had my dream of glory; and I have earnestly sought to make it real, by every means in my Power not involving the danger of getting hurt, killed or disfigured so I couldn't enjoy my glory when I got it. Spurred by this vaulting ambition,
"When war waged its wide desolation,"
I rushed madly into the turmoil, and for three long, perilous years served my "un- try as a notary public in the great State of Ohio. Fame came not yet; and no sooner had the war ended, and peace reigned long enough to show it had coute to stay, than I boldly accepted a lieutenant's commission in the Kansas militia. 'this, however, did not advance my aims; for no sooner had I bought my uniform and exhibited myself in martial array to my admiring family, than serious trouble #rose -there was a strike all along the lines of the railroads; the sheriff, while reading the riot act from a slow, melancholy cow-catcher, was hit upon his majestic shin by a riotous brick ; and as I deprecated all violence in case of a strike, when the rail- road employés had all struck for higher pay and the militia had been sent for, I struck for my home and fireside, like the Scots under Bruce, and stayed there. "then I tried to get a job as a humorist; but chancing one day to hit upon an original foke not down in the scrap books, the whole fraternity of funny men arose in wrath. de- claring I meant to ruin the craft, and I had to go. From that day to this I have avoided as a poison thing every thought or form of expression not already in uni- versal use or to be found in the medical almanacs. I have tried to practice law, but lately the court at nisi prius has virtually barred me out because, having grown so almighty learned, the other lawyers stand no show when I am in the case, and the judge is afraid I may influence him by my more than Demosthenian eloquence. Altogether, I have had reason to feel blue over my eternal fame prospects, with eren my very name as yet unknown to half the human race; and age coming on, I had despaired of ever having a biography anybody would ever read three centuries hence, and feared I should be compelled to put up with the customary hic facet, which is outside Latin for the inside devout wish -"May the divil fly away wid him." But there was one man who had watched my career with a discerning eye, able to penetrate external appearances and its own spectacles, and whose possessor saw in me one of those "Miltons born to blush unseen" because nobody can be in- duced to look at their blushes. So one morning last winter, when the sun shone re- splendent in the heavens, and with its refulgence made the ice, whereon the @Hizen walked, gyrated and sat him down, to glitter like hotel glassware, Mr. Radges flung upon an astonished world and the show cases of advertisers, the glad tidings, in a handsome sheet, that "versatile and brilliant" I had consented to write the non- sense end of his Directory. My fame is now assured; and I have but to intlaluce this interesting, though somewhat asthmatic, compilation, and reach forth in confi- dence to receive my crown of glory from a grateful public, and a box of ten ment-
SAMPLES
of LATEST NOVELTIES in Cloth furnished by Rodgers & Stranahan, Topeka. Write.
PROMPT MONEY. LOW RATES,
T. E. BOWMAN & CO.
TO BORROWERS. MINIMUM EXPENSE
No accepted application has ever had to wait a day for money.
T. E. BOWMAN & CO., Real Estate Loan Brokers.
GEO. W. WATSON
Makes Investments for Capitalists. CORRESPONDENCE SOLICITED.
20
RADGES' TOPEKA DIRECTORY.
house-imported cigars from the hands of my discerning patron. Perhaps I ought not to have mentioned these bits of purely personal history; but I felt constrained to do so for the encouragement of other youth struggling against difficulties to make way to the stars.
Lives of great men all remind us we can make our lives sublime, and this lesson will not, I hope, be lost. To be sure, not all can hope to attain to my dizzy altitude, for this Directory being at present published only once a year, it is not likely that many thousands can serve upon its literary staff; but let all aim high, and much may be achieved. In these days of Pears' Soap, Oats Essence and Sapolio, who shall say there is no opening for a lucrative and brilliant literary career? But to my subject:
Heretofore, the Hon. Joseph G. Waters has been accustomed to indite the intro- ductions to this thrilling continued story, and I do not hesitate to say he should long since have been indicted himself for his utter disregard of propriety and truth. In a solemn work like this, jokes are out of place; and what is there in it that should render an occasional bit of truth distasteful? Yet I have seen people enjoy what Waters wrote. They shall have no chance to thus desecrate my laborious work; for I am no liar as Waters is. I am foolish enough to believe that truth is, in this age and in this town, stranger than any real-estate advertisement. I am, I confess, about the funniest man that ever made a whole community shed its buttons to get room to laugh, but I conceive fun to be out of place in a document of this sort. Whether they like it or not, therefore, my readers must expect from me nothing but actual facts. I shall not abandon truth to puff the town, nor make people laugh to get them to believe what I write. To the end that I might depart from custom, and make my facts reliable, I have been at great pains to insert nothing here for which I could not personally vouch, and every fact here inserted has been either investigated or made. by myself.
-
I wish to be logical in this thing; and logic requires that I shall proceed with order, and do with my subject as does the parson with his text-take it to pieces, and do it up a word at a time. My subject is, "Radges' Annual Directory of the City of Topeka," and, proceeding after the manner of Parsons, I shall divide my discourse into the following heads:
1st. "Radges' Annual Directory of the City of Topeka."
