Call me weird, but there are few things I enjoy more than rooting around in abandoned buildings. The layers of history and questions that arise from strange additions and alterations — it’s fascinating. Earlier this week I got a quick peek at the building above. But this isn’t just any old, decaying building. It’s believed that this is the very second-floor room (it was originally one big open room with no dividing walls) where forty elected delegates from the Kansas Territory gathered to write the Free State Constitution in October of 1855. In fact, it may be the first permanent building constructed in Topeka, Kansas.

This was a quick scouting trip and I hope to return soon to further document the building in this condition — basically abandoned since the 1940s — and throughout its proposed restoration. More to come…