In the past..........

Thanks to the Penny Postcard site for sharing their photos of old.  The above building was in Murray, Iowa and was one of their first school buildings. The very first one was a wooden building this one looks like it is brick. I never saw this building and I am sure that it caught fire and was torn down. The history of these buildings usually met their final fate in that way.  I am not even certain of it's location in the town, but I figure a relative or two will help me to update that info.  I graduated from a different building in Murray that was built in the 1900's that sat on a hill that reminds me of this
location.

Edited on December 24th,

My cousin Joan Henderson Callison wrote me the following information:

The lst and 2nd schools in Murray were in the block kitty cornered northeast across the street from the present school.  Plans were being made for the present school when the brick one, pictured above, burned a month before school was out. It was thought that it was arson. They finished going to school in churches and business buildings.  Mom, Ruby Burgus Henderson and Mary Burgus Farr would have been Juniors.  Mom said that they had to ask the kids what their grades were because all the records were burned and the boys remembered them being much higher than they actually were. Mom and Mary were in the first graduating class of the current school in 1926.Grandma & Grandpa Burgus made Mom wait a year to go to high school so she and Mary were in the same class. 

Structures like the newer one are of flat roof construction. The illustration of the Woodward building a few pictures down is typical of the early 1900's style of school building. The 1926 building that Aunt Ruby and Aunt Mary graduated from is the very same building that I graduated from in 1968, 42 years later.

Another school structure that stood in Osceola, Iowa in the past shows the tower for the school bell, a carryover from the country schools who most had a tower structure built as the entry for the school and to hold the bell. As the country grew the families grew and I am sure this building became too small to handle the number of children in the town.

A structure that still stands today is the Osceola Depot.  It is still in use and the Amtrak train stops here frequently each day. When people are ready to board the train, they line up on the concrete slab and wait as a group for the train to slowly pull up to allow them to board. I don't know how fun that would be in a rain storm or snow storm as there is not covered area for them to stand.

When I was first starting out as a teacher, I taught in Sidney, Iowa.  The county seat of Fremont County was Sidney and this is the courthouse that still stands there today.  The trees have all grown in since this was taken.  This is actually the second courthouse built here as the last one was destroyed by dynamite.   The border of Iowa is more than twenty miles away but during the Civil War, the southern soldiers didn't have maps.  They were sure that they were in Missouri so they placed explosive material inside the court house and lighted a match.

 The Underground Railroad actually did go through Sidney in the 1860's. I do know that Iowa was against slavery but I don't think Iowa ever actually was attacked by the South except for this one time.

This is the Woodward, Iowa school building that was built in the early 1900's  Originally it was a Kindergarten through Senior building and the stories were told that the bottom floor was left with a dirt floor for it's early years. The school children went down there to play during rainy days for recess.  I am assuming that the money was tight.

I do know that they later finished the floor as I taught my first four years in this building. I was in the basement room with a concrete floor.  It is the one with the right back basement windows. I started teaching there in 1976.

The cupola was said to have blown off in the 1920's.  Do you notice all the Roman influence on this structure with the pediment over the doorway and the water line base that reminds one of Venice, France?

As with all older structures in this country we tear them down after 100 years.  It was taken down in 1993 to be replaced with a single story building.

I am off theme most every time but maybe I can dig out my Grandmothers old cookbooks and create a food theme for next week.   I seem to be behind on themes or never conforming at all.  I enjoy all the themed blogs and you can see more blogs who share in Sepia Saturday by clicking here.

This old chair..........

I was watching an old PBS special about the Civil War in the United States.  They covered the shooting of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth at the theater, showing old photos and the present day historic site.  Also they described what happened after the President was shot, saying that they took him across the street from the theater and placed him in a randomly chosen boarding house room on the first floor.  They laid him out on the bed diagonally because he was too tall for the small bed. There he lay being attended to by doctors who had none of today's technology to really give him any hope of survival.

They didn't ask permission of the man who had rented the room and since he was gone at the time,  I am sure he was surprised to find the government officials had taken over his room when he returned to the room. From my memory of things Abraham Lincoln didn't die from his wounds until a day later.

The thing that jumped out at me was the chair that was sitting in the boarding house on the right side of the bed. It had a caned seat.  I own a chair like that one in the photo, at least I thought so.

It is the same style of chair.  This chair did have a cane seat in it originally and it is the same shape.  I looked at other views of the chair in other pictures of the bedroom and it is from the same family of chairs but it is not the exact same kind of chair.

My chair has been stained mahogany and I am sure it was originally a light or medium brown wood.  From other views of the chair the side supports and bracing are all the exact same. The three spindles are the same in the back and the carved arches are the same.

