Did you know that nostalgia is good for the brain? Those happy memories help us to live longer. So consider giving a fun and healthy gift this Christmas season! I’m offering a great sale on my books as I know that inflation is hitting us all in the wallet this season. Books available at Burlington By The Book, 301 Jefferson St., Burlington, Iowa, or call the store at 319-753-9981 for mail order. Credit cards accepted. Thank you for shopping local!
I truly enjoyed researching and writing every chapter in my new book Beloved Burlington Volume II: Featuring businesses you knew and loved!
The chapter on App’s Music House is extra special to me because I became acquainted with Jamie Appleton, son of O.W. and Inez Appleton, the founders and owners of App’s. I want to share an excerpt from that chapter, but first, here’s the info on my events coming up.
On Nov. 13, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., I’ll be signing copies of the book at Burlington By The Book, 300 Jefferson St., in Burlington, Iowa. On Nov. 14, I’ll give a talk about the book and share some behind-the-scenes anecdotes at 1:30 p.m. at the Des Moines County Historical Society’s Heritage Center, 501 N. Fourth Street. This is a free event, but registration is requested by calling (319) 752-7449 or emailing dmchsevents@dmchs.org.
Here’s how the chapter on App’s Music House begins:
When O.W. Appleton named his business App’s Music House in the 1930s, did he realize how appropriate that name would be for decades to come? The store lived up to its name by bringing music into thousands of homes in the Burlington region.
Appleton, and the teachers he employed, taught thousands of youngsters and adults to play the guitar or piano or accordion or whatever caught their fancy. Students played in their homes, in the school band or orchestra, or in the local clubs. LPs and 45 rpm records whirled around turntables in home stereos, all purchased at App’s, bringing the rich voices of Perry Como, Nat King Cole, and Patti Page in the 1950s. Through the years, those sounds evolved into the raucous rock ‘n’ roll of Elvis Presley, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones. App’s Music House was a store that touched multiple generations within the same home.
Jamie Appleton, the son of O.W. and Inez Appleton, recalled that many people in Burlington suffered challenges in the years of the Great Depression and World War II. Some people “hated their jobs and had to have a pleasant hobby—taking music lessons from my dad,” Jamie said.
These pupils would have been hard pressed to find a more accomplished musician, even in Chicago, than “App”, as Orbra Wallace Appleton was called. “App” was born in 1902 in Keokuk, Iowa and began playing the piano in grade school. In high school, he started playing the ukulele, the baritone uke, the banjo, and the guitar.
“App” scratched out a living by playing mostly banjo in a traveling dance orchestra; he also arranged the musical numbers and scheduled the bookings. In 1926, after Jamie was born, “App” wanted to stop traveling with the orchestra, so he taught music lessons in people’s homes in Burlington and nearby towns. Inez took whatever jobs she could find, such as teaching sewing at the Singer Store. “App” eventually rented studio space above Union Supply at 323 N. Fourth St. “Before long, he had a glass case filled with strings and picks for his students, which grew as he gradually obtained all eight rooms on that floor, and that became App’s Music House,” Jamie recalled.
Move to Main Street
By 1949, the business had grown enough that “App” and Inez decided it was time to expand. They located a vacant store front at 205 N. Main St., the former home of Reilly’s Cafe for many years, thus giving the business excellent visibility. A Dec. 14, 1949 newspaper article announced that the move would take place after the new year. “Plans call for the music firm to use the first floor of the new location for a salesroom for all types of musical merchandise. The second floor will be converted into individual studios for five instructors. One large room will be used as an ensemble room where various groups will practice.” Jamie, by then 23 years old, built a recording studio in one of rooms and also taught lessons for App’s School of Music. Inez, who was especially good at bookkeeping and office work, ran the store.
I hope you enjoyed reading this excerpt! If you can’t make it to my events in Burlington, the book store is handling orders and owner Chris Murphy will happily mail a signed copy of the book to you or you can arrange to pick it up. Just call (319) 753-9981. Thank you for your interest!
