William Allen White House

This house at 927 Exchange was home to William Allen White, nationally and internationally known editor of the Emporia Gazette, from 1899 until his death in 1944. Here the White family entertained several U.S. presidents-- Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover-- and prominent Americans, such as Edna Ferber, Frank Lloyd Wright, Walt Mason, and Jane Addams.

The site was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976. Three buildings comprise the site on four town lots and also include the visitor center to the southwest and White's mother's home at 923 Exchange, connected by a terraced garden.

Mary Ann Hatten White lived in the house at 923 Exchange from about 1904 until her death in 1924. The adjacent foursquare was typical in the Midwest in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but the multi-colored brick and limestone window lintels and sills made this house unique.

The home is made of bright sandstone from Colorado, which covers the first story. The top two stories of the house are red pressed brick, stucco, and wood strips. The red sandstone is believed to be from a quarry in Red Rock Canyon near the Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs, Colorado. Almerin Gillett, lawyer and cattle entrepreneur began building the house around April 1888. Due to drought and a drop in the cattle market, Gillett was unable to complete the construction. His wife, Eugenia, died in 1892, and Gillett soon moved to Kansas City where he died in 1896.

In 1915 William Allen White wrote to architect Frank Lloyd Wright and suggested that he "do over" the house, which was "warted all over with bow windows, and towers and gables and fibroid tumors, acute angles, meaning nothing and merely serrating the sky line." Wright soon began to develop preliminary designs for the house. In October 1915 White sent a letter to Wright introducing him to his friend Henry J. Allen, editor of the Wichita Beacon. Allen was preparing to build a new home in Wichita and White suggested that Wright was the "best man in the world to do it." Wright eagerly agreed to the work saying that "Allen's home will be an 'oasis' in the architectural desert of Kansas." White and Wright continued their discussions of design until around November 1919, when White contacted the architectural firm of Wight & Wight in Kansas City.

On January 20, 1920, a spark from the chimney started a fire while the Whites were dining, destroying the top floor of the house. The family was forced to move out quickly to a home they had just purchased to live in during remodeling. The renovation began in March 1920 under close direction from William Allen and Sallie. The Wight design retained much from the Frank Lloyd Wright plans. The former Queen Anne was changed to a Tudor Revival. The house entrance was moved from Exchange Street to Tenth Avenue and features a one-story gabled porch. The house was enlarged from ten rooms to eleven with four full baths and two half baths. Dormers were added on the north and south sides of the third floor. Sleeping porches were enclosed, including in the area that became White's office. The terraced garden, pergola, and lily pool also were built during the renovation. White took particular interest in the living room fireplace. "I have here in Emporia a lot of very beautiful white foundation stone-Carthage stone-left over from the trim on my garage building . . .It might do well for a mantel, if white stone can be used."

The renovations were due to be completed in late May or early June 1921. Before the family could return to Red Rocks, White's daughter Mary was fatally injured in a horseback riding accident and died May 14, 1921. The family moved back to Red Rocks by autumn. In 1925, writer Edna Ferber described her visit at Red Rocks. "There juts, at one side of the White residence, a large, square roomy porch so constructed as to catch all the breezes. On it are easy-chairs, hammocks, swings, books, tables, and like aids to indolence . . .Big, still, comfortable rooms."

"The thing I like most about the house, in summer, is this wide porch . . .it is roofed and is covered with vines, and it gets the breeze from every point. Everybody in town gathers here on this porch and is welcome. I have so many social irons in the fire that I have to have this big house to meet the folks in. You might say of this house what they say of many big hotels: "A bath in every room and meals at all hours.

--William Allen White, in a Kansas City Star interview, 1931

William Allen and Sallie lived at Red Rocks until their deaths. William Allen died in 1944; Sallie in 1950. Their son and daughter-in-law, William Lindsay and Kathrine Klinkenberg White, moved into the house around 1955, although they also maintained a residence in New York City. William Lindsay died in 1973 and Kathrine died in 1988. In 2001 their daughter, Barbara White Walker, donated Red Rocks to the Kansas Historical Society to be operated as a State Historic Site.

This information is from the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) in Summer 2002.