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.
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