Keen Kutter Building

The Keen Kutter Building is a former hardware warehouse located in Wichita, Kansas, that was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2003.

In 1999 the building was re-purposed as the Hotel at Old Town, which includes a large collection of Keen Kutter hardware on display.

This building displayed the owners as the "Morton Simmons Hardware Co." and it had Keen Kutter logos on its tower.

The warehouse's stock included ammunition, lawn mowers, axes, knives, wires, and cutlery.

The tower's more practical purpose was to hold 20,000 US gallons (76,000 L; 17,000 imp gal) of water that could be delivered to sprinklers on each of the four floors in the event of a fire.

The design included electric elevators, an internal telephone system and messenger call boxes.

These offices were placed in a 17-foot (5.2 m) wide strip that stretched 150-foot (46 m) along the south side of the first (ground level) and second stories.

The Harwi company had a slightly smaller building of 75,000 square feet (7,000 m2), based in Atchison, Kansas.

"The Dog Doesn't Mind": A Keen Kutter advertising postcard, depicting a family about to dock a dog's tail with an axe.
The Morton Simmons Hardware Company building. Note the railway car delivering goods.