of the Lawrence Preservation Alliance
August 19, 2004
Lawrence Historic Resources Commission
Planning Department
City Hall, Box 708
Lawrence, Kansas 66044
Dear HRC members,
I wanted to thank you all for your willingness to take up the proposition this evening, of taking preliminary steps towards placing Hobbs Park in queue for possible listing on the Lawrence Register of Historic Places. I understand that the planning staff has made a preliminary decision that the site might well qualify for such listing, and that your next step involves getting official approval to proceed, through a response to a letter to the city manager’s office, and the City Commission. As per my further understanding, given a positive response from city hall to your inquiry, HR Director Lynne Zollner would then be able to proceed with drafting a nomination for the park, and its two principle existing historic features, for official appraisal by the HRC, and the Commission.
I and a handful of residents from Old East Lawrence have worked for seven years now, in an attempt to usefully salvage the Murphy-Bromelsick House, both as an architectural relic of the city’s rebuilding period, following the massacre, and as a symbol of this community’s important history and heritage. Following a neighborhood-wide effort in the mid 1970s to halt a city-sponsored roadway through the site of Hobbs Park and its greater environs -- we also began to work for the preservation and renovation of Old Municipal Stadium, which was dedicated the day after the death of Babe Ruth, in 1948, and just months after the integration of major-league baseball.
We feel that Hobbs Park, through its varied associations with Lawrence’s storied past, from the earliest days of the city’s history, has a significant narrative to recount. From its beginnings as an early preemption of John Speer, one of Lawrence’s founders, to its military encampments and battlements, its Quaker Meeting House, the LL & G railroad, its surrounding canneries and industrial legends, its tiny WWII-era POW camps, and the recently demolished Livestock Sale Barn -- the site is a veritable theme park of historic associations, which tie Lawrence and her citizens to the great drama of our nation’s history. We feel that it’s time for the site to get the recognition it deserves -- as a principal locus of public and quasi-public uses and applications, unparalleled here, aside, perhaps, from the university campus, and downtown.
We also would like to declare our complete willingness to work with the HRC and its administration in developing a strong case for the park’s nomination to the Lawrence Register, through the sharing of our on-going research regarding the MB House, the ball park, and Mr. Speer.
Thank you once again, for your willingness and time, in taking this under consideration.
Sincerely,
Mark Kaplan
Hobbs Park Memorial Fund