Old Town Wichita

Old Town Wichita is a 17-block entertainment and dining district centered on E 1st Street North and S Mead Street, approximately one mile east of downtown Wichita in a repurposed warehouse and rail district. The neighborhood's brick-paved streets and late-19th-century commercial warehouses were transformed beginning in the 1980s and 1990s into a dense concentration of restaurants, craft breweries, live music venues, galleries, and bars that makes it the most active entertainment district in central Kansas. The district's anchor buildings include former grain warehouses and meatpacking facilities dating from the 1880s through the 1920s, now housing multi-floor restaurant complexes, a bowling alley, a vintage cinema, and independent retail. WaterWalk, on the eastern edge of Old Town along the Arkansas River, adds a marina-adjacent bar and restaurant cluster with outdoor patios overlooking the waterway. The Drury Plaza Hotel at Old Town and the Hotel at Old Town are within the district and make it convenient for overnight visitors to explore on foot. Friday and Saturday evenings from 5pm onward are the peak period, with live music from multiple venues audible simultaneously on the sidewalks. Weekday lunch hours draw a professional crowd from the nearby medical and office district. The district is entirely walkable and most businesses are within four to five city blocks of one another. Street parking on weekend evenings is competitive; the Naftzger Park garage on E 1st St and several nearby surface lots provide overflow capacity. The Arkansas River pedestrian path extends from the WaterWalk area westward past the Keeper of the Plains sculpture and Cowtown Museum, linking Old Town to Wichita's river park system.