$18K awarded to aid restoration of Topeka’s Constitution Hall

? An $18,000 grant from the National Park Service has moved a nonprofit closer to refurbishing the facade of a building where slavery opponents met during the Bleeding Kansas era.

Grant Glenn, president of the nonprofit Friends of the Free State Capitol Inc., said the group will have sufficient funds to begin the work on Topeka’s Constitution Hall if it receives a $90,000 grant from the Kansas Heritage Trust. An announcement is expected early next year, The Topeka Capital-Journal reports.

Topeka’s governing body previously awarded Friends of the Free State Capitol $355,000 — including $175,000 for facade restoration — over 10 years. The money from the National Park Service is earmarked for the restoration of the front doors and windows.

Constitution Hall, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, played an important role during the fight over whether Kansas would enter the Union as a free or slave state. Tensions mounted after Missourians crossed the border in large numbers during the Kansas Territory’s first election in March 1855 to vote illegally and elect a territorial Legislature that was pro-slavery.

The federal government recognized the election of that Legislature, which in July and August 1855 passed laws that provided severe penalties for those who freed slaves or spoke out against slave holding.

Kansans opposed to slavery responded that year by holding a convention in Topeka and adopting their own constitution, which was approved by the public in an election that pro-slavery advocates didn’t recognize. A free-state Legislature was elected and began meeting in March 1856 at Constitution Hall.

A Congressional investigating committee visited Kansas that spring and issued a report saying the free-state government reflected the wishes of most Kansans. Still, federal officials rejected that government, and President Franklin Pierce ordered the Army to disperse its Legislature. Troops did that at Constitution Hall on July 4, 1856.

“For this, the first Topeka streets — named for the presidents — exclude Pierce,” Glenn said.

After Kansas became a state in 1861, legislators met in Constitution Hall until the current Statehouse was occupied in 1869, Glenn said. But by 2001, the building was near collapse after decades of abandonment. Glenn said recent years have brought major projects to repair the west and south stone walls, structurally stabilize the second floor and replace the roof.