Built in 1858 (vernacular architecture). Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971.
From the record
“Old Castle Hall was the first building of Baker University in Baldwin City, Kansas. It was built in 1857-58 to house the university on its first two floors, with the Palmyra Masonic Lodge occupying the third floor.”
Wikipedia article Old Castle Hall, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 118 National Register listings published here for Douglas County · listed in 1971 · category: Building · built in 1858, vernacular architecture.
National Register reference number. 71000309 - assigned by the National Park Service when the property was listed.
Fires near this property
56 since 2015
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 56 fires within 5 miles of Old Castle Hall, Baker University
between 2015 and 2020, burning about 301 acres in total. None started naturally. 15 were recorded as arson.
Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted
here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
Reported cause
Fires
Debris and open burning
23
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
17
Arson/incendiarism
15
Equipment and vehicle use
1
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Baldwin City, the town this property stands in, in 2 storm reports in 1995: 1 thunderstorm wind, 1 tornado.
No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
A small tornado formed along the north edge of a strong downburst and moved mainly across open fields. The tornado skipped across the county destroying several farm buildings, a motorhome and farm equipment. However, with widespread straightline wind damage in the area, it was difficult to distinguish between the cause(s) of the damage. The most significant damage occurred along and about one to two miles west of highway 33.
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
Listed places nearby
6 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
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