Wichita, Kansas from 9th floor view.

Wichita, Kansas from 9th floor view.

I’m sitting at my desk and I’m looking through my office window it’s a wonderful view of the north side of Wichita, Kansas, where I have lived since 1999. The tallest building I can see is the Epic Center which has at least 25 floors and was built in 1987 mainly for office space. The building is very distinct because the top floors form an odd geometric shape and it is crowned with a bronze roof. Nearby it’s the City of Wichita building a square shape with black windows where local government affairs happen. Behind the city building is the blue and white Sedgwick County building with no more than 10 floors. In the old days it was used for the county and city offices. On the west side of the county building is an annex for the county jail, a small building with no more than five floors, it is beige in color and has very tiny windows, where BTK, a famous serial killer, was jailed for several months during his trail. On the east side of the county building is the Federal Court House; that was built on the early 1900’s when Wichita was young. It is a white building with a lot of green and white marble details, at the front of the building is a big statue of Lady Justice. Far towards northwest is the Wichita North High School, a unique building. I don’t know for sure when it was built, but the most visually prominent architectural element, is the tower designed in American Art Deco with American-Indian details and sculptures in a very colorful terracotta. Far to the northeast is the grand grain elevator that is 2,717-foot-long and is listed as the largest grain elevator in the world. In 1998, an explosion at the facility killed seven people. It has a capacity of over 20 millions bushels of wheat, enough wheat to supply all the bread consumed in America in a six week period. On the west side of my view is the Arkansas river, with its origin in the Rocky Mountains

in Lake County, Colorado, near Leadville, Its outlet is in Napolean, Arkansas. On the edge of the river is Exploration Place, a unique shape building known as the “The Sedgwick County Science and Discovery Center” it is gray cement color and one of the newest buildings in the city. The major science events and expositions take place, right now is “Our body: The Universe Within”, exposition that teaches how the human body works and looks, inside and out, using real human bodies. A few feet away is the new renovated structure of the city is “The Keeper of the Plains”. The 44-foot, Cor-ten Steel sculpture now stands elevated on a 30-foot rock. A very unique and distinctive symbol for the city. Wichita, Kansas is the place than I call home.