2d. "Radges' Annual Directory of the City of Topeka."
3d. " Radges' Annual Directory of the City of Topeka."
TOPEKA.
The Kaw Indians, who were here when the town was named, said "Topeka" was one of their words, and meant "a good place to come for your artichokes;" and a common man might be excused for sup- posing that, as it was an Indian word, the Indians ought to be allowed to say what should be done with it. But the wise men of the world, who cannot explain even a combination of white dress, pink ribbons and a Derby hat, with light trousers festooned on the back of low-cut shoes, hanging on a gate, of an evening in June, without going into an observatory and making sundry mathematical calculations, were not satisfied with the definition furnished by a tribe of savages, and have
118 East Fifth Street
IS OUR NEW NUMBER. CALL and SEE US. Rodgers & Stranahan.
As an Investor of Capital for Non-Residents,
GEO. W. WATSON is a Decided Success. Correspond with Him.
RADGES' TOPEKA DIRECTORY. 21
sought earnestly for a hidden meaning. Many guesses have been made; but I am convinced that Prof. Max Muller's theory is correct; that "Topeka" is an Aryan word, standing for a phrase, as is com- mon in that language, and means "the only place where a civilized man, being free to live where he will, would voluntarily take up his abode for life." According to this great investigator, there was, cen- turies ago, a prophecy current in Arabia, that, in some aftertime, such a city bearing this name, and more beautiful and rich than any which even the oriental imagination had ever pictured, would exist in a far- off western world; and it was this prophecy which Plato mistook for past history and wove into his story of Atlantis. Such is the scientific understanding of the word "Topeka," and it is currently believed in this city. I might have given some fanciful definition, as Waters has always done, but I prefer to stick to the simple, prosaic facts.
THE CITY OF TOPEKA.
The town of Topeka was laid out in 1854; and the city of Topeka has since laid out every rival town in the State. For four years the town had no government-no laws. Not that it could not have had both had it so desired; for the slavery Territorial Legislature had government and laws to spare, and insisted, almost to the point of ill-breeding, upon supplying the new town; but the people were re- solved not to be under obligations to their neighbors, and contrived to get along without the proffered luxuries. In 1858, however, the city got a charter, and since then, though the city has grown wonderfully in all other directions, nothing has grown so fast as its government. Thirty years ago it had no government at all, and now it has more than any two kingdoms of Europe, or any female academy on this continent.
This city is the capital of the State; but it is not merely the capi- tal -it is the commercial metropolis as well. Some people with num- ber six heads talk of removing the capital to some lithograph town that has nothing to live on, and needs the wages of the State-House "help;" but that will never be. And be it known, we do not depend upon the State House for a living. We have plenty of banks, either one of which can pay out for office furniture and stationery more money than the State treasury has in it, and not notice it in paying dividends. Topeka is a railroad, commercial and manufacturing city; and the disbursements of its railroad employés alone amount to more every month than all the legislative appropriations for a whole year,
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and more than any other town in the State ever sees in twelve months of flush times. Do you suppose we could pave our streets till they look like the most beautiful parts of Paris, if we had to live off the State officers, clerks and janitors? We have water works and street railroads it would make the State treasury fast ten years to build. We even get away with the State House on legislation, and have some city ordinances no Legislature could be hired to pass without the en- couraging presence of the regular army. You just wait and see. If ever Gabriel does come to this place to annoy our busy population, break up real-estate deals, and disturb the contractors of the State House or the engineer of the coal hole, the police judge will have him on the rock pile for disturbing the peace, and confiscate his trumpet as a concealed weapon, before he has had a chance to get his bearings.
The State House has been trying for years to close up the saloons, while we closed ours so long ago we have forgotten what a saloon looks like. To be sure, the police run in a man now and then for being drunk, but this is usually on Saturdays, and always one of the same men on the same drunk; and he could have been run in any other day just as well, only the police judge lets it go till Saturday so as to make a good showing at the end of the week. We have a jail of such architectural beauty, and so well kept, that it takes the com- bined police force to turn a prisoner out when his time is up, and people make all sorts of excuses to get in. Men confined there have declared they preferred it to the penitentiary, though that is a State institution. We have a school house in every block-not otherwise occupied-and so many colleges that their professors alone would make a town larger than either of those clamoring for the State capi- tal. The city of Topeka, as defined by its corporate limits, is four miles long and three miles wide, while the real Topeka is not less than eight miles in either direction. The Rapid Transit, the Cable, and the Street and Circle railways are reaching out to the country towns, and the people are building homes and starting groceries all along the new lines; so that it is no exaggerated prophecy, that in five years the intervening country will be so completely settled up that all these country towns will be as much parts of the city as North Topeka is now. We shall then have a city extending twenty-nine miles-from Grantville to Silver Lake-one way, and twenty-five or thirty miles-from Meriden to Auburn, or thereabouts-the other way, and the county boundaries must be enlarged to make room for the county seat. Laugh at this if you want to. Who cares? But
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