Topeka High School stands at the intersection of 10th Avenue and Western, a few blocks from the State Capitol, and is a genuine piece of American public architecture worth seeking out. The 1931 Collegiate Gothic building — all limestone towers, carved stonework, and leaded windows — was designed to look like an Oxford college, and largely succeeds. The vaulted interior spaces and the central courtyard reinforce the impression.
The school remains in active use as a public high school, so interior access is limited to visitors with a reason to be there. But the exterior is fully visible from the street, and the building repays a walk around its perimeter. It appears on the National Register of Historic Places. The school's graduates include politicians, athletes, and artists — it has been the educational home of Topeka's civic leadership for nearly a century. Its presence a block from the Brown v. Board of Education site, where segregation forced Black children to attend different and inferior schools, gives the location additional historical resonance.