welcome to the wiley

elcome to the

A look At the history And rebirth of A hutchinson lAndmArk

the hutchinson news mArch 2015

1913 1987 2007 2015

2 Wiley | The Hutchinson News

1912Nov. 15 – Construction begins on the northeast corner of First and Main, on the former site of the Opera House and Moon Cafe.

1913Nov. 20 – Grand opening of the new Rorabaugh-Wiley store on the first four floors. Offices are on the top four floors. At least 10,000 people visit the building that evening.

1929Ninth floor, now referred to as the penthouse level, is added to the building for the laboratory of the state Grain Inspection Department.

1933During the Great Depression, A.O. Rorabaugh sells his share of the ownership of the store to Wiley, and Rorabaugh is dropped from the name of the store.

1937The entire Wiley Building is air-conditioned.

1946The interior of Wiley’s store is remodeled with new fixtures and two floors are added over the Fox Theatre, accessed via the bridge over the alley.

1930-31Rorabaugh-Wiley Improvement Co. builds the 1,400 seat Fox Theatre to the east of the store. The store and theater were connected by a viaduct over the alley.

1901

Jan. 1 – Vernon Meek Wiley, then 23 years old, comes to Hutchinson from Emporia.

Jan. 19 – Wiley opens the Rorabaugh-Wi-ley Dry Goods Co. at 122 N. Main St.

1911

Vern Wiley forms the Rorabaugh-Wiley Building Co. and hires architects to design the 8-story skyscraper we know today as the Wiley Building. Chase Manhattan National Bank in New York loans him $350,000 to build it.

wiley thru the yeArs: Follow the history of the Wiley Building from Vernon Wiley’s arrival to the creation, from the final sale to the recent renovation.

Table of ConTenTs Stories written by:Ken Stephens | The Hutchinson NewsFrom the cover:1913: Construction of the Wiley Building on May 31, 1913. Construction of the building had begun on December of 2012.1987: A clipping from The Hutchinson News on April 21, 1987, announcing Wiley store closings. The Wiley Building closed in late 1985, two years prior to Wiley’s other stores closing.

Courtesy photos 2007: A picture of the Wiley on Jan. 3, 2007. Besides a couple of spaces, the building had been standing empty since 2002. In five years, the last tenant will move out, leaving the building completely vacant. 2015: The building renovations are nearly complete, with three residents having moved in on Dec. 30. After many years and proposals, the renovation project began in 2013.

File Photos

A man, an idea, a store that changed a cityVernon Wiley’s vision ‘transformative’, but after downturn, building languished

hen the Rorabaugh-Wiley Building opened on Nov. 20, 1913, it was one

of the biggest one-day events in the history of the city.

Through the fog and mist, search lights a mile south of downtown in Riverside Park, now Carey Park, lit up the south side of the building, casting a giant shadow of the dome of the old courthouse – then at 200 S. Main St. – onto the building.

At ground level, the lights of the display windows and street lamps turned First Avenue and Main Street into what people called the great white way.

At 7:30 p.m., the doors were thrown open to see the new department store on the first four floors of the building and the offices on the top four floors.

It was such a big event for the city that even Wiley’s competitors – like Pegues-Wright, Kern Brothers and Star Clothiers – sent flower arrangements.

More flowers, ferns and vines decorated the store, and music from Professor Ax and his 10-piece orchestra wafted out from behind the palms in the mezzanine tea room. Upstairs on the eighth floor, another band played in the Commercial Club.

It seemed like nearly everybody in Hutchinson was there, according to accounts at the time. And that statement wasn’t far off. At 8:30 p.m., it was announced that 10,000 people were in the building. Back then, Hutchinson’s population was only 16,300.

The women wore long skirts with hats trimmed in feathers or ribbons and the men wore suits with bowlers or fedoras.

“It was,” The Hutchinson News crowed

the next morning, “a proud moment for Hutchinson, as nowhere in Kansas will be found a better, a classier, a finer store than Rorabaugh-Wiley’s new establishment.”

Counters in the store were made of waxed oak or mahogany. The office corridors were lined with more mahogany and birch and the floors were made of marble and tile.

Two elevators carried customers between the four floors of the department store; a

2 building HisTory

8 Manskes: THeir vision

13 Profile of sTore founder

14 Wiley eMPloyees reMeMber

16 life aT an uPPer floor: grain CoMPany

17 Tea rooM THe PlaCe To be

18 sTore eMPloyee’s disPlays dazzled

20 PHoTos

3| Wiley March 2015


The Hutchinson News

The front of The Hutchinson News on Friday, Nov. 21, 1913, featured the formal opening of the new Rorabaugh-Wiley Building.

freight elevator carried merchandise within the store, and two more elevators served the offices on the top four floors, which included the Board of Trade. For a time, Hutchinson was the largest wheat market in the world and in 1929 a ninth floor – today referred to as the penthouse – was added for the offices of the Kansas Grain Inspection Department.

The opening of the Wiley Building, as it is known today, was the crowning achievement of the career of Vernon Meek Wiley. Wiley was an Ohio native who went to college in Emporia, then clerked in A.O. Rorabaugh’s new store there. He exhib-ited so much talent that Rorabaugh dispatched him to run his second store – the

Rorabaugh-Wiley Dry Goods Co. – in Hutchinson in 1901.

The original store was sandwiched between two competing dry goods stores on Main Street. When one of the competitors, Pat Martin, decided to move to California, Rorabaugh and Wiley bought him out and moved their store into Martin’s larger building at 118 N. Main in 1903.

By then, Vern Wiley was already one of the original members of the Commercial Club, whose members were described as the unofficial yet de facto city fathers of the time. A few years later, Wiley was among the founding di-rectors of the Central Kansas Fair Association, which would become the Kansas State Fair in 1913.

Meanwhile, Rorabaugh opened six more stores, including a department store in Wichita, and in 1910, Wiley hatched a plan to build an eight-story, $332,000 skyscraper in Hutchinson for a newer, bigger department store.

“The story my dad used to always tell,” said Doug Wiley, “is that when my grandfather tried to find financing for the building he went to New York City. He couldn’t find financ-ing there and was in the hotel room getting ready to leave when the president of Chase Manhattan Bank called to his hotel and told him that if he was crazy enough to build an eight-story skyscraper out in the middle of the prairie he’d be crazy enough to loan him the money.”

5| Wiley March 2015

Wiley, then only 35 years old, returned to Hutchinson triumphant, and construc-tion began on Nov. 15, 1912. The grand opening was just over a year later.

According to a story in The News the day after the grand opening, it took 20,000 tons of concrete, 1,785 tons of bricks, 400 tons of reinforced steel, 105 tons of structural steel, 905 tons of lumber, 120 tons of flooring, 101 tons of plaster and partitions, 60 tons of orna-mental iron stairs, 100 tons of plumbing and heating, 20 tons of glass, 50 tons of marble, 25 tons of tile, 150 tons of fixtures, 60,000 feet of conduit, and 45 miles of electrical wiring.

If someone had decided to tear it down on the day it opened, the newspaper said, it would have taken 38 freight trains of 30 cars each to haul away the debris.

Collectively, the suppliers of the building materials took out a full-page advertisement touting their contributions to the structure.

“It is the finest building between Kansas City and Denver,” the newspaper said.

A year after the building opened, The Hutchinson News estimated that 1,560,000 people had passed through its doors – about 1 million visitors to the store and more than 500,000 visitors to the wide ranges of offices on the upper floors.

The Wiley Building’s ten-ants were so extensive that on the first anniversary The News called it “a city under one roof.”

