“These grotesques are unique to Kansas. They are unique to the nation. And they are certainly unique in representing KU. There’s no doubt the grotesques must be replaced.” —Leonard Krishtalka we have monsters and cartoon characters. “There is a sense of humor in this. If there’s not humor in science, it’s extremely grim. It’s that sense of humor and lightness. Without lightness, it’s just awful.” Considering his mischievous, playful, delightful carvings, Joseph Roblado Frazee almost certainly would have agreed that humor and lightness were essential. Roblado (row-BLADE-oh), as he was known to his family, was born in New York in 1850, the son of the prominent sculptor John Frazee. According to Carol Shankel’s research—launched at Krishtalka’s request as part of the grotesque renovation and replacement project— Frazee left his family’s Long Island home at 16 to study sculpture and architecture in New York City. After working across the Northeast— including New York City, Buffalo, Philadelphia, New Jersey, Connecticut and Washington, D.C.—he sought adventure out west and brought his young family to Kansas City, Mo., likely sometime in the late 1880s. He found plentiful work in
Kansas and Missouri, including ornate capitals atop the columns at Emery, Bird, Thayer & Co. department store in Kansas City, Mo., but little is known about details of his architectural sculpture work. Hired in 1902 to work on Dyche Hall, Roblado and Vitruvius rented a home at 1232 Vermont St. and set up a sculpture studio at the work site atop Mount Oread. According to Shankel, an engineering student named Antonio Tommasini, e’1905, sharpened Frazee’s tools at Fowler Shops and later wrote that the sculptor began his carvings with nothing more than “a few (to me) meaningless marks” on the limestone blocks to serve as guides. “… and then the mallet and chisel in Mr. Frazee’s hands started at the top,” Tommasini wrote in 1941, “and worked down, to free the figure from its encasing stone.” Apparently working with no detailed directions other than images of generic grotesques that the architects included in their drawings—imparting only placement and relative size—Frazee emancipated from the blocks of Kansas limestone fantastic beasts of a mythical menagerie. STEVE PUPPE (2)
“Voltaire, in his poem ‘Le Mondain,’ the Man of the World, says the superfluous is a very necessary thing,” Johnson says. “Why do we have clothes with color? Why not just wear burlap? It does sort of add something, and that something here is spiritual, it’s intellectual, it’s funny. There is a very serious part of science, but there’s also the human condition, human folly, and it’s not entirely serious. If we were entirely clinical here, it would be terrifying, absolutely terrifying. And so
Three grotesques removed from Dyche Hall’s north wall in 1963 have been restored and are on display in the Biodiversity Institute’s office. They will one day rejoin their menagerie in a Natural History Museum display.
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