Neighborhood Guide

A listing of some of Topeka’s more unique, historic neighborhoods

College Hill
Each July the Collins Park neighborhood has a “come-as-you-are” Independence Day parade. The event is believed to be the city’s longest continuous parade, running more than 35 years.

Holliday Park
Holliday Park is “home” to some of the oldest houses in Topeka.

Governor’s Row
Governor’s Row includes the site of the former Governors mansion and the Governor’s Row House.

Westboro
Westboro features large colonial homes in the middle of Topeka. This area includes a quaint shopping area, Westboro Mart, styled after Kansas City’s Country Club Plaza area.

Potwin Place
This gorgeous area known for its big, Victorian-style homes and circular intersections, is a community favorite, especially at Christmas time when the neighborhood decorates the intersections with lights and themed décor.

History

Freedom’s Pathway
A short walk through this Topeka neighborhood takes visitors through the very locations where the fight to gain freedom for all Americans was fought. These sites participated in the struggle for what President Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg called, “a new birth of Freedom.”

The Kansas State Capitol, the historic Ritchie House, and the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site make up “Freedom’s Pathway,” successive stages in the battle for freedom in Topeka and across the country.

From the Greens of Lexington and Concord in 1775, to Kansas in the 1850’s, where the pro-slavery forces clashed with those who would end slavery, to the 1950’s, when segregation came under fire, each of these stages is linked with the experiences of John Ritchie.

Ritchie’s grandfather fought with George Washington and was captured and jailed by the British. Conscious of that legacy 80 years later, Ritchie brought his family from Indiana to Topeka to take up the “free state” cause against the spread of slavery into the Kansas territory and was jailed by the proslavery forces in Lecompton.

As a representative to the Free State Wyandotte Constitutional Convention, Ritchie championed racial and gender equality. Ritchie and his wife Mary Jane ran the local Underground Railroad and encouraged former slaves to move to Topeka to establish families and lead lives of full citizenship.

The Ritchie’s owned land in the Monroe School neighborhood that they gave or sold to blacks and whites who also shared Ritchie’s ideals of an inclusive and equal citizenry. Ritchie also donated land and funds to build a school for area residents, the predecessor to the Monroe School now commemorating Brown v. Board of Education.

The Kansas State Capitol is a witness to the political history of Kansas as a free state. It exhibits John Steuart Curry’s impressive mural of John Brown, who was a frequent visitor at John Ritchie’s House. The 1850’s Freedom’s Honor Roll is depicted in the Capitol around the House chamber. Whether the promise of the declaration that “all men are created equal” includes race, gender, religion and ethnicity in its meaning has been debated often in the Capitol’s chambers.

Geography and history come together in this neighborhood to demonstrate the concept of freedom, central to our American heritage. The Freedom Pathway walk allows visitors to learn and reflect on the enduring struggle for freedom and the meaning of equality for all Americans.

Shawnee County Historical Society
Kansas State Historical Society
Topeka Genealogical Society Library