“They say a man can do everything but die and remain in the Rorabaugh-Wiley building,” the paper said. “No coffins are sold there, but you could get flowers for the funeral.”

The 1924 City Directory showed that 10 doctors, 10 dentists, seven independent lawyers and two more law firms, three oil companies, two insurance companies, one real estate company, a couple of loan agencies, one architect, a stenographer, 16 grain companies, four grain elevator operators, the state grain inspection depart-ment, a grain laboratory, the Hutchinson Board of Trade, three brokerage com-panies, a barber, a tailor and

several other miscellaneous businesses had offices in the building.

During the Great Depression, Wiley sold part of his interest in the build-ing to finance the purchase of the Rorabaugh family’s interest in the store itself, which continued to operate from the building for five more decades.

In 1931, the Wiley Investment Co. completed construction of the Fox Theatre, which was con-nected to the Wiley Building. And in 1937, the Wiley Building became what was believed to be the first fully air-conditioned office build-ing in Kansas.

Meanwhile, Vern Wiley’s three sons went to work in the store, starting with the eldest, Phil, in 1929, followed by Ed in 1935 and Bob in 1946.

Ed would leave the busi-ness and move to Colorado in 1950. About the same time, Vern began turning over more and more of the oper-ation of the business to Phil and Bob until he died in 1954.

Vern Wiley not only built Hutchinson’s first sky-scraper and ran its biggest department store but he also served as chairman of the American Red Cross for the state of Kansas, was chair-man of the United War Work Campaign during World War I, served as president of the Hutchinson School Board and was president or director of American National Bank, the Rotary Club, the YMCA and the Hutchinson Building and Loan Co.

He was so revered in the community that his competitors and many other downtown businesses closed for his funeral.

Phil served as president of the company until 1972, when Bob took over.

Eventually Bob became chairman, naming his eldest

son, Doug, as president. Another son, Jack, sat on the board of directors.

By the mid-1980s, however, the store was suffering because of competition from the Hutchinson Mall and new department stores there, including Dillard’s. In June 1985, the Wileys made the “bittersweet” decision to close the downtown depart-ment store.

“The economy went real bad about that time and really hurt business in total,” Doug Wiley said. “And then when the mall came in, we weren’t in a strong enough financial position to weather the whole storm permanently. When we decided to close was about the time my dad retired. My brothers and I had a choice

to continue on, but we kind of felt the best we could hope for was to just survive. So we made the decision to close at that point. It was very, very difficult, but it was probably a good decision.”

The independent depart-ment store was no longer a viable business model, said Wiley, who now works as a financial planner and lives in Manhattan, Kansas.

The Wileys continued to operate a carpet store downtown and a home specialty store, selling linens, china, glassware and housewares at the mall, but both those stores also went out of business in 1987 and the Wiley name disappeared from Hutchinson’s retail landscape.

After the downtown

department store closed in 1985, the rest of the building was still largely occupied. There were still six grain companies, the Board of Trade, three law offices, a couple of investment companies, two insurance companies, a dentist, a po-diatrist, the state probation and parole office, and a number of other businesses on the top five floors. The City Directory listed only six vacant offices.

But the building was clearly headed downhill. In 1986, First Federal Savings and Loan of Hutchinson took over ownership of the building from Nelson Hobart, who had acquired the building in the 1950s but eventually became over extended.

1949Phil Wiley, Vern Wiley’s oldest son, becomes president of the store.

1950Ed Wiley, Vern’s second son, moves to Colorado, where he becomes an accountant.

1951A bridal shop opens in Wiley’s.

Mid-1950sNelson Hobart purchases the Wiley Building from the Wiley family.

1959The building is enlarged with an addition to the north side from the fifth to eighth floors. The remainder of the building is remodeled with new fixtures, lighting and floor covering.

1971Jan. 24 – A fire destroys Wiley’s home furnishings department, an adjacent two-store building to the north of the main building. Two employees, Elsie Irene Ediger and Alta Moshier, die in the fire.

1968Aug. 31 – Wiley’s Tea Room closes.

1973Bob Wiley becomes president of Wiley’s.

1954March 30 – Vern Wiley dies. Two days later, many downtown stores close for his funeral, which is attended by more than 900 people, including 200 of his employees.

1978Wiley’s opens a carpet store at Ninth and Main.

A clipping from the Nov. 21, 1913, edition of The News showing the Wiley Building by the numbers.


First Federal, in turn, folded amid the nation’s S&L crisis in 1989, and the federal Resolution Trust Corp. inherited the

building. Then in 1995, George Nerhan, an Arizona businessman, purchased the building from the RTC for a mere $40,000. At the

time, 22 offices and most of the retail space once occupied by Wiley’s were vacant.

In 1997, Nerhan was told that city code required that he install a sprinkler system for fire suppression. Nerhan fought the order and received several exten-sions of time in which to install the sprinkler system over the next five years.

By 2002, the City Directory showed that the building was mostly vacant. Only one lawyer, a bank management service company, a private investi-gator, an Internet provider, a radio station, a doll shop, Fraese Drug, and a couple of entities related to the ownership and operation of the building remained.

And in March that year, under threat of city fines for not installing the sprin-kler system, Nerhan closed off the upper floors and the last few office tenants were forced to leave.

In March 2012, the last ground-floor tenant, Fraese Drug, moved to new quarters elsewhere on Main Street.

A excerpt of the Wiley advertisement from the Nov. 19, 1913, issue of The Hutchinson News.

7| Wiley March 2015

Over the years, city officials have worked on a number of plans to rede-velop the building. In 2003, the city began exploring the possibility of creating a tax increment financing district and using the power of eminent domain to take control of the building and sell it to a Minnesota devel-oper who was interesting in renovating the building into apartment and retail space. Other developers also offered plans. But none of those plans came to anything because Nerhan wouldn’t sell the building.

Then in January 2013, Manske & Associates came up with a plan to use state and federal tax credits to help finance redevelopment of the building and per-suaded Nerhan to sell them an option to purchase the building at a later date.

When Jack and Jay Manske decided to exercise their option a few months later, Nerhan at first refused to sell and it appeared that yet another attempt to redevelop the building had foundered. A couple of months later, Nerhan finally did sell the building to the Manskes, whose $18 million redevelopment plan has transformed the building into 73 apartments and 11,000 square feet of retail space.

Because the construction is being partly financed by the sale of $7 million in fed-eral low-income housing tax credits over 10 years, about 40 percent of the apartments will be rented at less than the market rate to people earning no more than 50 to 60 percent of the area median income.

A 102-space parking garage, for which the city of

Hutchinson will contribute $2.5 million, has been built east of the Fox Theatre, largely for the benefit of tenants of Wiley Plaza. The renovation also will open up two floors of the Fox that have been inaccessible to the theater for years because the entrances to those floors were closed off from the upper floors of the Wiley

Building.Noting that the con-

struction of the Wiley Building 100 years ago was a transformative event for the city, Doug Wiley said he hopes the redevelopment of the building will also be a

transformative event.“I haven’t been back to

Hutch a lot, but seems like the downtown is showing a little life again, and maybe this sort of project will be just what they need to get some confidence going

again,” he said. “My dad always maintained that the key to downtown was getting people living there. He said if you can get people living in the area, you’ll get retail and restaurants and services.”

Courtesy of Dorothy Beltz and Rita Lingg

Above is an excerpt from the April 21, 1987, Hutchinson News reporting the announcement that the Wiley Home Fashions Store and the store at the Hutchinson Mall were closing.

