About Top City Build
Top City Build is construction exhibit in which visitors are invited to design, stack, and construct their own city inspired by Topeka’s history and architecture. Visitors will learn how buildings rise, bridges connect, and people shape the places we live. Top City Build includes a historical interactives exploring the history of Gage Park, Topeka-themed Duplo tables, an interactive Kansas Capitol building created from Imagination Playground blocks, Keva Plank building stations, kid-powered crane, and a blacklight building section where visitors can experiment with architectural shapes to create their own skyline. Top City Build opened in 2025 as park of the Building Discovery expansion.
Fun Facts
Top City Build tells the fascinating story of Guilford and Louisa Gage, who donated the land for Topeka’s Gage Park where the Kansas Children’s Discovery Center now sits. Guilford Gage’s career as a brick maker is the perfect foundation for an exhibit about how we build community. The exhibit also features other Gage Park builders including:
- William Porter: First Parks Commissioner who helped bring trolley service to Gage Park in 1914, making the park accessible to most Topekans, who didn’t own cars.
- E. F. A. Reinisch: City Landscape Designer from 1900-1929 who helped make Gage Park more beautiful with world-class gardens. The rose gardens he envisioned are named after him.
- Lillie Gordon Munn: Donated land to expand the park and funds for the Munn Memorial, the limestone and bronze monument at the park entrance, a tribute to Kansas history.
- Harry Snyder: Parks Commissioner from 1933-1953 who believed parks should be great places to play as well as to enjoy nature. He added playgrounds and attractions to the park.
- Constance Sawyer: Washburn University student who filed a lawsuit to desegregate Gage Park Pool in 1952. She believed Gage Park should be for all children, and the courts agreed!
Brain Building
Imaginative play, Creativity, Materials testing, Cooperation, Symbolic thinking
Body Building
Small Muscle Development (Fine Motor), Big Muscle Development (gross motor)
