Howard Building

200 South Summit Street

Richard C. Howard, longtime editor and publisher of The Arkansas City Daily Traveler, built this structure in 1931 at a cost of $35,000. Howard also served as a city mayor, postmaster, and state representative and senator.

The Howard Building replaced two previous imposing buildings, each of which was destroyed in a fire. The first of these, built in 1889, was a four-story structure of red stone called the Colorado Block.

It was a business building that included a barber shop, transfer office and newspaper plant. It burned down on January 10, 1905.

Reconstructed in 1906, the new building became known as the Johnson Block (1906) and the Donohue Block (1928).

The building burned again in February 1931.

The three-story Howard Building was designed by a Wichita architect with elements of the Commercial Vernacular and Spanish Eclectic styles, finished in buff brick and trimmed in Silverdale-cut stone.

The cornice has several feet of red clay tile parapet, in addition to corbeled trim and projecting brick pilasters at regular intervals along the principal façades.

R.C. Howard came to Ark City in 1884 as a newspaper printer. In 1886, he and a partner established the city’s first daily newspaper; it was to be named the Daily Traveler a few years later. Howard sold the Traveler to Oscar Stauffer in 1924. Howard’s sons, Forrest and Harry, learned the newspaper business from their father, starting at age 10 as delivery carriers. Years later, R.C. Howard and his son, Harry, became partners in ownership of the Traveler; Forrest was managing editor and editorial writer.

The Howard brothers acquired the Weekly Tribune in 1929. The brothers moved the Tribune to a Howard building on West Fifth Avenue and once again went into business with their father, who became the Tribune publisher. In 1945, the year after R.C. Howard died, the Howard bothers sold the Tribune to the Traveler Publishing Co.

They then established Howard Brothers Investments, located in the Howard Building at 200 S. Summit St. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Howard Building was occupied by Dye’s Drug Store, on the ground level on Summit, and the Rex Barber Shop on the ground level on East Fifth Avenue. It is now occupied by H&R Block, on the Summit Street ground level, and the U.S. Marine Corps Career Center, on the East Fifth Avenue ground level.