Shell Noble cuts Terry Bertels' hair after the ribbon-cutting ceremony of the fictitious barber shop at Topeka's Old Prairie Town.

Topeka ? You can’t get a shave and a haircut there for two bits, but you can see what a barbershop looked like back when men’s grooming could be purchased for even less than a quarter.

Noble Shell, who usually cuts hair at the Family Styling Barber Shop, gave the inaugural haircut recently in Old Prairie Town’s newest attraction, an old-fashioned barbershop, to Terry Bertels, acting director of Parks and Recreation of Topeka.

At a ribbon-cutting ceremony in the city-owned park, Mayor Bill Bunten said he remembered sitting in a barber chair like the one in the shop and recalled how barbers used to sharpen their straight razors on a leather strop.

But as for the advertised price of a nickel for a haircut and shave, Bunten said, “I’m not that old.”

Haircuts cost a quarter when he was a boy, the mayor said.

The addition of a barbershop to Old Prairie Town, which re-creates a Kansas town around the turn of the 19th century, started with the donation of a vintage barber’s chair by Mike and Suzi Branaman, said Bill Riphahn, director of planning and development for Parks and Recreation of Topeka.

Mike Branaman, who was once a barber, said he had great-uncles who plied that trade as a living, including one who used to cut Dwight D. Eisenhower’s hair as a boy in Abilene.

Branaman said he acquired the barber’s chair in Abilene, but he couldn’t say for certain whether “Ike sat there.”

In addition to the barber’s chair, visitors can find inside several shaving mugs, razors and clippers, a bottle of Wildroot and other barbershop accoutrements, including a spittoon and a Chinese checker board for waiting customers.

The ribbon-cutting was timed to coincide with National Barbershop Quartet Day, and a Topeka quartet, Capital Sound, performed.

Unlike Old Prairie Town’s Potwin Drug Store where visitors can buy treats at the soda fountain or the Mulvane General Store where one can buy merchandise, the barbershop won’t be routinely staffed for haircuts, shaves or baths.

However, as part of the grand opening, Bertels sat in the barber’s chair for a haircut by his regular hairstylist, Shell, who usually wields his clippers at Family Styling Barber Shop.

When a bystander noted the event wasn’t historically accurate because Shell was using electric clippers, Riphahn pointed out some hand-powered barber’s shears on display but warned they might pull out more hair than they would cut.