Century II

A blue dome on a ring of sand-coloured piers: John M. Hickman, who had served his apprenticeship with Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin West, meant the Wichita building to stand for the wheat fields and the sky above them. Century II opened on 11 January 1969 as a combined concert and convention centre, its lobby running right round the drum and three wedge-shaped auditoriums meeting at the centre point. The Concert Hall seats 2,197 in continental rows and is home to the Wichita Symphony Orchestra, which shares the building with the city's opera and music-theatre companies. Rossini's 'William Tell' is among the works heard in it. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2020, the complex has since been at the centre of a long civic argument over the future of Wichita's riverfront.