1986First Federal Savings and Loan of Hutchinson takes over ownership of the building from Nelson Hobart.

1991May – Phil Wiley dies.

1993Dec – Bob Wiley dies.

1980July – Ed Wiley dies.

1985Sept. – Wiley’s closes the downtown store.

1989First Federal Savings and Loan becomes insolvent and the federal Resolution Trust Corp. takes possession of the building.

1995George Nerhan, an Arizona businessman, pays $40,000 for the building at a Resolution Trust Corp. auction.

2012March – The last ground-floor tenant, Fraese Drug, moves to new quarters elsewhere on Main Street.

2002After being told several times over the years that the building does not meet the fire code and sprinklers must be installed, Nerhan closes the upper floors of the building and tenants move. Only the ground floor and mezzanine are now occupied.

1987April – Wiley’s Home Fashions closes.


In 1988, Jack Manske took his wife and two children to Saudi Arabia for a sort of one-year life experience, working for a company owned by Prince Faisal that sold center-pivot irrigation systems. While there, he received a letter from a con-struction contractor, an old friend from Nebraska.

Congress, the friend said, had passed a new law offering tax credits to help finance low- to moderate-in-come housing. The friend suggested that when Manske got back to the states, they should look into how they could use the law to build housing in rural Nebraska.

“When we came back in June of 1989, we spent a year just studying this law … try-ing to figure out exactly how we could use this financing mechanism to build houses,” Manske said.

Over the next three years, the Manske family worked with Vakoc Construction to build six housing projects in northeast Nebraska. Word spread and soon they were getting proposals from as far west as Scotts Bluff. That was too far for the contractor to travel to build housing, so Manske formed Manske & Associates for the sole pur-pose of developing affordable housing.

It wasn’t long before what was then the Kansas Department of Commerce

and Housing invited the Manskes to come to Topeka to discuss working in Kansas.

“And at this meeting, Fred Bentley, who is still at what has become Kansas Housing Resources Corp., said, jokingly, that ‘If you move to Kansas, you’ll never turn back north.’ And he was right. We started just spend-ing a lot of time in Kansas beginning in ’95.”

By 2003, they were spending so much time in Kansas that they decided

to move to Wichita. Jack’s son, Jay, joined the company as a partner two days after graduating from college that year. They were working on project No. 58 then, Walnut Court Apartments here in Hutchinson.

Now they are wrapping up project No. 79, their largest, most complicated and, at a total cost of about $17 million, their most expensive project yet. The renovation of the Wiley Building, a department store and office building that opened in 1913,

into two floors of commer-cial space and 73 apartments is the Manskes’ 11th project in Hutchinson.

This week, the Manskes will join city and state officials, their financial partners, representatives of Key Construction and WDM Architects, former employees of the Wiley’s Department Stores and their descendants and others in a ceremonial re-dedication of the building, followed by a public open house.

It will be a celebration of about two years of planning and work for the Manske family and an even longer trek for city officials who tried for at least 15 years to put together a deal to rede-velop the nine-story historic building, which had been mostly vacant since 2002.

Manske said the Wiley Building first popped up on his radar about 10 years ago. George Nerhan, the owner of the building at the time, asked him to take a look.

“We walked every stair-well in that building, and at the time, we just didn’t have a good plan for it,” Manske said. “It was too big a project to take on without a plan, knowing it would be extremely difficult, and if you go back and look at our list, we probably had three or four projects under construc-tion at that time. It was just more than we wanted to take

on at that particular time, so we kind of forgot about it for nine years.”

Then about three years ago, Manske and Associates, a local architect and a construction firm applied for tax credits to finance ren-ovation of the old Landmark Building at Fifth Avenue and

Main Street.“When we submitted the

Landmark application, peo-ple said ‘Oh, yeah, that would be a great building to reno-vate, but you really should look at the Wiley Building as well,’” Jay Manske recalled. “And we thought, ‘Yeah, well, we’ll see how the Landmark

renewal After surmounting obstacles, Manskes ready to share fruits of labor with city

Family charts long road to

2013January – City officials reveal that Manske & Associates, a Wichita company, has an option to purchase the Wiley Building and renovate it into 73 apartments and two floors of commercial space. The city agrees to contribute to the construction of a parking garage, east of the Fox Theatre, for future Wiley tenants.

Aug. 20 – Wiley Plaza says the deal to buy the building is dead and amends its lawsuit to seek monetary damages from Nerhan, touching off a series of conversations and negotiations mediated by City Manager John Deardoff. Three days later, Nerhan agrees once again to sell the building.

Aug. 27 – Nerhan signs the papers selling the building.

May 16 – The Kansas Housing Resources Corp. awards $7 million in federal tax credits over 10 years to Wiley Plaza Development, a company formed by Manske & Associates. The tax credits will be sold to finance part of the construction costs.

Dec. – Workers begin gutting the building’s interior, starting with the old mechanical systems in the basement. Over the ensuing months, demolition will move up a floor at a time, followed by construction workers putting in new windows, walls, plumbing and electrical wiring.

Summer – Construction of the parking garage begins.

Dec.– Renovation of the residential portion of the building is completed. Renovation of the commercial space on the ground floor and mezzanine will be done to the specifications of the business tenants.

2014Dec. 30 – First three households move into new apartments.

2015Jan. – Residents begin moving into Wiley apartments.

July 31 – Nerhan balks at selling the building, and Wiley Plaza sues, seeking to force him to abide by his agreement to sell the building.

Sandra J. Milburn/The Hutchinson News

Jack Manske points to the area where renovation of the ground floor of the Wiley Building neared completion on Dec. 2, 2014.

MANSKE PROJECTS

The renovation of the Wiley Building is the 11th housing project completed by Manske & Associates in Hutchinson and financed in part by the sale of federal housing tax credits. Here is a list of the company’s other projects, number of types of units and dates of completion:

O Evergreen Park Townhomes (Phase 1), 16 units for elderly, March 2002

O Evergreen Park Townhomes (Phase 2), eight units for elderly, March 2003

O Coventry Court Townhomes, 12 units for developmentally disabled, August 2003

O Walnut Court Apartments, 24 units for families, 16 units for homeless, December 2004

O Maplewood Townhomes, 16 units for elderly, October 2005

O Crown Homes of Hutchinson, nine single-fam-ily lease-to-own units, December 2006

O Friendship Place I, 20 units for elderly, August 2007

O Tierra Verde Apartments, 28 units for families, 20 units for homeless, June 2008

O Coventry Court Townhomes II, 11 units for developmentally disabled, April 2010

OHutchinson Lofts, 29 units for families, May 2011

9| Wiley March 2015

application goes.’ Size-wise the Landmark is about a third of the size of Wiley.”

As it turned out, KHRC turned down the Landmark application, and the Manskes turned their attention to the Wiley Building.

At the same time, the city was trying to work with

another developer on a plan for the building. But it didn’t seem to be going anywhere, and behind closed doors, the City Council was getting frustrated.

“The city has been work-ing on a Wiley Building project for 15 years plus,” City Manager John Deardoff

said. “I started in 2005, and there has not been a week go by that we were not talking or thinking or working with developers on solutions to the Wiley Building project.”

But each effort seemed to break down over ownership of the building.

“There were a lot of runs


Visitors look at the historic Board of Trade room inside the Wiley Building on March 27, 2014, as renovations of the 100-year-old building continue.


at George with proposals with sales prices that were much lower than he was will-ing to consider,” Deardoff said.

But the city had learned a lot from previous efforts be-fore the Manskes came along with a viable offer.