The word “ecstatic” doesn’t begin to describe how I feel about the publishing of my new book Beloved Burlington Volume II: Featuring businesses you knew and loved!”
This book would not have happened if it were not for the enthusiastic buyers of the first edition. Your passion for nostalgia convinced me that you wanted more. Thank you!
Volume II is being printed this month in Rochester, New York, where I now live. On Nov. 13, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., I’ll be signing copies of the book at Burlington By The Book, 300 Jefferson St., in Burlington, Iowa. On Nov. 14, I’ll give a talk about the book and share some behind-the-scenes anecdotes at 1:30 p.m. at the Des Moines County Historical Society’s Heritage Center, 501 N. Fourth Street. This is a free event, but registration is requested by calling (319) 752-7449 or emailing dmchsevents@dmchs.org.
In the coming weeks, I’ll write more about the book. In the meantime, here’s a sneak peek at some of the 130-plus photos in the book!
I love to collect items that depict my beautiful hometown of Burlington, Iowa. Posters, prints, coasters, pillows, jewelry, books, canisters, Christmas ornaments, you name it, I love it!
My latest find is a beautiful set of dominoes made by Pamela Scholer Nelson. Pam is a few years older than me, but I know her and her younger brothers Randy and Lenny because all of us kids went to St. Paul School and then Notre Dame High. Pam contacted me not long ago to ask me about the photos in my book Beloved Burlington: Featuring businesses you knew and loved!
Come to find out, she makes beautiful sets of dominoes using images of Burlington. I was delighted to send her a photo of Sutter Drug from the 1970s, and not only did she make a domino of it, she sent me an entire set. Thank you, Pam!
I’m embarrassed to say that I don’t think I’ve ever played dominoes, but now I’m going to learn, or I’m at least going to display these lovely dominoes in my home in Rochester, N.Y. My set of dominoes includes images of so many places with special meaning in my life: St. Paul Catholic Church, Burlington Public Library, Gnahn’s Book and Stationery Store, Mercy Hospital, the curly slide at Crapo Park, Memorial Auditorium and on and on. She even has a domino of the fountain in Crapo Park and the water changes colors (just like the real fountain) when you freeze the domino for a few minutes, then hold it in your hand and warm it up.
I asked Pam a few questions and here is what I learned:
Please tell me about your background:
I was born ( maiden name Scholer ) and grew up in Burlington along with three brothers, graduated from University of Iowa and married Mike Nelson (also a Burlington native).
How did you come up with the idea of making the dominoes:
I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t fascinated with creativity. I love being imaginative and just can’t stop creating. While most of my art work has been centered around painting, I recently have a new creativity outlet — mixed media and working with resin.
The idea of the historic Burlington dominoes came from the idea of the Snake Alley tumbler and Swiss Cottage tumbler that I painted last year for my siblings and cousins.
Several years ago I painted each of my brothers a canvas of The Swiss Cottage that was built on the bluff in Crapo Park by our great-grandfather Jacob Scholer when he immigrated here from Switzerland in the mid 1800s. It was torn down sometime in the mid 1960s. The domino of the Swiss cottage is a photo of that painting.
The domino of Snake Alley is from a photo, but my tumblers of Snake Alley are actually painted. I also handpaint the hydrochromatic (color-changing ) fountain domino. The images for the dominoes come from a variety of sources, including my personal collection of images, the Internet, securing permission to use the images when necessary. I’m working on a future Iowa-themed set of dominoes.
What’s the process for making the dominoes?
Collect 28 images unique to the Burlington theme. Resize those images to fit the domino. Pour first layer of clear resin and set image. Let cure. Pour final layer of black resin forming the back of the domino. Let cure. Paint dots on domino and smooth any rough edges.
With pouring, curing time, painting and clean up, each set takes approximately 24 to 48 hours (curing time of course taking the most time).
3. I notice you place the dominoes in a beautiful black box that says Bougie Bees on the top. Where can people buy them? You can purchase them at Burlington By The Book. Dominoes traditionally are stored in a small wooden box but I wanted something not so heavy and with an attached magnetic closure lid.
