The Pauleys are one of the local families whose name lived on through their businesses for decades though the businesses are now locally gone. Their impact on Lincoln took on many forms, some of which live on as memories though they fade with time, others remain in the form of buildings and houses.
Conrad Pauley was born in Russia in 1862 but immigrated with his father to Sutton, Nebraska which had established a large German/Russian population beginning in 1873. A few years later the Pauleys moved to a farm east of Harvard, a community which had been formed by the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad 15 years earlier. In 1909 Conrad and his father opened lumberyards in Milford and Lincoln. Another yard established in Pleasant Dale closed in 1913 then Conrad died in Harvard in 1915.
A newspaper account in 1917 noted that the Wm. G. Pauley Lumberyard in Hastings had opened and though others had closed, they still operated in Harvard and Lincoln at 27th and E streets. Conflicting paper accounts showed the Lincoln yard did not open until 1915 while Conrad reportedly moved to Lincoln in 1916 although the 1917 Lincoln City Directory still shows him living in Harvard.
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One thing certain however is that in 1918 Ray Pauley worked with an architect in designing a house in the Prairie School tradition of architecture for a lot on the northwest corner of 26th and C streets to ultimately cost $5,000. The same year Ludwig Pauley built a $5,000 home on the southeast corner of 26th and B, just one block south. The Ray Pauley house became an official Lincoln Landmark in 1983.
In the 1920s the Pauley Lumber Company began building houses on spec, built the Belvedere Apartment House at 1124 N Street and, in 1925, hired Lincoln architects Miller & Craig to design a new masonry, triple building for a lumberyard and hardware store at 965 South 27th Street.
In 1928 Millington Packard, who owned the Moonlight Party House at 300 North 56th Street, bought lumber from the Pauleys to build a new dance hall six miles south of Lincoln just east of the corner of Highway 77 and Saltillo Road. Unfortunately, the operation was unsuccessful, and Packard was unable to pay Pauley Lumber Company which foreclosed on the Starlight Ballroom in 1935, renamed it the Turnpike Ballroom and continued the business under Reon Pauley’s management. The wooden frame ballroom burned but Reon rebuilt it in 1936 as a 100 by 104-foot dancehall at a cost of $50,000. In 1961, just nine days after Glenn Miller’s band performed there and only three hours after O. K. Jones appeared, the second Turnpike Ballroom also burned to the ground February 12, 1971.
The Pauley Lumber Company, headquartered in Lincoln, reported branch yards in Beatrice, Beaver Crossing, Clay Center, Hastings, Milford, Nebraska City, Seward and Julian. Various members of the family were corporation officers which also held an interest in People’s Savings & Loan Co, Home Owner’s Investment Company and Pauley Conoco Service Station at 925 South 27th Street.
Today the two Pauley houses on 26th Street are highly visible monuments while the two-story southern one-third section of the lumberyard survives as an office building. The northern two-thirds have been razed for a small shopping center and large hardware store which interestingly sells some lumber as well and covers the site of the Pauley Conoco service station. The Belvedere Apartment building was razed and is now an exit for the Centrum Parking Garage, but a number of Pauley-designed homes and probably hundreds of houses which were built of Pauley lumber, still stand.
Although the Pauley Lumber and Hardware Company closed in Lincoln in 1999 because of the perceived threat of chain stores, if you are willing to drive to Hastings, the Wm. G. Pauley Lumber Company there is still in operation, just over 100 years old.
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.