GREETINGS FROM COUNCIL BLUFFS II: A Collection of Historical Memorabilia

GREETINGS FROM COUNCIL BLUFFS II •

A Collection of Historical Memorabilia

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GREETINGS FROM COUNCIL BLUFFS II • A Collection of Historical Memorabilia •

GREETINGS FROM COUNCIL BLUFFS Published by The Daily Nonpareil PUBLISHER Tom Schmitt EDITOR Kristine Gerber DESIGNER Christine Zueck-Watkins WRITER AND HISTORIAN Ryan Roenfeld COPY EDITOR Thad Livingston PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Bryan Kroenke SPECIAL THANKS TO: The Council Bluffs Public Library and to the family of Emil Pavich for allowing the public to view and learn from his Council Bluffs postcard collection. More on Emil Pavich’s career and collecting hobby is at the back of the book.

Dave and Helen Edwards for sharing their collection of Council Bluffs and Carter Lake postcards to add to the book.

The Omaha History Club Facebook Community for helping date a Missouri River image.

And to Adam Fletcher Sasse/North Omaha History Blog for his extensive research on Carter Lake.

Special effort was made to ensure the accuracy of the information for each postcard. However, information written on the back of postcards may not always be correct. Please share any corrections with The Daily Nonpareil.

Copyright 2018 The Daily Nonpareil. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior consent of the publisher, The Daily Nonpareil.

The Daily Nonpareil 535 W. Broadway, Suite 300 Council Bluffs, IA 51503 nonpareilonline.com First Edition ISBN: 978-0-9773067-8-7 Printed by Walsworth Publishing Co.

ON THE COVER: Offices of The Nonpareil moved into the I.O.O.F. building at 400 West Broadway in 1900 and then moved to Pearl Street eight years later. The I.O.O.F. building was razed in 1973 as part of urban renewal.

ENDSHEETS, FRONT & BACK: Rare 1920s views of Sand Point Beach at the short-lived Lakeview amusement park in Carter Lake, east of North 17th Street. Lakeview and its Sand Point Beach closed in the 1930s.

TITLE PAGE: This view of West Broadway looking west of Fourth Street shows the original location of the National Humane Alliance fountain donated to the city in 1907.

The fountain is now at the intersection of South Main and Pearl Streets.

FACING PAGE: The Grand Hotel opened on the northwest corner of Pearl Street and First Avenue in early 1891. The hotel was destroyed in a December 1925 fire.

TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION

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GOVERNMENT & INSTITUTIONS

7

HOMES

23

BUSINESSES & DOWNTOWN

33

ADVERTISING

53

RAILROADS & TRANSPORTATION

63

EDUCATION

69

RELIGION

77

PARKS, CEMETERIES & MONUMENTS

81

CARTER LAKE

111

ABOUT EMIL PAVICH 126

Greetings from Council Bluffs II

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I N T R O DUCT I O N

HOW FORTUNATE WE ARE today that the rise in the popularity of the simple postcard came at a time of transformation in Council Bluffs. While our city’s population was growing from 21,000 people in 1890 to almost 30,000 by 1910, the popularity of postcards was also skyrocketing. By 1906, more than 700 million postcards were being sold every year in the United States.

Nearly a billion were sold annually by the early 1920s.

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While postcards were the “social media” of the day, the colorful cards became much more than a way to send a friend or family member a quick note, or a snapshot of a faraway place. Postcards became a major way to record changes in a community. That was certainly the case in Council Bluffs.

During those postcard explosion years, the community of Council Bluffs was constructing new, more modern buildings and — now long-forgotten — amusement parks such as Courtland Beach and Manawa Park were attracting thousands of fun-seekers. Postcards featuring the new fortresses of business and places of relaxation

became “windows to the world” and a way to share the experiences of travel. The postcards not only allowed friends and family to see what the traveler saw, postcards also created a record of history that could be preserved for all of time if properly maintained.