Deardoff said they learned it would require tax credits to make it financially feasible, a public-private partnership, and a “parking component” – someplace for those who lived and worked in the Wiley Building to park.

Meanwhile, the Manskes were running the numbers.

“There were probably 30 iterations of the feasibility study on this project,” Jay Manske said, “and we determined that if we do a few floors of commercial space, a few floors of income-restricted housing and a few floors of market rate, it appears to work. The biggest issue is parking. At that point, we went to the city and said we’re looking at it, but right now there just isn’t enough parking for us

to do it and we can’t really make the numbers work without off-street parking. And at that point, the city mentioned that to see the project move forward they would be willing to finance the construction of the park-ing garage.”

Meanwhile, in January 2013, the Manskes were able to get what no other potential developer could: an option to

buy the building. They paid Nerhan $20,000 for an option to purchase the building for another $950,000 if they were successful in getting $7 mil-lion in housing tax credits from KHRC.

Four months later, in May, the housing agency granted those credits, and in June 2013, the Manskes notified Nerhan that they intended to exercise their option


Dave Razo, back, watches as George Nerhan signs a warranty deed Aug. 26, 2013, at Reno County Abstract & Title, officially selling the Wiley Building to Jack and Jay Manske.

11| Wiley March 2015

to purchase the building. However, Nerhan suddenly balked and didn’t show up at a scheduled appointment to sign papers to close the deal.

The Manskes sued Nerhan, and the deal appeared to be dead when Deardoff picked up the phone and called Nerhan.

“There were many con-versations with George,” Deardoff said. “He was frustrated that they were not executing their option. I explained to him that they couldn’t until the tax credits were in place. He felt they could have done it sooner, when in reality, they could not have. There was a time when the deal appeared headed south again.

“I was very respectful. He was the owner of the building. He had to make a business decision. I explained to him that the opportunity before us today would not be there tomorrow and it was unlikely that another oppor-tunity would come soon.”

Deardoff ’s patient, behind-the-scenes persuasion bore fruit, and on Aug. 26, 2013, Nerhan signed the papers, selling the building for a $910,000 profit over what he had paid for it 18 years earlier.

There was still much to be done before the renovation could begin, however.

The Manskes had to select

a general contractor, have the architect complete his draw-ings, get approval from the National Park Service, which has jurisdiction over historic preservation, arrange construction loans through area banks, sell the housing tax credits before the work began, and find a buyer for state and federal historic tax credits that would be sold once the work was done.

And they had to sort out several issues with the ad-jacent Historic Fox Theatre. The theater’s property line extended east, into the vacant lot where the parking garage would be built, and a corridor connecting the parking garage and the third floor of the Wiley Building would have to run through the theater. But that could be overcome by restoring the theater’s access to two of its upper floors, which had been cut off for years because the only access was through the Wiley Building.

And because the building was going to be part com-mercial, part low-income rent-restricted and part mar-ket-rate rentals, they had to set up three companies and spread the financing across all of them.

“Instead of having one entity having ownership of the entire building and leasing out to others, we had to create separate entities

and condominiumize the building,” Jay Manske said. “We had to have (Wiley Plaza Retail) own the basement and the first floor and the mez-zanine and have Wiley Plaza LLC own the second floor through the sixth floor and the parking garage and Wiley Plaza lofts own the seventh, eighth and penthouse.”

Added Jack Manske: “This is by far the most compli-cated project we have ever been involved in. Jay had weekly teleconferences with attorneys in Washington, D.C., Topeka and California just working out the details of the legal and financial structure and that went on for months. … Jay did all that. So we got our money’s worth from his college educa-tion on that element of this alone.”

WNC & Associates of Irvine, California, purchased the housing credits. Historic Preservation Partners of Topeka agreed to purchase the historic tax credits. And seven banks – First National Bank of Hutchinson, Central Bank and Trust and People’s Bank and Trust from Hutchinson; Lyons Federal

Bank, ESB Financial and Lyon County State Bank from Emporia; and CoreFirst Bank and Trust of Topeka – got the ball rolling with construction loans.

Gutting the interior of the building began the week before Christmas in 2013. In early January 2014, the Hutchinson City Council approved an agreement in which the city agreed to pay $2.5 million of the $2.9 million cost of building the parking garage. The city would issue bonds and give Wiley Plaza LLC an inter-est-free loan, to be repaid by the owners of the building in a lump sum after 36 years.

“They are an amazing development team to work with,” Deardoff said recently. “From the time we started

talking, they’ve done every-thing they said they would do on the schedule they laid out from the outset. We didn’t run into any issues with them. I’m sure there have been a lot of fires that they, as developers, have had to put out on a $17 million project. And there’s not been one issue brought to me. That’s amazing. That means they have a good design team, a good contractor and a good, solid development team.”

The rededication of the building will pay homage to the building’s long history and to the people who worked there, some of whom will be there.

“We knew the Wiley Building historically was very important to the city of Hutchinson, but I’ve been

very surprised at the number of people who either worked there or had a relative who worked there or remembered shopping there as little kids and are now well past Social Security age,” Jack Manske said. “Some of these ladies especially, the building means a lot to them. That’s their lives. We’ve owned the building, for what? A year and half? These people spent a lifetime in that building, so we want to do something to give the building its due.

“I don’t think it’s correct now that I’ve said we’re the owners of the building. I think we’re just the current stewards of the building. That building belongs to the community and all the fam-ilies who’ve been associated in one way or another.”

The Wiley Building’s renovations were nearly complete Dec. 30, 2014, with three residents moving in.

Photos by Sandra J. Milburn/The Hutchinson News

Jay Manske, right, gives details about the renovations inside the Wiley building Thursday to a group off officials from the City of Hutchinson and the Landmarks Commission. The group saw the various stages of demolition and renovation currently inside the 100 year old structure.

“I don’t think it’s correct now that I’ve said we’re the owners of the building. I think we’re just the current stewards of the building. That building belongs to the community and all the families who’ve been associated in one way or another.”

Jack Manske of Manske & Associates


This story draws upon numerous articles in The Hutchinson News between 1901 and 1954 as well as an article in Legacy magazine a few years ago by Marie Wiley, who was married to Vern Wiley’s son, Ed.

Vernon Meek Wiley was so much more than a merchant, even if his store was the biggest in town.

He believed when others doubted. He saw what others could not. And he built what others didn’t dare dream.

In an editorial after his death on March 30, 1954, The Hutchinson News wrote:

“Hutchinson has lost Its First Citizen. ... Vern Wiley had confidence and courage. He had an abiding belief in the future. He made those qualities contagious to his associates in the many fields in which he was so long active. In his ‘big store’ he left less a monument, than an enduring challenge to Hutchinson ever to forge ahead.”

Wiley was born on a farm in Ohio in 1877 and moved with his parents to Emporia at age 15.

He immediately enrolled in the College of Emporia, graduated at age 19 and went to work in John Harkness’s dry goods store in Emporia for $5 a week.

Two years later, he moved to A.O. Rorabaugh’s new dry goods store. Another two years later, Wiley be-came a partner and was dispatched to Hutchinson to run Rorabaugh’s second store.

Hutchinson still had mule-drawn streetcars on Main Street when Wiley arrived on Jan. 1, 1901, and opened the Rorabaugh-Wiley Dry Goods store two weeks later at 122 N. Main.

The storefront was only 25 feet wide, but that didn’t matter. According a history written in 1918, “their original stock of goods rep-resented a very modest investment and was barely sufficient to make a reasonable display.”

