JAYHAWKS STUNNED
WINNING COOKIES
Colorado smacks down Kansas, 75-72 Sports 1B
Check out these festive recipes SPECIAL SECTION INSIDE
L A W R E NC E
JOURNAL-WORLD ®
$1.50
LJWorld.com
35.$!9 s $%#%-"%2 s
RURAL KANSAS
A downtown
Officials working to boost visibility of KU
CLASSIC Local department store’s staying power puts it in rare company among American retailers
By Ben Unglesbee bunglesbee@ljworld.com
Richard Gwin/Journal-World Photo
HELEN KIEFER AND GRANDDAUGHTER BAYLIE KIEFER shop for Christmas gifts recently at Weaver’s department store, 901 Massachusetts St. Weaver’s may well be the oldest store of its kind in Kansas. AT TOP: A photo courtesy of Watkins Museum of History shows the A.D. Weaver store on Massachusetts street circa 1900, before its 1929 move to its current location. BELOW: Weaver’s as it appears today with its midcentury stucco facade.
Unique mix of old, new keeps 156-year-old Weaver’s in business By Sara Shepherd
See the gallery of historic photos at LJWorld.com
sshepherd@ljworld.com
Opening weekend of Christmas shopping season saw customers cramming the usual south Lawrence box stores and sprawling parking lots. But plenty of others were
merrily browsing bargains at Weaver’s department store at 901 Massachusetts St. — a retail relic where new trends and upscale brands are displayed between creaky old stairs and
a midcentury façade. “Every community throughout the United States used to have a store like Weaver’s,” the store’s
Mindful of where potential students and state budget makers hail from, Kansas University officials have been working to improve KU’s visibility and reputation in all parts of the state, including remote rural towns in central and western Kansas. Historically, KU has drawn much of its student population from northe a s t e r n Kansas. But with overall enrollment down for the fifth year in a row, the university has expand- Caboni ed its focus to reach students everywhere. And with a sometimes-strained relationship between the university and Legislature, officials have been highlighting the work they do all across Kansas. KU vice chancellor of public affairs Tim Caboni in particular has been hitting the road this fall as “part of my continuing education” on the state, he said. A New
Please see WEAVER’S, page 7A
Please see KU, page 6A
Lawhorn’s Future nature park once housed a Lawrence zoo Lawrence
T
Chad Lawhorn clawhorn@ljworld.com
hat dastardly year of 1951. Sure, the Jayhawks were playing some good basketball — they would win the National Championship in the spring of ‘52 — but there weren’t many other pleasant moments in the year. It was in 1951, of course, when the great flood
Arts&Entertainment 1C-8C Books 6C Classified 1D-8D Deaths 2A, 8A, 10A
Low: 9
Today’s forecast, page 10A
good year: Suzie the Monkey. You don’t know about Suzie the Monkey? Well, you must not know about the days when Lawrence had its own zoo. No, I don’t mean the Oread Neighborhood on a Saturday night. I mean a real live zoo, complete with a resident monkey. And while we’re not
INSIDE
A little snow
High: 30
came. The Kansas River swelled, and then swallowed. Farmers watched entire fields be overtaken by the river. Homeowners watched the water consume their houses inch by inch. People of all different stripes can recount losses in 1951. I’ll tell you who else, though, didn’t have a
Events listings Horoscope Movies Opinion
2B, 8C Puzzles 7D Sports 2C Television 9A
Join us at Facebook.com/LJWorld and Twitter.com/LJWorld
7C, 7D 1B-10B 2B, 8C, 7D
likely to have a zoo again, we might soon have new occasion to think about the days when we did.
Why Will Green wanted a zoo seems to be lost to history. Maybe it was because one of Green’s friends needed a job. The story
goes that C.D. Bunker, the assistant curator at KU’s Museum of Natural History, was out of a job because Dyche Hall had been closed for structural repairs in 1932. So he and his buddy Green — an owner of a hardware store that also sold John
Horses on parade Saturday’s cold led to an unusually short but typically cheerful Old-Fashioned Christmas Parade in downtown Lawrence. Page 3A
Please see ZOO, page 4A
Vol.155/No.342 36 pages