Sprague Apartments

The apartment building was funded by a bequest from Elizabeth Cade Sprague (1874-1960), head of the home economics department 1914-41, in memory of her sister Amelia, an artist and designer. Retired faculty members live in the 10 units of the redbrick building, completed in 1960.



It occupies a historic campus site. Charles Robinson, a founder of Lawrence and first governor of Kansas, sold the property to grocer H.W. Baker, who built a 24-room house that in 1890 he sold to fellow Quantrill raid survivor Brinton Webb Woodward, owner of Round Corner Drugs. Woodward enlarged the house, adding a notable art gallery, and named the house and grounds Brynwood Manor. 

At the end of World War I, the Acacia Fraternity bought the house and property but by 1939 could no longer maintain them. They were acquired by Olin Templin of the Endowment Association, who had long hoped to develop scholarship halls for men like Watkins and Miller women’s halls.

The house was refurbished and opened as Templin Hall, a scholarship residence for 38 men, in fall 1940; it and Battenfeld Hall were the first of several scholarship halls at Alumni Place, as the Woodward property was renamed. Templin housed men, women, and, during World War II, Navy officer trainees; it was demolished in 1959.