The Palace Clothing Store building, located at 709 Kansas Avenue, was built in 1888.  Besides being well known for its tasteful selection of clothing the store was at first deemed somewhat of an oddity due to the gargoyles the builder had installed on the corners of the building.  Seen above in a photo believed to be from the 1920’s are the unusual pair of adornments.  Topeka folklore holds the unusual pair were shipped over from Scotland from the ancestral home of the original owner of the Palace.

Unfortunately only one of the pair is known to exist today.  On a Halloween night in the early 1930’s the statues disappeared from the top of the Palace.  Local authorities blamed the disappearance upon teenage “pranksters”, though this was never proven.  In 1940, coincidentally again on a Halloween night, one of the pair was discovered atop the Jayhawk Hotel.  No explanation was ever found as to how the statue was placed there or why.  Some say the pose of the recovered gargoyle was slightly different than it had been originally.  This, of course, can be dismissed as idle gossip.  The statue had to be lowered by crane from the top of the Jayhawk Hotel, shown here in this 1940’s snapshot of the event.

For many years the statue gathered dust in a storage room at the Kansas State Heritage Society.  On June 18, 2004 the statue was moved to the private garden of a former owner of the Palace building. 

Source:  “Annals:  Bulletin 108 – Kansas State Heritage Society”