But Vern Wiley was quickly proving to be one of Hutchinson’s most ener-getic and formidable businessmen. The same year he arrived in town, he

helped organize the Central Kansas Fair Association, which would win a battle with Topeka and seven years later become the Kansas State Fair.

In 1903, Pat Martin, who owned the largest dry goods store in town, sold out to Rorabaugh and Wiley and moved to California. Rorabaugh-Wiley’s then moved to the larger quarters of Martin’s store at 118 N. Main and opened Hutchinson’s first beauty parlor.

That same year, Wiley married Mary Lena Crowley, whom he had met in college, in her hometown of Council Grove, where her father also had a dry goods store.

By then, Wiley had also joined and become a leading member of the Commercial Club, an informal group of businessmen that unofficially ran the city.

By 1910, Wiley was starting to think about what would become the eight-story building we know today as the Wiley Building. He hired architects in Ohio to design it and went to New York City for financing.

The opening of the Rorabaugh-Wiley building in November 1913 was the crowning achievement of his career but certainly not the only one.

World War I came in 1914. Although the United States wouldn’t become involved until 1917, Wiley became state chairman of the American Red Cross and of the United War Works Campaign.

At various times he was president of the Hutchinson School Board (Wiley Elementary was named for him in 1950), the American National Bank, the Rotary Club, the Community Chest and the chamber of commerce and a director of the YMCA, the Hutchinson Building and Loan Co. and the Hutchinson Water Co.

At one time or another, he held every office at his church, First Presbyterian.

Wiley and his family lived at 612 E. Ave. A. His daily habit was to get up by 6 a.m., eat breakfast, walk to the post office to pick up the mail and then to the store. He’d distribute the mail to

different departments and then go to the main floor before the store opened at 8:30 a.m. and spend as much time as possible greeting customers.

When the U.S. was drawn into World War II in December 1941, Wiley became chairman of the Reno County chapter of the American Red Cross.

Around 1950, Wiley began turning the store over to his sons, Phil and Bob. In 1953, he assumed the title of chairman of the board of Wiley’s and installed Phil as president and Bob as secretary-treasurer. But he continued to go to the store every day until ill health made it too difficult. That same year he and Ray Dillon were co-chairman of the build-ing company that erected the Baker Hotel, now Plaza Towers on Second Avenue. His last public appearance was at the opening of the ho-tel on Feb. 14, 1954. He died a few weeks later on March 30, 1954, in Grace Hospital.

He was so revered in the community that his competitors and many other downtown businesses closed for his funeral.

“Without him, Hutchinson would have no Garden Plaza, no Baker Hotel, no adequate, modern hospital facilities today,” the editorial in The News after his death said. “Before all the other elements that make up this commu-nity had caught up, time and again he forged ahead to supply new inspira-tion.”

Founder was true citizen until the end“Hutchinson has lost

Its First Citizen. ... Vern Wiley had confidence and courage. He had an abiding belief in the future. ... In his ‘big store’ he left less a monument, than

an enduring challenge to Hutchinson ever to

forge ahead.”

The Hutchinson News, March

30, 1954,editorial following

Vernon Wiley’s death

Moving quickly up the business ladder, Wiley’s ambition, ideas built more than a department store, they helped start a community


Wiley’s Department Store closed nearly 30 years ago, but former employees and memories still abound.

They remember women wearing their best dresses, hats and gloves for a day of shopping and a break for lunch in Wiley’s Tea Room.

They remember the anniversary sales and a tragic fire that killed two employees of Wiley’s home furnishings store next door.

They remember Wiley’s distinctive green sacks that, even from a distance, told everyone where you had been shopping.

They remember all the club meetings, bridal show-ers, birthday parties and fashion shows in the Tea Room.

They remember the Wiley family – Mr. Wiley, as founder Vernon Wiley was called, and his sons, Mr. Phil, Mr. Bob and Mr. Ed, as they were called.

And they remember the store closing, the victim of mall shopping and the general demise of Main Street across the nation, and the building’s slow, steady decline over the next three decades until the local landmark was saved by a re-development plan conceived by Manske and Associates of Wichita.

“We were very concerned that they would demolish it,” said Rita Lingg, who came to work in the home furnishings store in 1978, then moved with Wiley’s to

the Hutchinson Mall in 1986 and stayed with the store until it went out of business in 1987.

“If that building had been demolished, you’d have heard a big scream, I’m telling you,” added Dorothy Beltz, who worked for Wiley’s from 1954 to 1975.

Beltz, Lingg and a handful of other former Wiley’s em-ployees still gather monthly to talk over old times at lunch or dinner.

A lot of young women started out as elevator op-erators at Wiley’s and then moved into sales or office jobs.

“It’s a funny thing when everybody talks about when they started out at Wiley’s,” said Beltz, who started out in gift wrapping and eventually took over the housewares department. “They say they started as the elevator opera-tor. Well, I got cheated out of that because I never did get to run the elevator.”

New employees received a pocket-sized pamphlet titled “Courtesy is Golden.”

It begins by laying out Wiley’s “three prime func-tions:”

“To sell quality merchan-dise!

“To give the best possible value for the customer’s dollar.

“To treat each customer that comes into our store with COURTESY!”

The pamphlet went on to mention COURTESY time and time again, each time in all capital letters.

And it apparently was more than just a buzz word.

Cheryl Wilder, who worked for Wiley’s from the mid-’70s until 1981, recalled the time that a woman re-turned a lace table cloth that she said had shrunk. Wilder

was skeptical.“But Mr. Bob said give her

a new one,” Wilder said.Wilder tried to tell him

that the woman had pur-chased the table cloth years before.

“But he didn’t care,” Wilder said. “Give her a new one.”

“That was their policy,” agreed Lingg. “The cus-tomer is always right.”

Former employees all seemed to have a funny story about working at Wiley’s.

Sally Eubanks recalled that during one political sea-son then-Sen. Bob Dole came to the store to campaign. He

was so busy shaking hands that at one point he bumped up against a stage in the middle of the store, turned around and shook the hand of a mannequin.

Dole, never one to get flustered, got out of the awk-ward situation with a quip.

“Man, I thought her hand was cold,” he said.

Eubanks also recalled that when she first went to work at Wiley’s, the female employees all had to wear black dresses.

“When pant suits came into vogue, it took a long time before they’d let us wear them,” she said.

Looking back... Q From live turkey

displays to fatal fires, former employees can remember it all.

on a time of golden courtesy

Photos by Sandra J. Milburn/The Hutchinson News

Dorothy Beltz has many fond memories of working at the Wiley’s Department Store. She recalls the trips she took to Chicago to purchase new merchandise at market for the housewares department.

Rita Lingg, left, and Beltz talk Sept. 29, 2014, about the many memories they have of working at Wiley’s Department Store. Beltz was in charge of housewares at one time, and Lingg worked in the department.



Former Wiley Department store employees Shirley Ahrens, left, Sally Eubanks and Dorothy Beltz share memories about past events at the store while eating supper together at Sirloin Stockade.

It was while Cheryl Wilder was working there in the late ‘70s that they were finally told they didn’t have to wear black anymore.

Beltz recalled an occasion when two of Bob Wiley’s sons, Jack and Ted, went up to the mezzanine to get a drink from the water fountain. On their way back, they tried dripping water from their hands onto the heads of people on the main floor below. When they fi-nally found their target and a man looked up suddenly, they ducked back behind the mezzanine rail to avoid being seen.

“Bob came running up the steps looking around and couldn’t find anything,” Beltz recalled with her own mischievous grin. “I never said a word.”

