Wichita Kansas Hotel Lassen Souvenir Wood Fountain Dip Pen 155 N. Market St. KS

Description

Up for sale is this rare fountain dip pen advertising the Lassen Hotel in Wichita, KS. It measures  a little under 8 inches and was probably made sometime in the 1920s or 30s. I have never seen another one of these come up for sale.
Market
Centre
in
Wichita, Kansas
was built in 1918 as the
Lassen Hotel
. It was designed by architects
Richards, McCarty & Bulford
. It was listed on the
National Register of Historic Places
in 1984.Added to NRHPOctober 4, 1984
The 11-story building originally had an L-shaped plan for floors 3 to 11. It was expanded in 1922 by adding a wing that gave the structure a U-shaped plan.
[2]
The hotel was acquired by the
Schimmel Hotel group
in 1942, which operated it until it was sold in 1969.
The building has a 2-story annex that is not included in the NRHP listing.
[2
]
In 1954 a satellite studio of Hutchinson-based television station
KTVH
opened in the building. This was the first television station to open that covered Wichita, the state's largest city.
[3]
KTVH's attempts to provide service to Wichita, in what would become a running theme in the first three decades of station history, rankled the stations licensed there.
KAKE
radio and television petitioned the FCC in November 1954 to order KTVH to stop identifying as a "Wichita station";
[4]
it declined to do so.
[5]
In 1956, KTVH moved its Wichita facilities out of the Lassen and into quarters formerly used by the defunct
KEDD
.
[6]
The hotel operated as the
Lassen Motor Hotel
until July 1, 1969, when it was renamed the
Radisson Wichita Hotel
.
[7]
In 1971, it was purchased by the Defenders of the Christian Faith and was operated as a retirement home with offices and retail space. It was the subject of the Kansas Supreme Court case, Defenders of the Christian Faith v. Board of County Commissioners, 219 Kan. 181, 547 P.2d 706 (1976). In 1983, work began to convert the structure to an office building.
[2]
By 1986, it was functioning as offices, renamed
Market
Centre
. In 2015, the offices were vacated in preparation for a conversion of the structure into 110 apartments.
[8]
The work never began, and the structure is for sale, as of 2022.
[9