Entry No. 39 — the Wichita file — filed under: offbeat-museum
Original Pizza Hut Museum
“a trucker-bar sign with only eight letter slots; "Pizza Hut" just fit”
This tiny 500-square-foot brick building — the actual 1958 original Pizza Hut, not a replica — was relocated to Wichita State's Innovation Campus in 2018 and turned into a free walk-in museum. The name itself came from a trucker-bar sign with only eight letter slots; "Pizza Hut" just fit. Inside, the founders' accidental thin crust (borrowed from a French-bread cookbook), a pair of sneakers with a pizza-ordering button, Pizza Hut Barbie, and a framed fact about paying Russia $1 million to deliver pizza to space all share about as much room as a studio apartment. Most visitors walk right past it assuming it's a storage shed.
The move: Walk the whole thing in 20 minutes, then make your date guess which exhibit is real — the space pizza fact, the golf pants, or the sauce recipe on a napkin (hint: all three are).
📍 Before you go It sits on Wichita State's Innovation Campus just off 21st Street, directly behind the Marcus Welcome Center, so trust your GPS to the welcome center and walk south to the small brick building. Park free in the welcome-center lot to the north or by Eck Stadium to the west. The visit is self-guided: the door stays unlocked, motion-sensor lights flip on when you step inside, and there is no staff or admission desk. It keeps weekday daytime hours, so plan accordingly and confirm current times. After your 20 minutes, stroll WSU's adjacent Martin H. Bush outdoor sculpture collection or visit the Ulrich Museum of Art.
- 📍 West Wichita (WSU Innovation Campus)
- 💸 $
- ⚡ Up for anything
- 🌗 Indoors
Where: 2090 Innovation Blvd, Wichita, KS 67208
Hours: Added 2026-06-09 — confirm current hours before you go.
Plan a visit & invite your people →
Further reading: Roadside America · Yelp · visitwichita.com · wichita.edu
last checked: 2026-06-09