I bought my chair at an auction in Sidney, Iowa. The woman who had passed away had an antique business in Omaha and a lot of things she kept at her house were antique.  I doubt this was a family piece but I suppose it could have been. The cross stitch piece really does look great on this chair even though it is covering up the cane seat opening.

I paid six dollars for it which was not a high price at the time in 1974. I assume that the crowd really were looking for more modern furniture.  I also bought some Wedgewood pieces at that sale for three or four dollars a piece.  The auctioneer was not much with selling all the small items so he let me bid the per item bid and then said I could take as many as I wanted.  There was an ashtray that I didn't take at the time but someone else certain grabbed it. The chair seemed like a wonderful item and would make a great desk chair to an antique desk.

Just for fun I am showing you an artist rendition of what he thought it might have looked like while Mr. Lincoln lay dying.  The artist has taken artistic license on the looks of the chair in the illustration.  I assume the artist would not think that people could someday get on the internet and view that actual chair in 1865. As small as the room was I really doubt that there could have been that many people in the room.

I probably will continue my research about the whole history of the company that made the chair.  I have found numerous sites that show the room which has been kept as a museum.  It was a very small room and the shooting or our president was a sad part of our history that will always be remembered.

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Town Craft in Perry, Iowa.........

The building sits on the corner of 2nd and Willis Street in Perry, Iowa.  It was built in the early 1900's. The photo shows the building in the 20's.  As you study the photo, notice the Fords and that the upstairs windows are open.  I was told that the upstairs was an office area for lawyers to do business in the town. The bank building was eventually sold to another locally owned company,  Brenton Bank, and it remained so until it's closing 20 years ago as a new building was created on a new site near there. 

My wife and I spent a few days in the restored building doing an art show call  "Art on the Prairie" in the upstairs part of the old bank. 

The Iowa State University was involved in the redevelopment and design of the bank building and the adjacent building was also included in the project.  This is the model that students and  architecture instructors designed for it's renovation.    Notice the clock that has been put back on the building.  It was not original to the building but the bank must have added it in the 1930's. They named it the Town Craft to symbolize what had been done to restore and refresh the two buildings.

This is the photo of the restored two buildings today.  On my other blog, Larry's Creative Zone, you can see photos of the inside of the second floor of this building.

The story is complicated but I want to share with you how renovation of the two building of the Town Craft were financed.  The photo above is the Hotel Pattee, named after the brothers who first built the building in the early 1900's..   It sits on the same block down the street to the west.  The person who financed it all started by restoring this gutted building.  She turned it back into a grand hotel and then continued down the street continuing the  restoration of many more buildings in the area.

Roberta Green Ahmanson, a 1967 graduate of Perry High School,  and her husband, multimillionaire philanthropist Howard Ahmanson Jr., have financed dozens of various causes. They live in California but Roberta bought a Victorian house in Perry so that she could supervise the projects here in Iowa. Many buildings in a two block area were all financed by them.  A Carnegie Library where she worked as a young woman was one that was restored.

I always like to know the rest of the story and where the Ahmanson made their money is an interesting one. How this California couple and their money made it to Perry, Iowa.

Mr. Ahmanson was in the family line that created all the water distributions to southern California.  I don't remember the name of the movie that was made which had a plot that centered around the wheeling and dealing that were done. Millions of dollars were made from that business venture. If I find out the name of the movie, it included the name China in it, I will correct this posting. Yes, Chinatown was the name of the movie.

The Ahmanson's are known for there kind giving and the Town Craft project was the second or third renovation venture after the Pattee Hotel. I was told that much of the money was trust money that they were required to spend. The Hotel Pattee was completely recreated from nothing for 11 million dollars.

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Faces.......

A year ago a student made this graphic display of his classmates of 2010.  The faces really are not much different than the past except the clothing has changed and the modern problems are different too.

The faces really do look the same as you view the ones of the 60's and the 30's. A cousin's little girl sits with a smile while my Aunt Doris stands straight with her great looking dress.  My parents are dressed in their morning everyday clothes ready to start the day in our old farmhouse.

More faces from the classes that my mom taught while she was in her late teens early twenties.  The years of teaching started in 1937 and as you can see the faces seem the same.  They could be modern people today even though the form of the picture tells us otherwise.

People who wanted a memory of themselves and the event in their lives hold themselves so still for the camera for it to capture their image.

My grandmother Brooks was so proud of all her things that she made to sell.  This is as close to a smile that she ever put out for a camera.

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Old Photos 1940's

The photo is one that my Dad brought home with him when he returned from World War 2.  I think it could be Belfium in 1943 and yet they did travel to France via other countries so it may be in another country. It is one of my unknown photos in his collection of many war time shots. I really am not sure the photo is of my dad but it could be as they took photos of each other to record their happenings of the time.

Thanks to the two blogger friends that did the research for me.  This is Karlshafen, Germany in 1945. It had to have been taken after the defeat of the country and when they were leaving the country to ship out to go home.

