The accompanying photograph has been languishing on my desk for months. I couldn’t quite place it, though I was sure it was Lincoln because of the Sidles Cycle Company sign.
Nothing quite fell into place, and I didn’t want to file it without proper identification. Ultimately, I had to list all the signs to see when they coexisted, then check Sanborn’s Fire Map to see where there were three and five-story buildings on the same block, while keeping in mind that signs on buildings don’t necessarily reside on a wall wherein the business lives. Then, by bookending dates which seemed fairly possible, from 1880 to 1920, I worked to the middle and there it appeared, somewhere around 1895.
Lincoln city Block 39 is bordered by 13th, 14th, O and P streets and in 1896-97 had a five-story building on its northwest corner and a three-story structure near its southeast corner.
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The photographer stood in the middle of the intersection of 13th and O streets and was looking to the northeast. On the corner, at 1300 O St. was Elmer E. Mann’s Drug Store, to the right or east was Hall Brother’s Hardware with H. E. Sidles Cycle Company at 1304 O, which would, only months later, move across the street to 1317 O.
The three-story building is the Hall & Lansing Block/Building with J. W. Mitchell’s Mitchell & Smith Wallpaper store next at 1338 O, “frescoing & sign writing,†not quite on the corner, which was then an empty lot.
At the far left is the south wall of the side-by-side Halter and Furniture Blocks, whose major tenant at that time was the Lincoln Overall & Shirt Company. Today that is the site of the Stuart Building/University Towers.
In 1895 Harry Sidles, just graduated from the University of Nebraska, opened a bicycle shop just east of 13th and O streets. About a decade later he had opened an auto parts store at about 14th and P streets and later acquired a Cadillac auto dealership.
In 1890 the lots on the northwest corner of Block 39 were occupied by Mrs. Tweedy’s Boarding House. Just to the south, on what had been the house’s side yard, A. T. Gruetter and Mr. Joers built the five-story Furniture Block. Three years later the old mansion/boarding house was razed for the Halter Block. Both buildings literally shared a common middle wall.
Across the alley to the south and adjacent to Mann Drug was Hall Brothers Hardware/Lincoln Hardware Company, owned by E. E. Henkle and which would become Henkle & Joyce Hardware, whose buildings still stand in the current Haymarket area.
On Jan. 25, 1905, a fire started in the Furniture Block which, within half an hour, had spread over the entire building, engulfing the Lincoln Overall & Shirt Company, which also occupied the Halter Block. The winds came up and the temperature dropped to 12 degrees while the fire threatened the Oliver Theatre across 13th Street to the west and the smaller businesses south of the east/west alley.
Fire Chief Horace Clement, directing fire crews from the roof of the hardware store, fell through a skylight and broke his arm. Water pressure from the mains proved inadequate to lift water above the third floor, while coal used to power the fire engine pumper ran out, necessitating borrowing fuel from a nearby restaurant.
The Halter & Furniture Blocks were totally destroyed forcing the Lincoln Overall & Shirt Company to erect a new and extant building on the northeast corner of 14th and P Streets.
After 1905 the buildings on the northeast corner of 13th and O were razed and the two-story, brick Burlington Block took their place. The corner and 13th Street side housed the Burlington Railroad’s ticket office while the east side, from O Street north to the alley was the Wonderland Theatre. When the Burlington ticket sales moved to the Seventh and P Street depot, the corner became the United Cigar Company with the second floor occupied by offices.
In 1910 Nicholas Lawlor started what would become Lawlor’s Sporting Goods, as the Lawlor Cycle Company, bicycles, phonographs, and sporting Goods at 1324 O St. in the east bay of the building just west, to the left of Hall & Lansing’s Block.
In the 1950s the corner buildings were purchased by Miller & Paine who built the current structure, first leasing it to J. C. Penney Co. as a retail store. Today there is virtually no visible evidence of any of the pictured buildings.
PHOTOS: LINCOLN IN THE 1920s and 1930s
PhotoFiles: A look at life in Lincoln in the 1920s and 1930s
Kushner’s Grocery Store
Bethany
Fire Captain Al Barney
The Sower
Brake tests
12th and R streets
Nebraska Moon Motor Co.
Team of horses
Willard Sorority's May Queen
Alumni Roundup
Lincoln patrolmen
Sunken Gardens
U.S. Veterans Administration Hospital
Historian Jim McKee, who still writes with a fountain pen, invites comments or questions. Write to him in care of the Journal Star or at jim@leebooksellers.com.