4. Do you make any other products? Yes, some other recent fun things I’ve done include:
If you love unique Burlington, Iowa, stuff as much as I do, you need to get a set of these dominoes! Let’s support artists and entrepreneurs like Pam. To contact Burlington By The Book, call 319-753-9981. The store also has many other Burlington-related items.
For the Burlington woman who wanted to look like she shopped in Chicago or New York, Brinck’s clothing store satisfied that desire with wonderfully textured garments in classic lines and trendy colors. A shopper could count on Brinck’s to offer affordable designer brands that made women feel like a million dollars while living in the middle of the heartland.
Although Brinck’s, located at 217 Jefferson St., had a relatively short tenure in the long history of downtown Burlington, it developed a deep relationship with customers from its opening in the late 1970s until it closed in 1999.
The store’s location had been a home for women’s fashions for decades as Eklund’s Ready-to-Wear. Burlington native Marianna Brinck and her husband, Vern, purchased Eklund’s in 1977. Although Marianna Brinck initially kept the moniker Eklund’s (it had been around since the 1930s), she changed the name to Brinck’s about eighteen months later as she expanded her customer base and incorporated her own vision for the store. Vern Brinck’s family had had an established business in West Point that was called Brinck’s, and having a store called Brinck’s in Burlington was a way to carry on that tradition.
With the purchase of Eklund’s, Marianna Brinck brought with her a strong background in the business of fashion. In the early 1970s, she became a representative for Doncaster, an upscale women’s clothing retailer. Doncaster would ship trunks of clothing to Brinck via bus, and she would invite her friends to her home and take their orders.
One day, Tom Read and John Randolph, the owners of J.S. Schramm Co., paid a visit to Brinck, who told this author: “They asked me if I’d be interested in coming to work for them as a buyer.”
In those days, many women with children didn’t work outside the home, and there were six Brinck children, ranging in age from adolescence to young adulthood. So Brinck told them, “Well, you have to ask me in front of Vern,” she recalled to this author, laughing at the memory. “So they did, and we talked about it, and I decided to try it.”
Try it she did, and she found she liked it. Schramm’s owners “were very good to me. They certainly gave me a wonderful background for shopping the New York and Chicago markets.”
After about five years at Schramm’s, Brinck heard through the grapevine that Eklund was interested in selling his store, and she and her husband approached him about buying it. In a story in The Hawk Eye on Feb. 2, 1977, Eklund simply stated that he had sold his business to Brinck because “she was the right one to sell it to.”
Brinck told The Hawk Eye that she chose Eklund’s as an investment because of its location. “I’m very interested in Steamboat Mall (as Jefferson Street was called then) and downtown Burlington.” Although Brinck at one point contemplated moving the store to another building on Jefferson, she ultimately decided to keep it at 217, directly across from J.S. Schramm Co. She found that location to be advantageous because shoppers would walk from one to the other to see what struck their fancy. “Schramm’s had one concept, and I had another.”
Did you enjoy this excerpt from “Beloved Burlington: Featuring businesses you knew and loved?”
The book, which contains chapters on 10 other businesses and many historical photos, is available for $19.99 at Burlington By The Book, 301 Jefferson St., Burlington, Iowa and by mail order. For details, click here.
Remember the days when “dressing up” was the norm for daily attire? When men wore suits and ties and hats to work year-round, and every little boy had a suit to wear to church on Sunday? A “business casual” dress code would be seen as an abomination. Only laborers wore blue jeans, and sweatpants were strictly for athletes for pregame warm-ups.
The newspaper advertisements for the nearly 50 years of Riepe-Peterson Clothing Co. provide a window into a time when men strove to look like gentlemen, sophisticated and dapper, even sexy, in a well-tailored Hart Schaffner & Marx suit topped with a Royal Stetson Playboy hat.
Sure, by the time Riepe-Peterson closed in 1982, menswear fashions were becoming more casual. But even then, stepping into the store at 315 Jefferson St. made a man, young or old, stand a little taller, for he recognized he was entering a place that had class.