Today, those places — and so many of the others featured in this book — are likely not in the memories of anyone alive. Instead, they only exist as a simple image, perhaps with a hastily scrawled notation on the back of the card. What was probably a fleeting purchase dropped into the mail and forgotten, are now valuable pieces of pictorial history.

Throughout the years, The Daily Nonpareil has published a number of history-based books. In 2002, we published a postcard book called “Greetings from Council Bluffs.”

The 100-plus page book contained a collection of rare, vintage postcards and printed memorabilia that reflected a part of our community’s history. The majority of the images presented in the book came from a collection of postcards owned by the late Arthur and Kathryn Rogers.

RIGHT: The offices of The Nonpareil in the early 1860s on the corner of West Broadway and Scott Street. The newspaper issued its first daily edition in 1862 following the arrival of the telegraph.

This book, appropriately named, “Greetings from Council Bluffs II,” contains more than 275 full-color images. Like the first, this second edition of “Greetings from Council Bluffs” is a one-of-a-kind presentation.

Although this special collection has been preserved and is accessible to the public at the library, it has never been shared at large until now. Like the first, this “Greetings from Council Bluffs” book is a collection of history like no other. By producing this book, we have proudly taken what were once considered to be “windows to the world” and created windows to our past.

We believe you will thoroughly enjoy this book and will treasure it for years to come.

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With the recent discovery of another collection of postcards and historic printed memorabilia, The Daily Nonpareil jumped at the chance to share the collection.

This second collection, the majority of which was once owned by Emil Pavich and is now held by the Council Bluffs Public Library, has provided us with the means to present a second pictorial postcard history book about our community.

I N T R O DUCT I O N

The book, with its 230 full-color images, was an instant success and quickly became one of the most, if not “the” most, popular books The Nonpareil ever created. We still get requests for the book today — 16 years later. Sadly, we haven’t had copies available for sale for years.

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The 1888 Pottawattamie County Courthouse and 1904 Council Bluffs Free Public Library were a mainstay along the east side of Pearl Street for years after the electric streetcars stopped running down those tracks in 1948.

GOVERNMENT & INSTITUTIONS • ______________________________ • Some of the city’s most notable buildings are its public facilities. Some are only memories, while others, like the old library, have found new uses.

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G OV E R N M E N T & I N S T I T U T I O N S

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The new Council Bluffs Y.M.C.A. constructed in 1909 at First Avenue and South Seventh Street. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

G OV E R N M E N T & I N S T I T U T I O N S

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The Glen Avenue Reservoir had its start in the 1880s when the easiest way to supply the city with water was from on top of the bluffs.

In 1919 three boys drowned here. The reservoir was rebuilt and expanded in 1941 as a Works Progress Administration (WPA) project.

Today it is covered up but a pumping station at the end of Glen Avenue, below the old reservoir, still exists.

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G OV E R N M E N T & I N S T I T U T I O N S

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The Council Bluffs Free Public Library was designed by architects Patton and Miller and was completed in 1904 at Pearl Street and Willow Avenue.

After a new library was built in 1998 the building was remodeled into the Union Pacific Railroad Museum.

G OV E R N M E N T & I N S T I T U T I O N S

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The Council Bluffs City Auditorium at Bryant Street and Washington Avenue was built in just 30 days to host the first annual National Horticultural Congress. The auditorium was torn down in 1970.

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G OV E R N M E N T & I N S T I T U T I O N S

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ABOVE & RIGHT: The 1888 Pottawattamie County Courthouse was designed by architects Eckel & Mann. In the 1970s, it was

replaced by the present courthouse and a portion of this building was moved to Torrance, California, where it stands as the Iowa Courthouse Building.

G OV E R N M E N T & I N S T I T U T I O N S

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The 1885 Pottawattamie County “Squirrel Cage� Jail at 226 Pearl St. was designed by architects Eckel & Mann and was the largest rotary jail ever built in America. The jail was closed in 1969 and today serves as a museum for the Historical and Preservation Society of Pottawattamie County.