Eubanks recalled that Ernie Rayner, who was in charge of window and floor displays until his death in 1968, always created fan-tastic decorations. But she didn’t care for his Christmas promotion involving a live turkey.

Eubanks was working in the stationary depart-ment at the time. Wiley’s was giving away a turkey every day from the day after Thanksgiving until Christmas evening. They called it “A Country Christmas,” and Rayner had a cage built for a live turkey that ran the length of the island counter in the middle of the stationary depart-ment. It was long enough for the turkey to strut back and forth and tall and wide enough for it to spread its tail feathers, Eubanks said.

“I hated that turkey,” Eubanks said. “It was loud and it hated the telephone, and of course the phone rang all the time and it would gobble all the time you were on their phone.”

Rayner’s son, Jeff, worked for Ed Wolcott, his father’s successor, for a few months after high school. Wolcott, Rayner recalled, was painting displays and sent Rayner to get a gallon of white paint. On his way back, Rayner tripped and spilled the paint all on

the carpet in front of the elevator.

“I wanted to run,” Rayner recalled. “I didn’t know what to do.”

Rayner survived and re-turned to work in the Wiley Building for five or six years in the 1970s, when the build-ing was getting new heating and cooling systems and plumbing.

Eubanks also recalled a day when a fire truck racing out on a call collided with the corner of the Wiley Building.

“Someone ran a red light at First and Main,” Eubanks said. “The fire truck was going north and trying to avoid this stupid little Volkswagen. It just missed this much (holding arms about a yard apart) either side of going through those plate glass windows with the mannequins. It hit the corner of the building and there were firemen scattered all over the street.”

While tragedy was averted that day, Phil Caudillo, who worked at Wiley’s for 32 years, from

1954 until the store closed, recalled when a fire in the Wiley home furnishing department, a two-story building immediately north of the main building, killed two employees on a Sunday morning in January 1971.

“I was doing inventory on Sunday,” Caudillo said. “I was in the stockroom on the fourth floor. Somebody yelled fire. I assumed they were joking. Then I smelled the smoke and ran down the stairway and out the back door. One of the fire engines was already there and one of the firemen had me help hold a hose until more fire-men got there.”

Firefighters eventually recovered the bodies of Elsie Irene Ediger and Alta Moshier, who like Caudillo and 100 other Wiley’s employees, had been taking inventory that morning.

“They were found em-bracing each other,” he said.

Lingg has assembled three thick binders about Wiley’s Department Store and the Wiley Building.

The first traces the

Rorabaugh-Wiley Dry Goods Co., as the store was known when Vernon Wiley came to town in 1901 to open it in a long-gone building at 122 N. Main, to the construction of his skyscraper and new store that opened on Nov. 1, 1913, and the store’s growth and eventual demise. They also hold articles about Wiley and his descendants, who ran the downtown store until it closed in 1985.

One binder contains newspaper columns, stories about employee reunions, obituaries of former employees and the ribbons employees pinned to their shirts and dresses.

“I started in 1978, and the reason I can remember that is that I was hired for the start of the anniversary sale, which was in October,” Lingg said. “We wore ribbons each year for the anniversary sale, and the saying that year was ‘78 AND GOING GREAT.’ ”

Others were “79 AND THE BAND PLAYS ON” and “81 AND STILL NUMBER ONE.”

Another binder is a collec-tion of Wiley’s advertising through the years. One 1955 newspaper advertisement crowed: “We dress the most beautiful brides in the world.” The featured gown was $125. Others ranged in price from $49.95 to $139.95.

The bridal shop opened in 1951 and developed into much more than a place for the bride to buy her gown. “More like a wedding plan-ner,” Lingg said.

The store sold bridesmaid dresses, formal wear for the groom and groomsmen, wedding invitations, thank-you cards, photo albums and guest books. Wiley’s also had a gift registry, offering linens, china and house-wares.

Newly engaged women re-ceived an elegantly printed brochure detailing Wiley’s wedding services, including a couple of pages at the back with a checklist of expenses the groom was expected to cover, starting with getting the marriage license.

Also in Lingg’s binder was an 18-page list of the models, the clothing they

wore, the designers and the prices from one of Wiley’s fashion shows.

Wiley’s, however, eventually surrendered to competition from the Hutchinson Mall and its anchor department stores.

“I think Dillard’s and Walmart were the first two stores out there,” Lingg said. “Dillard’s was compe-tition for Wiley’s. The mall was a new thing, and people like to shop at new places.”

Beltz said people “fell apart” when Wiley’s closed.

“But what could you do? Business was going down, down, down,” Beltz said.

With Wiley’s gone and fewer and fewer office tenants on the upper floors, First Federal Savings and Loan of Hutchinson took over ownership of the building from Nelson Hobart, who had acquired the building in the 1950s but eventually became over extended.

First Federal, in turn, folded amid the nation’s S&L crisis in 1989, and the federal Resolution Trust Corp. inherited the building. Then in 1995, George Nerhan, an Arizona businessman, purchased the building from the RTC for a mere $40,000.

The city tried numerous times to put together a deal to redevelop the building. But nothing worked out until 2013, when Nerhan fi-nally accepted an offer from Manske and Associates, which came up with a plan to use low-income housing tax credits and historic tax credits to help remodel the building into 73 apartments and two floors of commer-cial space.

“Boy, was I thrilled. I was thrilled,” said Beltz. “All I want to know is when he’s going to cut that ribbon. I want to be there.”

Work gutting the interior began in December 2013 and the reconstruction took less than a year.

“It really is a wonderful landmark here in town,” Lingg said. “When you tell somebody, ‘Well, it’s south of the Wiley Building’ they know. You use it for refer-ence.”


Olen Mitchell worked for Collingwood Grain in the Wiley Building from 1947 to 1962.

“I think our office number was 710, if I remember correctly,” said Mitchell, now 82. “Those were good ol’ days. The building was full, and there were a lot of interesting people in there.”

The Wiley Building bris-tled with grain companies, but there also were doctors, dentists, lawyers, insurance agents and others.

“It was a rounded out office building, and as I recall, it was pretty well full all the time,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell started as a book-keeper for Collingwood, but he said he didn’t really have the knowledge for that job,

so he was put in charge of country storage.

“At that time we had only 15 country elevators. I took care of the storage. A farmer could sell his grain at the country elevator or come to our office in town and sell it.”

One floor above the Collingwood offices was the Hutchinson Board of Trade, one of the largest grain exchanges in the county at the time. And one floor above that was the laboratory of the state grain inspectors.

“The state grain inspectors would go out early every morning and get a sample from all the (rail) cars of wheat and take ‘em back up on the ninth floor to the lab,” Mitchell said. “Then they would bring us down

a sample in kind of a little bread pan and give us the moisture and the weight and then grade so we’d know whether to store it or sell it.”

Even though the grain companies were competitors, Mitchell said there was good camaraderie among them.

“Every afternoon – after most of the business was handled in the morning, we’d get together in the Board of Trade on the eighth floor to gossip or play gin,” he said. “All our Christmas parties were usually handled in the (Wiley’s Department Store) Tea Room, which was on the fourth floor. All the grain companies went in together and had their Christmas parties at the same time.”

The Tea Room, he said,

was “first cabin all the way,” with white table linens and uniformed waitresses.

Women of Hutchinson used to take tea there in the afternoons and then stick around to play bridge.

Mitchell recalled a small confectionary stand in the lobby, near the elevators.