Partners Walter H. Riepe and Walter O. Peterson were exposed to well-heeled men and women at an early age, around 10 years. (Both Burlington natives, Riepe was born in 1884, and Peterson in 1892.) Each worked as a “bundle boy,” employed by local stores to carry packages for their customers who had stopped off the train or steamboat in Burlington to shop. Imagine the exposure that gave these young men to gentlemen and ladies. In a special newspaper section celebrating the 25th anniversary of Riepe-Peterson in 1958, Peterson explained to reporter Lloyd Maffitt of The Hawk-Eye Gazette that aspiring clothing salesmen had to serve these apprenticeships.
“Several trains came into Burlington in the morning and left in the afternoon,” Peterson said. “Packet boats, five or seven of them, arrived two or three times a week. They, too, left for New Boston or Nauvoo or wherever in the afternoon. The people who came in on them would come to the clothing store, make their purchases, and go on about their business. It was up to the bundle boys—Eddie Nelson, Tom Holmquist, and me—to be at the railroad station or the Diamond Joe boathouse with their parcels for them to pick up as they left.
“We also did a lot of delivering, and that was after hours and on our own. If we didn’t have the money for streetcar fare, we walked. I well remember walking to and from Crapo Park on various occasions, delivering packages to the late Fred Schneider.”
Young Peterson got a good stretch of the legs on those jaunts. From Eisfeld Clothing at 307 Jefferson St., where Peterson apprenticed, to Crapo Park was a good three-mile hike.
Did you enjoy this excerpt from “Beloved Burlington: Featuring businesses you knew and loved?”
The book, which contains chapters on 10 other businesses and many historical photos, is available for $19.99 at Burlington By The Book, 301 Jefferson St., Burlington, Iowa and by mail order. For details, click here.
If your childhood in Burlington involved reading Dr. Seuss, Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, Charlotte’s Web and other cherished books, then you most likely loved wandering around Gnahn’s Book and Stationery Store.
Perhaps your parents took you there every August to pick out new pencils and pristine notebooks before your first day of class. The fancy stationery boxes intrigued you (don’t touch!) and you marveled at the expensive Sheaffer pen sets and longed for the day to be old enough to have the money to buy one.
Gnahn’s, located in the massive Tama Building on North Third Street, had its roots in Love’s Book Store, located around the corner at 316 Jefferson St. in what was called the Hedge’s Block. Burlington native E.C. Gnahn, as a teenager, went to work for proprietor James Love in the mid-1870s.
According to published reports, Love’s was a thriving store. Advertisements from 1877 editions of the Burlington Hawk-Eye tout Love’s as a “first-class book store” and promote a variety of goods including “teacher’s Bibles, miscellaneous and children’s books, blank books, banker’s checks, diaries, commercial and fancy stationery” and more.
E.C. Gnahn purchased Love’s store in 1887 when he was about 29 years old. He renamed it Gnahn’s and quickly rose to prominence in the business community. After he died in 1932, his wife, Kate Boeck Gnahn, took over, and that same year she moved the store to 307-309 N. Third St. in the Tama Building. That space was previously occupied by Sutter Drug Store, which had moved in 1930 to the corner location at Jefferson and North Third.
When Kate Gnahn died in 1945, the store ownership passed to son E.B. Gnahn. He was the busy president of Chittenden and Eastman Company, a furniture manufacturer, so he delegated oversight of Gnahn’s to employees Lewis B. Wallbridge (nephew of E.C. and Kate Gnahn) and Clair E. Stover (a brother-in-law of Wallbridge).
Wallbridge had joined the store in 1925 after graduating from the University of Iowa. His mother, Anna Boeck Wallbridge, was a sister of Kate Boeck Gnahn, and the two families lived next door to each other in the 700 block of North Fourth Street. “Edward (B.) Gnahn had no interest in running the bookstore, but my dad did,” explained Wallbridge’s daughter, Ann Hass to this author. After World War II, Stover joined the staff at Gnahn’s.
Did you enjoy this excerpt from “Beloved Burlington: Featuring businesses you knew and loved?”
The book, which contains chapters on 10 other businesses and many historical photos, is available for $19.99 at Burlington By The Book, 301 Jefferson St., Burlington, Iowa and by mail order. For details, click here.