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A B O U T E M I L PAV I C H

Emil Pavich

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FORMER IOWA SENATE MAJORITY LEADER Mike Gronstal fittingly called Emil Pavich the “godfather” of Pottawattamie County Democrats. He was born the son of a Union Pacific boilermaker named Guy and his wife, Josephine, in the summer of 1931 and came from a part of town called Little Vienna. Down there, most folks worked at the U.P. Transfer where the boxcars rolled through all day and night.

His neighbors were second and third generation Mexicans, Serbians and Croatians, like Emil Pavich’s family. Years later, commenting on an “English-only bill” before the Iowa House, Pavich told The Nonpareil he’d grown up “in a neighborhood where three different languages were spoken.” He would spend his life there on 15th Avenue just off South 17th Street.

Pavich graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in 1949 and spent two years in the Army during the Korean War. In 1954, he found work as a “cereal hauler” at Kellogg’s in Omaha and was long a member of Grain Millers Local 50. Pavich was elected chairman of the Pottawattamie County Young Democrats in 1956 and a decade later was named chairman of the county’s

Democratic Central Committee. When asked by The Nonpareil that August about his biggest pet peeve he replied, “people who don’t register and vote.”

Pavich ran for the Iowa House of Representatives in 1970 and lost by 37 votes. He lost again in 1972 and then stepped down as county chairman in 1974. That fall, Pavich beat the Republican incumbent by 989 votes to represent House District 99.

He would continue to be elected to the Iowa House, in 1976, 1978 and 1980. Due to redistricting, Pavich then represented House District 100 and was re-elected in 1982. The next year, Pavich first introduced legislation to allow Iowa cities to operate their own lottery. Although not opposed to a state-wide lottery, Pavich told The Nonpareil he’d “prefer this.” Pavich also pushed for a return to parimutuel dog racing in Iowa in 1983 as the state dealt with fall-out from the farm crisis.

The popular Pavich ran unopposed for re-election in 1984, 1986 and again in 1988 when he finally retired from Kellogg’s. It was during his seventh term in office when Pavich won approval to relocate the Iowa State Patrol post to the eastern edge of Council Bluffs. When Iowa’s 73rd General Assembly opened in Des Moines in 1989, it was Pavich who held the gavel as temporary Speaker of the House.

RIGHT:

Council Bluffs collector, Emil Pavich, in 1980.

Jim Burnett / The World-Herald

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Pavich was an avid collector of political campaign buttons, most of which are displayed at the RailsWest Railroad Museum. He also collected a variety of local ephemera, especially postcards, that were donated to the Council Bluffs Public Library after his death and form the heart of this book. We think Emil would have enjoyed this project and hope you will as well.

A B O U T E M I L PAV I C H

Another redistricting placed Pavich into District 84 and he was defeated in 1992. He was then nominated to the Council Bluffs City Council in March 1995 and at age 64 Pavich won election to the council in his own right that fall and was re-elected in 1999.

He did not seek re-election in 2003. Nevertheless, Pavich was re-appointed to the council in April 2005 and died in his sleep at his home just over two weeks later. He was 73 years old. His varied accomplishments were commemorated in a resolution by the Iowa House of Representatives in 2006 and a cycling and walking trail between the South Expressway at 23rd Avenue and Katelman Park was named in his honor in 2008, as was a street in a new subdivision west of South 15th and north of 28th Avenue.

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A sunset scene at Council Bluffs accompanied by a quote from poet John Greenleaf Whittier on the back: O’er me, like a regal tent, Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent, Purple curtained, fringed with gold, Looped in many a wind-swung fold.

GREETINGS FROM COUNCIL BLUFFS II •

A Collection of Historical Memorabilia

•

POSTCARDS WERE THE “social media” of the day.

Colorful cards became much more than a way to send a friend or family member a quick note, or a snapshot of a faraway place. Postcards became a record of the businesses, events, homes, parks and churches of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Greetings from Council Bluffs II contains more than 275 full-color images of Council Bluffs’ long-forgotten places and those that still stand today.

It is a collection of history like no other.

$29.95

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