Salina Post proudly presents Flashback Friday in partnership with the Smoky Hill Museum. Enjoy a weekly tidbit of local history from the staff at Salina Post and the Smoky Hill Museum as we present "Salina-Flashback Fridays."
By SALINA POST
Along the narrow streets of Assaria sit century-old buildings filled with stories of the small town's inhabitants.
One of those buildings once stood as the home of the Assaria Trojans, but today, it houses a beloved fine dining eatery named the Renaissance Café.
From Oban to Assaria — early history of the small community
Just a few miles west of the Smoky Hill River in south Saline County, English and Scottish settlers organized a tiny community named Oban, a Scottish word meaning "little bay," in the late 1800s.
Mans Peterson and Ben Hesser were among the region's first settlers in 1868, when they and the other community members began building grain elevators, hotels, a telegraph and post office and a roller mill.
As the inhabitants from the British Isles struggled through the harsh Kansas winters, they grew tired of the challenge and moved out of the region.
While the initial colonists left the region, many Swedish settlers arrived and founded the Assaria Lutheran Church.
One of those Swedish settlers, Jonas Applequist, arrived in 1870 with his family and established deep roots in the new community. His descendants later founded Great Plains Manufacturing Inc.
In 1879, a town company led by Highland Fairchild plotted and organized the town, renaming it Assaria as a tribute to its Swedish population. By 1883, Assaria boomed with growth, establishing 30 homes in the community and a population of 150 people by 1884.
The town's schools grew alongside its population, with 49 students in the primary grades and 54 in the advanced program. According to the Smoky Hill Museum, Assaria High School graduated its first class in 1913 with three students.
Assaria Schools to fine Italian cuisine
Assaria's schools only continued to grow, requiring the town to build a new school in 1919. There, kindergarten through 12th-grade students learned and competed as the Assaria Trojans.
The school featured four floors of classrooms and office spaces, with the ground floor housing the gymnasium and theater stage. The school's cafeteria surrounded the gym on a second-floor balcony, where the Renaissance Cafe serves its patrons today.
Throughout the next 50 years, the school continued to teach the community's children until 1968, when Assaria Schools consolidated with Southeast of Saline USD 306.
The building remained empty for a decade until Roy Applequist, the founder and CEO of Great Plains Manufacturing, purchased the school to expand his budding agricultural business.
"We bought the whole square block there in 1978," Applequist said. "As part of the Assaria High School building, there was a cafeteria there."
Applequist said the roughly 75 employees at Great Plains in Assaria used the cafeteria for lunch, where local women would cook for the workers.
"We had an hour lunch period, so a lot of us played volleyball for the last half hour of lunch," Applequist said.
Besides eating, the school also housed Great Plains' first factory, producing most of Applequist's products on the ground floor for the first three years until they needed more space for manufacturing.
READ MORE: 📸 Flashback Friday: Salina Post - Brookville Hotel - Vol. 19
The school continued to service Great Plains until the early 2000s when Applequist decided to use this historic building in a new way — an eatery inspired by his world travels.
Initially, the idea stemmed from when the local Coffee Cup Café burned down and left the community without a regular eatery. Applequist decided to open the cafeteria for patrons until he found a new opportunity to transform the location into a fine dining establishment.
Today, the school houses the Renaissance Cafe, with posters and photos Applequist and his family gathered from their global travels, alongside some excerpts from books and catalogs from the 1800s.
"Around the balcony, there's probably several hundred sepia-toned pictures," Applequist said. "We had one set of books that was famous people in the U.S. mainly that was published in 1890, so we took those pictures to the computer and blew them up to different sizes."
One of the portraits featured the previous U.S. president, Abraham Lincoln, alongside famous authors of the time.
Today, the cafe offers dining on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings, catering and event opportunities, where patrons can view the gym while dining in the past Assaria School cafeteria.