If you caught the photography bug after shooting family snapshots with a Kodak Instamatic, you most likely headed to Witte Camera or its successor, Camera Land, to upgrade to a 35mm Nikon or Cannon.
Looking back, Chuck Siekman thinks his involvement in the retail camera business hit the golden age of photography before cell phone cameras became ubiquitous. Eastman Kodak introduced the first Instamatic in 1963, a camera that simplified picture taking by including a film cartridge that users dropped into the back of the camera. Siekman was 25 years old, and he had been building the camera business at Witte Drug Co. since he was 18. For the next 50-some years, he would continue to help both amateur and serious photographers upgrade to more sophisticated equipment and learn how to take captivating photos.
Siekman started working at Witte’s at 200 Jefferson St. when he was 16, “at the bottom of the bottom,” he told this author. When he wasn’t driving the truck to make deliveries of prescriptions and sundries to Witte customers, he was operating the machine that peeled potatoes for the lunch counter. “This evolved into running the check cashing and money-order window at the back of the store. I was working seven days a week, 40 hours a week when I was in high school. I loved it.”
That was no small responsibility in the mid-1950s, Siekman noted. Many people didn’t have checking accounts back then, and they’d line up at the money-order window in the back of Witte’s to cash their payroll checks and purchase money orders for paying their rent or their alimony. A holiday weekend would require having about $30,000 in cash on hand, Siekman marveled, the equivalent of about $280,000 in 2019. That experience taught Siekman a lot about business. “I had a mini-MBA before I even graduated from high school because I knew how things worked.”
Siekman went off to the University of Iowa after graduating from Burlington High School in 1957, but he wasn’t there long. One day, his father called him to say that someone at Witte’s had contacted him to see if Siekman would be interested in managing the store’s camera department. “I said, ‘I’d like that better than what I’m doing,’” Siekman recalled. He returned to Burlington, and started to work, with the goal of growing the small department.
He had enjoyed photography as a teen, and he had traveled to Cuba the summer after graduation–the beginning of a lifetime of world travel.
After working a few months in his new job, Siekman drove to Rochester, New York, home of Eastman Kodak, to get training there in retail sales. Before leaving Burlington, Siekman made drawings of how he’d like the camera department to be moved to the front right of the store’s entrance. Workers from the well-known local construction company Carl A. Nelson came in and built it. Early on, the enterprise was called the Camera Department at Witte’s, “and then we changed it to Witte Camera because it was becoming a pretty dominant factor in the business,” Siekman said.
Did you enjoy this excerpt from “Beloved Burlington: Featuring businesses you knew and loved?”
The book, which contains chapters on 10 other businesses and many historical photos, is available for $19.99 at Burlington By The Book, 301 Jefferson St., Burlington, Iowa and by mail order. For details, click here.
If diamonds are a girl’s best friend, then Paule Jewelry beckoned many a man inside to fulfill his heartthrob’s dream.
For 107 years, silver and gold shimmered behind the glass of polished maple cases. Brides-to-be rode the elevator with their intended to the second floor to choose their china and sterling silver patterns. Tiny engraved silver spoons and cups commemorated the birth of a child. The gift of a gold watch signified a young man’s passage into adulthood.
Paule Jewelry was there for all of life’s special moments: birthdays, graduations, engagements, weddings, anniversaries, job promotions, and retirements. Stepping into the store, you entered a quiet world of dignity and class, giving the feeling that you were part of something special, and you were worthy of the finer things of life.
An advertisement for Paule Jewelry in The Burlington Hawk-Eye in July 1914 captured some of that feeling. In part, it read: “The jeweler is very close to life in all its variations. His art expresses and typifies victory, achievement, superior performance, as well as beauty, utility, joy, and refinement … Life’s heroic moments are marked with a jewel or a bit of gold or silver.”
The ad ended with the store’s motto of that time: “Our name on the box your guarantee.”