“The fella that ran the confectionary (in the lobby by the elevators), his name was Virgil Davidson,” Mitchell said. “You could get news-papers, magazines, cigars, candy and gum, and a boy had a shoe shine deal set up in there too.”

All of downtown was bustling.

“In those days, Kress’s was on one side of the street, Woolworth’s was on one side, Grant’s was on the other side and, of course, Montgomery Ward, Sears and the Crown Drug Store were all bundled downtown,” he said. “KP&L was across the street, and American National Bank was where Allie’s is now. That’s where we did our banking.”

And there was no shortage

of places to go to lunch.“We had the Hollywood

Grill (near the Fox Theatre),” he said. “Across to the south we had the Liberty Café, and of course Woolworth’s and Kress’s had little lunch count-ers, or you could go down to the Tea Room for a first-class dinner.”

Fraese Drug, then in the Wolcott Building, also had a diner.

“Of course, in those days they had center parking,” he said. “They marked the cars down to the post office. You could park all day beyond the post office. But we would park in the center (of Main Street) and run down after they had marked the cars and move our cars. I would back mine up until I covered the (chalk) mark (on the tire). But one day I went down there and I had a ticket. And on the ticket they marked ‘This auto was moved two feet!’ So I went and paid the ticket.”

Once parking meters came along, they would run down from their offices to keep plug-ging the meter during the day.

“You’d say ‘I’m going down to feed the meter,’ and some-body would say ‘Would you mind feeding mine too while you’re down there?’ ”

A perk of having an office high in the Wiley Building was the view it offered. Mitchell recalled watching the construction of the steel water tower on Adams Street “right out my window.”

He went to another fellow’s office to watch the construc-tion of the Baker Hotel, now called Plaza Towers. He watched a giant fire consume the Davis Lumber Co. at Severance and First Avenue from the windows of the Board of Trade in May 1959.

“It was a tremendous fire,” he said.

Throughout 2014, Mitchell has been eager to get back into the Wiley Building to see the renovation.

“I never dreamed they’d be making my office into a bedroom. But I was accused a few times of sleeping on the job. … I hope they make a go of it because it’s a real good building.”

Man remembers busy Wiley offices, thriving downtownSandra J.

Milburn/The Hutchinson

News

Olen Mitchell has fond memories of working in the Wiley Building for the Collingwood Grain company from 1947 to 1962.


A chalkboard listing grain prices is seen in May 2008 the former Hutchinson Board of Trade located inside the Wiley Building.

“The state grain inspectors would go out early every morning and get a sample from all the (rail) cars of wheat and take ‘em back up on the 9th floor to the lab. Then they would bring us down a sample in kind of a little bread pan and give us the moisture and the weight and then grade so we’d know whether to store it or sell it.”

Olen Mitchell


For many of the years it was open, Wiley’s Tea Room was THE place to go.

Women would dress in their finest to go there for lunch during a break from shopping in the department store.

Hutchinson residents reserved it for birthday parties, anniversaries and bridal showers. Employees of the many grain companies with of-fices on the upper floors of the building went together to throw one big Christmas party in the tea room each year.

Clubs – from the Commercial Club to the Knife and Fork Club, Soroptimist International, the Kiwanis Club, the Altrusa Club and oth-ers – met and dined there.

There was a stage at one end and Wiley’s Department Store would extend a runway from the stage and put on fashion shows with local residents and their children modeling the latest clothing for sale in the store.

“What really made Wiley’s the place to go was the tea room,” said Cheryl Wilder, who worked for Wiley’s from the mid-’70s until 1981. “Everybody talked about the Tea Room.”

Sharon Poulton worked as a kitchen helper in the tea room for five years.

“I worked there when it closed in 1968,” she said. “I helped Jane Wiley (store president Bob Wiley’s wife) close it. She gave me a cake plate. She said ‘When you get married, I want you to put your cake on this plate.’ I never got married, but I still have the cake plate. It’s the most precious thing I own.”

Rita Lingg, who came to work at Wiley’s Home Fashions Store in 1978, has researched the history of the store extensively and saved a number of artifacts, including copies of tea room menus from 1938 and 1968.

In 1938, you could have a lunch of soup or appetizer, choice of chicken à la king or baked ham with vegetables, cottage cheese or salad, and dessert for all of 85 cents. And that was the most expensive item on the menu.

A club steak with French fries and a vegetable salad was 65 cents. A T-bone steak with chili sauce and French fries was 75 cents. You could get your choice of chocolate cake, apple or blueberry pie, lemon pie, or maple nut ice cream or sherbet for 15 cents.

Thirty years later, you could get your choice of roast beef with brown gravy or breaded cod with tartar sauce along with a choice of a garden salad or apple sauce, mashed or parsley potatoes, and green beans or beets, along with a hot roll and coffee or tea, for $1.40.

Apple pie had risen in price to 25 cents. Ice cream or sherbet was 20 cents, only a nickel more than in 1938.

Molly Laughlin, whose father, Ernie, was the store’s display manager for four decades, recalls her mother hosting parties in the tea room.

“It was really fun to get dressed up, and you’d get dressed up with your gloves and it was really a social occasion,” she said. “We had family birthdays there, and whenever they had fashion shows we’d go there and watch the fashion show.”

“You had to bring that up,” said Jeff Rayner, Ernie’s son, who’s still sore about the little sailor suit he had to wear once.

Tea time

Courtesy Jeff Rayner

Four models pose onstage during the “Dress to Beat the Band” fashion show in the tea room at the Wiley Department Store in 1961.

MEAL PRICES

1938Soup or appetizer, chicken à la king or baked ham, vegetables, cottage cheese or salad and dessert .............. 85 centsClub steak, French fries, a vegetable salad ..................................... 65 centsT-bone steak with chili sauce, fries ......... .............................................. 75 centsChoice of chocolate cake, apple or blue-berry pie, lemon pie or maple nut ice cream or sherbet .................... 15 cents

1968Roast beef with brown gravy or breaded cod with tartar sauce along with a choice of a garden salad or apple sauce, mashed or parsley potatoes and green beans or beets along with a hot roll and coffee or tea ............................... $1.40Apple pie ................................ 25 centsIce cream or sherbet ............... 20 cents

Sandra J. Milburn/The Hutchinson NewsSharon Poulton holds the two glass plates she was given when she worked at the Wiley Department Store in 1968. She helped Jane Wiley close the store, and Wiley gave her the plates to use at her wedding.

Restaurant was premier location; hosted numerous events, dinners


Ernie Rayner’s vision and imagination defined “window shopping” for customers of Wiley’s Department Store for four decades.

Rayner started his 39-year career at Wiley’s as a clerk in shipping and receiving but was soon given the chance to show what he could do when he was put in charge of a Christmas display in the toy department. From then until he died in 1968, Rayner served as the display manager, designing countless window and floor displays to attract customers into the store and through all its departments.

Rayner, an avid pho-tographer, created an archive showing what the department store looked like through the years. His chil-dren, Jeff Rayner and Molly Laughlin, recently shared these memories one evening, spending nearly three hours reminiscing and paging through photo albums and letters and Ernie’s own orig-inal sketches as he designed displays.

“His creativity just as-tounds me,” Molly, who now lives near Dallas, said. “I was 19 when he died, so a lot of those pictures were from the ’30s, before I was born. But even some of the later ones that were in the ’50s and early ’60s, I was in grade school and junior high and self-absorbed like any kid. Looking at those pictures now, I really wish I had known more about some of the artistic talents and things he had going into the displays because now I think, ‘Wow!’”

