.jpg)
Just above my column in last week’s News was an editorial noting that Rob Dump and Peggy Year, longtime publishers of the Cedar County News and later the Laurel Advocate, would be passing the torch to their son Kellyn and his wife Emily.
The editorial also noted that the News office would be moving from its longtime home at 102 West Main in Hartington to smaller quarters across the street.
Coincidentally, this writer happened to be taking notes from the Advocate of December 1945. This was the month the News moved into the building it would occupy for the next 80 years.
Here is the story of how it came to pass. The first issue of the Cedar County News was published in January 1898. The office was located over a meat market on the east side of Broadway. Possibly it was above the Knights of Columbus Insurance building at 207 N. Broadway or one of the adjoining buildings.
The News was not in that location very long. A room on the wooden second floor of a meat market is not suitable for heavy printing machinery.
In July 1905 the News moved to the ground floor of a building one door north of Fred Reifert’s furniture store. Reifert’s store and funeral parlor covered the two lots now occupied by High Street Insurance at 106 N. Broadway. So the News probably would have been in the building now occupied by the Broadway Studio at 108 N. Broadway. (Note: The addresses cited here are speculative as houses and businesses were not numbered in those days.)
Prior to that move, the News office was said to be three doors north of the 1905 location. That would seem to put it where Lifestyles Barber and Style Shop now stands. But the office was known to be on the ground floor of a two-story building and the only two-story in that block today is the Ice Cream store at 118 N. Broadway.
By 1925 the News had outgrown its building. In December Henry Stuckenhoff began work on a new building designed especially for newspaper work.
The site was on lots 1-2 in Block 44. These lots were at the corner of Broadway and Center right behind where the now empty Security National Bank building stands and just across the alley from the old Hartington Telephone building.
Stuckenhoff had purchased the lots in December 1924. But because the front part of one of the lots was occupied by Dr. J.M. Johnson’s office, it was decided to build on the back of the two lots.
The new building was 36 feet wide and 50 feet deep with one large room and a full basement with a concrete floor. Built of tile block covered with stucco, the new building fronted on Center Street just east of the old telephone office. (The building is now gone. In its place is a gravel parking lot behind the bank.)
Work began in December 1925. The plan was to finish the basement and get it covered before snow arrived. The basement could then be used by construction workers in the winter. By January 1926 the exterior walls were up.
Editor/Publisher J.P. O’Furey said experts from Omaha would dismantle the 14-ton press and reassemble it in the new building located just around the corner. The big press could print four pages at a time at a rate of 1250 sheets an hour. O’Furey also said a new Intertype line casting machine, one of the largest in the country, had been ordered from New York.
The first issue published in the new building hit the streets Thursday, March 11, 1926. O’Furey noted that “the new facilities were second to no other weekly paper in the state.“ This would be the home of the Cedar County News for the next 19 years.
But the News would eventually outgrow that building, too. The next move would come in December 1945 when the News moved into the former Hartington National Bank building on the northwest corner of Broadway and Main (102 W. Main).
The Hartington National, originally Bow Valley State Bank, opened for business less than a month after Hartington’s first lots were sold in September 1883. For many years the bank was located in the historic building now occupied by the Don Miller Land Co. (226 N. Broadway).
As few people owned wrist watches or other timepieces, a need was expressed for a town clock. In June 1915, the Hartington National purchased a large clock with two faces and had it installed on the east side of the bank building so people could see it while walking on Broadway in either direction. From that time on the Hartington National billed itself as the “Bank with the Clock.“ By that time the “Bank with the Clock’s” biggest competitor was the First National Bank located directly across the street to the east. It didn’t have a clock but it did have a fine new building. In 1912 the old First National building, which dated from the late 1880s or early 1890s, was demolished and replaced with the building that now houses the Bank of Hartington. When the new bank opened for business on Feb. 6, 1913, it was described as “one of the finest and most modern banking houses in the state.“ Not wishing to be outdone, officers of the Hartington National began planning an even finer new facility. In the summer of 1916, directors purchased the lots directly across the street on the northwest corner of Broadway and Main (102 W. Main) and announced plans to build a modern building the summer of 1917.
But by the summer of 1917, America was at war and the price of steel and other building materials were rapidly increasing. The directors decided to postpone construction until prices stabilized.
Although the war was still raging in 1918, a decision was made to go ahead with construction. “The bank dislikes to start construction at this time but expanding business makes it necessary,” said the May 23, 1918 Hartington Herald.
After the fighting ended Nov. 11, 1918, the business that expanded so rapidly during the war contracted just as rapidly. Hartington National’s decision to build an expensive new building proved to be a bad one. More next week.
