The Baehr Audio-Reader Center
The Early Days
The Baehr Audio-Reader Center stands on land acquired in the early 1920s by Paul A. Dinsmore and his wife Mary. Mr. Dinsmore was a vice-president of the Lawrence Paper Company, and his wife was a daughter of one of the Bowersocks, who founded that business. It’s difficult to date precisely when the Dinsmores built their home, but a spokesman for the KU Endowment Association remembers seeing a blueprint for the landscaping dated 1929.
Mr. Dinsmore died in 1940, and shortly thereafter his widow sold the property to JL (Tommy) Constant and his wife Frances. Tommy Constant was a widely known builder in the community, as well as a member of the City Commission, a founder of the Lawrence National Bank, and a member of the KU Athletic Board and Endowment Association. Long before his death in 1973, the Constants moved away from the house at 1120 west 11th Street, which then later the home of the Phi Kappa fraternity (later known as Phi Kappa Theta). When the fraternity moved to larger quarters in 1968, the house was taken over by the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity. When PKT disbanded its KU chapter there were several short-term owners who never occupied the property. By 1972 it had become a holding of the endowment association. It was considered as a location for a University Club but instead became a storage facility throughout the 70s and 80s.
Around 1980 a KU architectural student spent several months redesigning the house as a new facility for Audi-Reader for a class project. Several very different plans were worked up, and it was estimated that the remodeling costs would exceed $300,000. An Endowment Association spokesman remembers, “It looked as if they had given every fraternity member over the years a roll of Romex (electric wire) and a piece of wallboard and let him build his own cubbyhole. It was a mess.” Water pipes had frozen and burst, a fire had burned a hole in the roof, and part of the second floor was on the verge of collapse from fire and rain damage. And nobody had yet discovered that the walls were filled with recently outlawed asbestos insulation.
Within a couple of years Audio-Reader director Rosie Hurwitz began to raise both funds and enthusiasm for the project. A very important step in solidifying the dream came from Chancellor Gene Budig, who made a 15 year commitment to support Audio-Reader and keep it on the air from its new studios.
Even though almost a decade had passed since the original price estimates, the renovation was completed for about the same amount. Funding has come from a large number of contributors, with about half of the cost covered by the Louis and Dolpha Baehr Foundation, of Paola, Kansas.
Remodeling took about a year, and included many unusual features to control sound and to accommodate the miles of wire required for an audio facility. Early in 1988, Audio-Reader moved its operation into the “new” house, and began the final stages of wiring for audio and control signals, and “fine tuning” the acoustically-controlled areas.
A Moving Story
The Kansas University Endowment Association purchased the former Phi Kappa Tau fraternity house in 1972 as a prospective site for a University Club, which was being considered at the time. When the club project was scrapped, however, the building became a storehouse.
More than ten years later, a program called Audio-Reader outgrew its facilities at Sudler House, and the Phi Kappa Tau building was selected as the new site. Audio-Reader will be moved to the old fraternity house in the spring of 1987.
Audio-Reader is part of a national network of individuals who read publications on the radio for persons who are visually or print handicapped.
New Audio-Reader Facility
After moving into the Baehr Audio-Reader Center, Audio-Reader has enjoyed 4,000 square feet of usable space, more than double the space the Sudler House offered. The expansion was thanks to the generous $150,000 gift from the Louis and Dolpha Baehr Charitable Foundation and matching gifts from several other donors totaling over $300,000 to renovate the former Phi Kappa Tau house.
The center's name honors the principal donors Louis and Dolpha Baehr who settled in Paola, Kansas in the early 1900s and spent the rest of their lives there. They were very active in the community. Louis was a businessman who started his career by owning a meat market. Dolpha Baehr began losing her sight during middle age and was totally blind for a number of years.
Work on the inside of the old fraternity house, which also once housed the Phi Kappa Theta fraternity, already has begun. Early this summer, the KU Endowment Association contracted to have the interior of the 76-year-old building gutted and the asbestos removed from it to prepare it for renovation.
Kurt von Achen, with the Kenneth O. von Achen architect’s office in Eudora, is preparing the final renovation drawings. Allen Wiechert, university director of facilities planning, said he expects bids for the renovation to be let sometime this fall.
He said the reader service will occupy only the first two floors of the structure. The basement will be used for mechanical space, and , with modifications, may be used for expansion. The attic also will be reserved for expansion of the service.
The garage on the property was converted earlier into library space for Audio-Reader and the tape exchange program. The garage also houses the Audio-Reader engineering workshop.
“The survival of the program, really hinged on finding a better physical facility,” said Rosie Hurwitz, audio reader director. “ We’ve been hampered by lack of space since our earliest broadcast in 1971 from the lobby of KANU’s Broadcasting Hall.
In 1973 Audio-Reader moved into the 450-square foot space in Sudler House. Two years later, the services added a 50-foot-long mobile home fitted out with three recording studios, a live broadcast studio, and the control room and desk space for the operations manager and volunteer coordinator.
Hurwitz said the most serious problem with the trailer aside from obvious space limitations, is the lack of sound control. The new structure will be equipped with acoustically treated recording booths and special broadcasting equipment.
She pointed out that unlike regular radio stations, Audio-Reader produces about 95 percent of the 24-hour-a-day programming it broadcasts. It does so with 155 volunteers and student assistants.