Eastborough: An English Village in Kansas

Sometime in the late nineteen twenties, a British architect named Burdon Hunter stood atop a low hill east of Wichita and imagined an English village in the middle of the Kansas prairie. He began selling lots in Eastborough Village starting April tenth, nineteen twenty-nine, but an oil discovery in the area delayed development. The City of Eastborough was formally incorporated on June first, nineteen thirty-seven, when forty-eight homes housing about two hundred residents were valued collectively at one million dollars.

The founding ordinance required minimum home costs and architectural review to preserve the village feel. Wichita eventually surrounded Eastborough entirely, but annexation attempts in nineteen thirty and again in the early nineteen fifties failed. Today Eastborough, roughly one square mile, remains an independent city of about seven hundred residents inside Wichita's boundaries.