Rayner frequently en-tered – and won – display contests sponsored by the merchandise makers and vendors. One was a company

that made stationary and sponsored a contest during National Letter Writing Week. Rayner’s window display showed boxes of stationery and a little girl in a plaid dress handing a letter to a uniformed postman, who was smiling down with his hands on his hips.

“A lot of times they would get $25 or $50 or $100, which nowadays doesn’t seem like very much,” Jeff, who lives near Rose Hill, said. “But back then, I’m sure it was quite a bit.”

Molly, who has been doing research on her father’s career, recalled seeing a story about her father winning $500 one time.

That was in 1950 for a cos-metics window display.

“I’m building a house, and I’ve got 500 uses for that $500,” he joked to a reporter at the time.

Rayner also was recog-nized by Better Homes and Gardens for a window display showing its cookbook, with a giant page of the introduction titled, “Dear Homemakers.”

A couple of years before his death in 1968, Rayner won a two-week “vacation of a lifetime” in Spain and Portugal for his window display designed for Spanish baroque silverware made by Reed & Barton.

As Rayner and his wife, Margaret, went from Lisbon to Madrid, Granada, Marbella, Seville, Cordoba, back to Madrid and then Palma and Barcelona, they were met by a translator, lo-cal officials and a journalist, who usually wrote a story about the Americans in each city’s newspaper. There are pictures of the Rayners rid-ing in a horse-drawn carriage and visiting a cathedral in Barcelona.

“He really put Wiley’s on the map in the department store and trade journals because he would enter these contests, for the hand-kerchief vendor or the stationery vendor,” Molly

said. “Looking back through the letters written to the store for the prizes he won, there were entries from all over the United States from department stores coast to coast, and here was a store in Hutchinson, a town of 25,000 at the time, being recognized.”

Added Jeff: “He and my grandfather had a developer’s lab in the basement and so he took a lot of pictures. We had carousels full of 35 milli-meter slides and they had an enlarger down there where he’d take these pictures and blow them up. He was constantly sending pictures off to enter contests and doc-umenting all this work. I just think of the thousands and

thousands and thousands of window and floor displays he must have done during the 40 years he worked there.”

While going through their father’s pictures, Jeff and Molly were at first puzzled by pictures of people they didn’t know that appeared to have been taken in Carey Park:

two couples paddling a canoe, a boy doing a swan dive off a high diving board, two girls riding horses.

Then they looked closer at adjacent photos in an album and noticed that Rayner had enlarged his photos of people having fun around Hutchinson and used them

as background images in a series of window displays bearing the slogan: “Get Ready for the Fourth and a Summer of Fun.”

He also used movie posters from films showing next door at the Fox Theatre: A poster touting “The Country Doctor,” a 1936 movie about

Children ‘step back in time’ with father’s photos

Photos courtesy Jeff RaynerPeople view Wiley Department Store’s 1954 Army and Navy Reserve Training Center window-display showing a scale model of the upcoming center.

“Unlike today’s department stores, Wiley’s windows and interiors didn’t just sell merchandise. They were a celebration of inventions and events of the day, happenings in Hutch, Hutch people, national contests and holidays. And the photos showing the old building inside and out are fascinating.”

Molly Laughlin, Ernie Rayner’s daughter

Q Man’s creativity, and award-winning displays helped bring recognition to store.


Wiley’s Bridal Chorus window display had a “Bridal Chorus” music score from the opera “Lohengrin” that formed the backdrop.

Ernie Rayner took this photo of three girls riding bikes in Carey Park for the “Get Ready for the 4th and a Summer of FUN” window display at the Wiley Store.

Rayner would take action shots at area locations and enlarge them into posters for his window displays. The photo above, circa 1935-1938, can be seen in the photo at left of the “Get Ready for the 4th and a Summer of FUN” window display.

the Dionne quintuplets born in Canada in 1934, was in a window display of Electrolux refrigerators.

Their father’s work included displays for every-thing under the Wiley’s roof: neckties, shirts, lamps, tow-els and other linens, dresses, bridal gowns, fur coats, hats, swimwear, appliances and garden furniture.

Before what became known as “ready to wear” clothing, stores like Wiley’s sold fabric by the yard and women took it home to sew their own dresses or curtains. One of Rayner’s window displays showed an array of fabrics and announced “Wiley’s Dressmaking Contest.”

There was a back-to-school sale: “Stop here. School zone,” the window display read.

In one photo, the windows on the south side of the building were lit up at night and over the windows a banner of lights touted “The Christmas Store.”

There were several photos of a mechanical Christmas display spanning several windows, each with moving parts. In one, a father bent down to accept a gift from his young daughter. Rayner went to Chicago to purchase elements of the display.

“Unlike today’s

department stores, Wiley’s windows and interiors didn’t just sell merchandise,” Molly said. “They were a celebration of inventions and events of the day, happenings in Hutch, Hutch people, na-tional contests and holidays. And the photos showing the old building inside and out are fascinating.”

Paging through a trade industry magazine, Molly talked about the time her father collaborated with local floral shops on a series of windows for “Beauty Week;” each flower shop in town provided a floral display to go with Wiley’s merchandise.

In 1953, Wiley’s promoted Mother’s Day with a window display showing a little girl playing dress-up in her moth-er’s clothes and pushing her dolly in a pram. “Mother’s Day,” the display said, “Play it up big!”

Another picture showed a window display of an Army and Navy Reserve Training Center that was to be built in Hutchinson. A second photo showed men and women crowded around the same window to look at the model.

“That’s what’s been so interesting looking at these,” Molly said. “It’s just a com-pletely different era.”

“A step back in time,” added Jeff.


Coming back to life

Far right: Kody Huss looks back to make sure everyone is ready to move inside the exterior elevator during the Wiley Building renovations.

Workers remove old windows and prepare the openings to install new windows on the north side of the Wiley Building on May 20, 2014.

Scenes from historic building’s year-long transformationPhotos by

Sandra J. MilburnThe Hutchinson News

Right: Workers with Beran Concrete attach rebar for the Wiley Building’s parking garage at the corner of First Avenue and Walnut Street on May 27, 2014.


Above: An electrician works on installing lights in the interior of the Wiley Plaza parking garage on Aug. 26, 2014.

Top left: A single light illuminates the stairway inside of the Wiley Building.

Middle left: The start of a new wall is seen on the southeast corner of the seventh floor of the building during renovations on June, 3, 2014.

Second from bottom left: A long empty area is seen on one of the floors of the Wiley Building on March 27, 2014, as crews renovate every part of the historic building, creating apartments and commercial space.

Bottom left: Bankers and investors walk up the ramp at the parking garage next to the Fox Theatre during a tour of the Wiley Plaza on Aug. 26, 2014.

Left: Workers are silhouetted against the window opening as they prepare them for new windows on an upper floor at the building on May 20, 2014.


Above: Decorative details on the outside of the Wiley Building are seen before they were repaired.

Above: City Manager John Deardoff, left, City Council member Jon Daveline and Stratica’s Gayle Ferrell look out the windows of the penthouse of the Wiley Building on March 27, 2014, during a progress tour.

Bottom left: A mail letter box is seen next to the elevator on the main floor of the Wiley Building. The mailbox will not be used but was left for historical reasons.

Below: The Wiley Building is reflected on a car parked along First Avenue on May 9, 2014.


A one-bedroom apartment at the Wiley Plaza was furnished, as seen July 23, 2014, as a model for showing in the fall.

The bedroom inside of apartment No. 205 was furnished by the Sleep Shoppe.

The Wiley Building at sunset on Nov. 7, 2014.

welcome to the wiley

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