An unknown location but I am sure my dad thought it to be a majestic building. He, being a farm boy from the midland prairie, was familiar with small one story wooden farm houses or two story square farm homes.  A house that reminds one of a castle would be of interest to him.

The American soldiers all averaged in their early twenties in age and fishing would have been of great interest to them. The children seem interested to see what he has on his line. This photo had to be there near the city in Belgium where  my dad was stationed. He was there temporarily before he was sent out to be with the soldiers in the Battle of the Bulge.  One of my older blogs had a commenting friend tell me the name of the city as to where they were stationed but I have yet to find it in my old blogs.


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Just sitting there........

Great grandfather Charles Brown, Illinois.
Died when my grandfather was three years old in the early 1900's.

Unknown school scene of the early 1900's in southern Iowa

Unknown folk from an album found in a house in Osceola, Iowa.  Probably related to the Webster's of Osceola but that is yet to be researched.

Step grandpa Oscar Brooks with my brothers Ron, standing, and Rex on his lap.  By the age of the boys this has to  be around 1944.  Oscar was a grumpy old cote.  He would sit and stare at the black and white tv set with a baseball game being televised and spit chew next to his chair into a tall fruit juice can.  Baseball games that were televised back then usually only had one or two tv cameras so it was starring at the back of the head of a pitcher as he threw the ball.

My grandfather Leroy Brown died in 1937 and my grandmother remarried Oscar at an unknown date for me anyway.  The photo is taken on the steps of the porch of the house in Murray that my grandmother owned in Murray.  The house still stands today with it's second story having been removed and it being turned into a Cape Cod style house.  It is in a lot of disrepair these days but still stands.

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Building with Brick in the New Country.....

As the United States was settled in it's early years the building of structures for actual protection from the elements was necessary. There were no condos to move into or highrise apartments.  Living in the woods and along the shore outside were the two options

The available timbers supplied wood and the use of manual labor produced wood products that would create instant shelter.  The early years were lean and the use of wood beams and mud worked well but as they survived they wanted better, so they moved  to building all wood structures.

In many ways the Cape Cod style house above resembles the earliest structures created in this country.  The windows then were smaller and the whole building was smaller.  Lean-to additions created more rooms and even saltbox house. In the originals mud and beam there was a hole in the roof to let the smoke out from the burning pit. Now they needed stone fireplaces attached so the building wouldn't burn down and even maybe brick could be used if they could buy them.

The technology from the old countries in which each of the settlers had come helped in developing brick making companies. It did become prevalent once communities became established.  The resulting product to resemble brick streets and cobblestones gave them ideas of things to make from the local clay resourcss. They could create brick fireplaces and use bricks for walls of their structures.

Through the years as the middle America's were settled,  towns would have pottery or brick factories set up along the rivers and in clay filled areas of the United States.  Iowa is filled with reserves of clay beneath some of the rich soils. Murray, Iowa had it's own brick factory west of town and as a result the earlier years of the town had a main street  lined with brick faced building. This brick building once stood as the fire station in Murray.

 The quality of brick varied throughout as different factories had low or high firing furnaces which are call kilns.  When you see brick crumbling on buildings, many times it is because it was a low fired brick. The clay may not be a predominate material as sand could be too high in proportion.  Low fired material never gets hot enough to make it able to weather the elements. The higher the heat the stronger the brick.

Stone laying was also popular in this country and as various sources were found, stone companies were developed.  It would be transported sometimes long distances. The stone could be produced for the facing of buildings and used for foundations. Some European influenced designs required a stone facade up to the first floor.

A state institution that was built north of my town has mostly brick buildings. The main large buildings all are fully covered with brick. The farm buildings that were created to do the agricultural work for the institution were also made of the same material. The farm buildings helped to store food for the residence to eat throughout the year.

I am assuming that there was a brick company in this area or that they were shipped in from our county seat town of Perry, Iowa.  They have a brick factory there yet today making bricks that are shipped throughout the United States. It has become an automated factory with train car sized containers being fired with shelves of brick inside.

An older outbuilding that I photographed in Maine was created with brick.  Because the east coast has been settled longer than where I live, this brick could have been made in the early 1800's or even before that.  The lighthouse that sits next to this structure was probably made of brick but they covered it with a concrete coating like frosting to cover up it's brick appearance.

As a side note of info, I was surprised to find that the round columns placed on the grand porches of the southern plantations some were actually made from bricks laid in a circular shape. Then they were plastered with concrete like material to be made round and smooth. Whitewashed or painted white they resemble the wooden ones.

My diversion from the Sepia Saturday original intent is a little broad this week but history is history. I enjoy watching the progression of the use of building materials in this country. When I find a brick buried in the ground I wonder it's age and where it is made.


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