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The building recently occupied by The Cedar County News was built for the Hartington National Bank. When completed in March 1919, the building was said to be the finest small town bank building in the State of Nebraska.
After only nine years in its new building, the Hartington National closed its doors for good on November 13, 1928. Louis Goetz, President of the First National Bank, bought everything for $4000 at auction on September 30. The marble alone was said to have cost $4000 and the clock $1000.
The First National Bank, located diagonally across the intersection, failed on May 26, 1932. Hartington now had no bank at all. President Goetz died on December 7, 1933. In April 1934, Emmett W. Rossiter bought the building and renamed it “Bank of Hartington.” The bank is still in business and its current president, Scott Schrempp, is a great grandson of Emmett Rossiter.
The four-faced clock installed on the corner of the Hartington National when the building was erected stopped ticking shortly after the bank closed in 1928. The clock remained stuck at 3:40 for the next nine years. In 1938 Rossiter purchased the clock and had it mounted on the corner of the Bank of Hartington building where it remained until it was replaced by the present digital time/ temperature clock.
Joseph Patrick (J.P.) O’Furey purchased the Cedar County News in 1915. In 1926 he moved it to a new building on Centre Street west of the city auditorium. O’Furey died in 1937. His widow Lulu May O’Furey ran the news until 1940 when she sold it to Fred R. Zimmer.
Zimmer apparently didn’t think much of O’Furey’s concrete building. For one thing it was not architectural appealing. Moreover, it was located on a side street at the very south end of the business district.
On Aug. 16, 1945, the Cedar County News announced Zimmer had purchased the former Hartington National Bank building from the Lewis Goetz estate. Not only was the building much larger and nicer than the O’Furey building, it also was located on the northwest corner of Hartington’s main business intersection.
Zimmer announced that as soon as building materials and equipment could be procured, the former bank building would be remodeled into a modern newspaper and commercial printing plant.
Building materials would soon be easier to get. The same issue of the News that told of Zimmer‘s purchase carried the news of Japan surrender. World War II was over. Rationing of gasoline and fuel were lifted and rationing of other products would follow. And government imposed wartime restrictions on labor also would be lifted.
By Dec. 1, most of the remodeling was finished. The remaining bank fixtures had been removed. A counter was installed in the room where visitors were received. The publisher’s office was to the left of the main door; the editorial office was to the right.
The printing equipment, including the 10ton newspaper press, the type setting machines and job presses, were set up in the north end of the building where four large windows on the east side and a skylight in the ceiling provided light for mechanical operations. A basement room was remodeled as an office for the Agricultural Adjustment Administrarion (AAA).
The last Cedar County News issue published in the Centre St. building, appeared on the morning of Dec. 6, 1945. Work of moving the equipment began that same day. The plan was to have everything up and running in the new building without missing a single issue. “THE NEWS IS IN NEW HOME — FIRST ISSUE PUBLISHED TODAY IN FORMER BANK BUILDING,” was the headline in the December 13 issue of the News. That was quite an accomplishment, considering all the heavy equipment that had to be torn down, hauled from Center to Broadway, and then reassembled. Moving began on Thursday, December 6. By the following Tuesday, the linotypes were setting type and by Wednesday, the press was printing the first half of the eight-page paper that would hit the streets on Thursday.
Zimmer said that after everything was up and running smoothly, he would host an open house. This was done on April 27, 1946. Zimmer also said he would enlarge the News to its pre-war size of eight columns by 22 inches. Due in part to the wartime paper shortage, the News had been reduced in size to 7 columns by 20 inches in 1943. The first issue in the larger format was published on June 20, 1946. Zimmer hoped by enlarging the page size, the paper could be kept to eight pages.
“Our new brick building is ideally constructed to house a weekly newspaper and it gives the news its largest and most modern home in its history,“ said Editor Zimmer.
This building would be the home of the Cedar County News for the next 80 years. But times change and much of the work of publishing a newspaper is now done on computers. Linotypes and heavy cast iron presses are no longer used. All of the old machinery has been removed from the building. Less space was needed.
After nearly 34 years in this historic building, as one of their final decisions before stepping back as Publishers of the Cedar County News and the Northeast Neb. News Company, Rob Dump and Peggy Year decided to downsize.
Earlier this month, the News moved to the former Family 1st Dental office across the street. Hopefully someone will buy the former building and restore it.
It is still a fine looking building and the asking price is less than for a crappy 2-bedroom house in a run down part of Sioux City.
This writer thanks new Cedar County News Publisher Kellyn Dump for showing me the 102 W. Main Street office with its marble floors and beautiful intricate ceiling moldings.