That Paule name never lost its significance. In later years, the motto was “Paule’s on the box is like sterling on silver.” Unwrapping a gift to see the diagonal silver and white stripes on the box with the “Paule Jewelry Co.” name and logo stamped in deep blue no doubt sent a shiver of delight through the recipient.
Related post: Beautiful artwork reflects “Beloved Burlington” businesses
Modest beginning
In 1889, Charles Christian Paule opened Paule Jewelry at 405 Jefferson St. with less than $500. A Burlington native, Paule (known as C.C.) had purchased the stock of jeweler August Stucke at that location. Paule started his career at age 19 as an apprentice watchmaker for Stucke, before moving to Chicago, then Kenosha, Wisconsin, and back to Chicago. Paule, by then about 26 years old, heard that Stucke was closing his business and seized the opportunity to go into business for himself. He kept at least one of Stucke’s employees on staff, Emil Baumle, who became secretary-treasurer when Paule incorporated the business.
Those early years may have been awfully lean. According to Paule’s obituary in The Burlington Hawk-Eye Gazette in 1943, the jeweler had just a small stock when he started, and a man named George Finck proved to be a savior. “George represented a big jewelry firm, and at Christmas time brought his trunks into the store, and the contents became Paule’s stock over the holiday period,” the newspaper stated.
Did you enjoy this excerpt from “Beloved Burlington: Featuring businesses you knew and loved?”
The book, which contains chapters on 10 other businesses and many historical photos, is available for $19.99 at Burlington By The Book, 301 Jefferson St., Burlington, Iowa and by mail order. For details, click here.
“For the finest in foods and cocktails,” not to mention live entertainment, multiple generations of families flocked to The Arion Restaurant and Cocktail Lounge at 210 Main St.
As soon as a football or a basketball game ended at Burlington or Notre Dame high schools in the ’70s, the teens headed to the Arion to relive the action and order “the genuine Italian pizza.” Shirley Temple drinks were popular with the girls, who collected the little plastic elephants and monkeys, in pink and orange, that garnished the drinks.
Their parents loved the expansive menu that included “Pan Fried Chicken, Lobster Tails, Fried Oysters, Grilled Calves Liver, Prime Rib of Beef, Jumbo Shrimp, Bar-B-Q Ribs, Choice Iowa Steaks, Channel Catfish” as proclaimed in a familiar advertisement in The Hawk Eye in the early 1970s.
Is your mouth watering yet?
The house-made pizza sauce was so good that a rival restaurateur came in one evening, slammed a wad of bills on the bar, and asked Arion founder Art Diewold to give up the recipe. She didn’t get it, and the recipe eventually was lost. (Using trial and error, grandson Curt Diewold recreated the sauce years later and now sells it on the internet. Click here.)
Related post: Beautiful artwork reflects “Beloved Burlington” businesses
The Arion wasn’t Art Diewold’s first venture into making people feel good. That was Art Diewold’s Beer Barrel, located at 803 Jefferson St. It was the early 1930s, and Prohibition was in full reign. In keeping with his establishment’s name, Art was only legally allowed to sell beer─no liquor by the glass.
“They had a woodburning stove behind the bar, and Grandpa kept a bottle of whiskey in the ash pan in the stove,” Curt Diewold told this author. “All the old boys were sitting at the bar, and Grandpa was telling a story, and the feds come busting in the front door and start raiding the place” just like in the movie The Untouchables, Curt said.
“Grandpa just kept talking and talking, and they were looking in cupboards, and one of them opened up the woodburning stove, looked in there and closed it, and he said, ‘Art, you’re good this time but we’re gonna bust you next time!’ ” The feds left and the guys at the bar all started to laugh and one said, “Art, we thought you were gonna give it away, because when they opened the door, you went” and this fellow sucks in his breath, imitating what he had heard Art do.
Art didn’t give it away, and in fact, this was not the only time he would elude the authorities. …
Did you enjoy this excerpt from “Beloved Burlington: Featuring businesses you knew and loved?”
The book, which contains chapters on 10 other businesses and many historical photos, is available for $19.99 at Burlington By The Book, 301 Jefferson St., Burlington, Iowa and by mail order. For details, click here.
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