our History

The Northview neighborhood has a long and rich history as one of the oldest neighborhoods in Manhattan. It is home to a hearty, diverse group of residents who are known for ‘keeping it real’. We have not one but two schools, several churches, many small neighborhood businesses, parks, trails, and many wonderful people who care.

There is a sense, however, that Northview is ‘disconnected.’ The time and energy dedicated to family, work and other responsibilities have made it hard to gather with friends and neighbors. There is also the sense that Northview has been ‘forgotten’. Resources are being invested in other areas of the community but fewer in ours. It seems likely that these trends will continue if Northview does not take action. We will become more disconnected from our neighbors and from the rest of the Manhattan community. We will see other neighborhoods grow and develop while ours does not.

In response to these concerns and with a different vision for what Northview could be, a small group of concerned Northview residents came together on December 6th, 2017 at the Vineyard Community Church on Casement Road. The group met several times, discussing what is happening in the neighborhood and what a healthier, more connected and engaged neighborhood would look like. Given time and effort, Northview residents created Northview Rising. With a view toward that future, we embrace our past.

THE HISTORY OF NORTHVIEW, 1780-2018

From 1780 until 1830 at the southeast corner of today’s Northview neighborhood, on the east bank of the Big Blue River, the Blue Earth village of the Kansa (Kaw) nation was home to hundreds of the “People of the South Wind.” Even today, the site where the Blue and Kansas rivers join has deep spiritual significance for native people. At that time the Blue River channel ran straight south through what are now the Knoxberry and Dix additions and the southeast corner of Casement Road. The hunting, fishing and agricultural lands of the Blue Earth village included all of what is now Greater Northview.

By the middle 1800s, due to the Louisiana Purchase (1803), the treaty in which the Kansa nation ceded Kansas territory and were moved to Oklahoma where they live today (1846), the annexation of the northern third of Mexico after the Mexican-American War (1848), and the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), settlers from the east had begun to populate the region. Manhattan was founded in 1855 and incorporated in 1857. For a decade it was a frontier town for travelers headed west. Early settlers included Henry and Elenora Strong, whose farm on the banks of the Big Blue River gave its name to Strong Street in Northview. Their farmhouse, a stop on the Underground Railroad, burned in 1865. They rebuilt it in stone in 1867-68; today it survives as the Strong Inn bed & breakfast on Beck Street.  

A widespread flood in 1903 changed the Big Blue River channel to form a loop further east. Residential settlement in Northview grew in the 1940s and 1950s but stayed to the west and north of what is now Casement Road due to periodic flooding of the river. Northview Park, with a swimming pool, picnic shelter and baseball field, was constructed in 1956. Northview Elementary School next door was finished in 1957 and has expanded several times since. It was designated a National Blue Ribbon School in 1987-88, the first in Manhattan to achieve that honor.

East of Casement Road, Northview was largely farmland until the construction of Tuttle Creek dam, dedicated in 1963, after a devastating flood in Manhattan in 1951. Residential development then expanded east of Casement Road, with the Dix addition completed in the late 1970s and Knoxberry and Northfield in 1981. Over the last thirty years additional housing has grown along the northwest side of Casement. Eisenhower Middle School on the far northwest corner was completed in 1996.

Today Greater Northview is home to more than 9000 residents of diverse backgrounds, including roughly 25% of the children of Manhattan. The neighborhood has two schools, several churches, a few small businesses along Tuttle Creek Boulevard to the west and scattered throughout the neighborhood, a residential lake south of Northfield Drive, Northview Park next to the elementary school, and more recently Northeast Community Park to the southeast with walking trails, a playground, a picnic shelter, soccer fields and a small Tallgrass prairie restoration. The wooded Cecil Best birding trail at NE Community Park’s southeast corner connects to the city’s Linear Trail near the Highway 24 bridge.

Northview has responded energetically to both natural disasters and development opportunities over the last thirty years. In 1993 widespread flooding forced Tuttle Creek Dam engineers to open its Spillway gates, which caused the Big Blue River to overrun our southeast neighborhoods for several months, and many homes were damaged. Northview residents and volunteers from around the city and country spent weeks sandbagging, pumping water, and helping each other to evacuate. The area rebuilt, though with a few empty lots at its southern border. Then in 1998 a team of Northview residents began to lobby the city to help with the lack of parks for our many children. The city had already purchased land east of the Dix addition in 1997, and the group helped to advance the development of Northeast Community Park, dedicated in 2003. The Manhattan Audubon Society finished the Tallgrass Prairie restoration project and the Cecil Best birding trail in 2000.

However, due to the way that Northview developed when Tuttle Creek Boulevard was constructed, it is isolated from the rest of the community: no restaurants, no real grocery stores, no retail except for the strip mall on Tuttle Creek Boulevard.

INTO THE PRESENT

In the last five years, the city has once again begun to take notice of our situation; new bike boulevards, walking trails and sidewalks have gradually begun to make our neighborhoods safer for children. In 2017 the city began to plan a pocket park at the corner of Casement and Dix where a home had been condemned due to a fire. A wide multi-use trail along Knox Lane now connects Allen Road to NE Community Park. In 2018 the city built two signaled crossings at Allen Road and Griffith Drive along Casement Road that connect the sidewalks between Allen Road and Butterfield Road, thus allowing schoolchildren to get to our schools more safely. A crosswalk at Tuttle Creek Blvd. and Kimball Avenue will soon make it safer to cross at that intersection. Construction just finished on a new “escape route” into the city for walkers and bicyclists from Parker Hannifin, on Hayes Drive south of Casement, to the intersection of Tuttle Creek Blvd. and McCall Road, with a crosswalk at Tuttle Creek Blvd. to connect to 4th street. It follows the path of the old Blue River channel.  

In the fall of 2017, the Kansas Health Foundation awarded a substantial grant to the the Flint Hills Wellness Coalition - with the Riley County Health Department acting as fiscal agent. The aim of the FHWC - improving the health of a priority population/geographic area of Riley County.

That area was Northview, and the health department staff convened the first meeting of a group of Northview citizens to map areas of Northview, compile information about health and social needs and establish the foundation for health-related projects. Beginning in December of 2017 a small group of Northview residents began to meet regularly - forming the previous community organization, the Greater Northview Action Team (GNAT). Following a year of initial development and growth, the group further refined its sense of identity, values, and operating principles to become what is now Northview Rising.