Business Directory: Learn
Burr & Muir Block
| Categories: | Learn, Historic Haymarket Tour |
| Address: | 227 North 9th Street (Map) |
| Additional Info: | Year Built: 1888 The Burr & Muir Block is one of the very few intact examples of the substantial commercial buildings that lined 9th Street before the turn of the century (see also the Bird Windmill Building). D. D. Muir and his partner Carlos C. Burr, a Lincoln real estate dealer, attorney , and one-time mayor, constructed their block in 1888 from designs by James Tyler, one of Lincoln’s first architects. Tyler came to Lincoln around 1874 to supervise construction of the first U.S. Post Office and Courthouse (‘Old City Hall’). Burr & Muir Block is one of Tyler’s best-preserved early designs, as well as being the oldest Haymarket building for which the architect is known. It displays elements of the Romanesque Revival style in its squat, carved stone capitals above the ground floor piers and the round-headed third floors windows. The arched decoration above those windows is metal. Note also the rounded bricks used at the corners of the façade. A datestone above the third floor central windows, illegible today, reads clearly ‘1888’ in early photographs. Built as a rental property, the Burr & Muir Block has had a variety of occupants, including Norden Laboratories, today an international leader in research and production or veterinary medicines. Norden moved to this building eight years after the company’s founding in 1919 and occupied the whole structure by the mid- 1930s. The ‘Lincoln Underground’ restaurant, which opened in the basement in 1972, anticipated the district’s redevelopment era by nearly a decade. ‘Brittany’s’ restaurant, which has occupied the lower and first floors since 1983, features the spectacular wood and marble bar that once graced Lincoln’s legendary ‘Hob Nob’ tavern. |
Cafe and Hotel
| Categories: | Learn, Historic Haymarket Tour |
| Address: | 230 North 7th Street (Map) |
| Additional Info: | Year Built: 1916 This structure is another of the small hotels that formerly lined North 7th Street facing the Depot, and one of the many buildings of Russell Stover Company’s Haymarket complex. It is most important for its role in recent Haymarket history as the district’s pioneering residential rehabilitation project. The ground floor, which was originally a café, provides retail space, while the upper floor guest rooms have been converted into the owners’ unique urban home. Bob Carpenter was the architect for the rehabilitation. The hotel’s building permit of 1916 identifies the owners as the Tiernan Brothers and their architect as Alfred W. Woods. He designed a simple but handsome stone-trimmed façade and very plain side walls, in the manner of many Haymarket building. The ‘1869’ datestone centered high on the front wall presumably had meaning to the Tiernans, but it is something of a mystery today. Perhaps it commemorates or was salvaged from one of the earlier hotels on the site. |
Cafe and Shop
| Categories: | Learn, Historic Haymarket Tour |
| Address: | 206 North 7th Street (Map) |
| Additional Info: | Year Built: 1915 Built in 1915, the same year as the Bennett Hotel to the south, this building was originally divided into a shop in the north half and a café to the south, with the ethnically diverse name ‘Pusateri & Spaulding’s Restaurant.’ The architect of the small building was Jesse B. Miller, designer of numerous downtown commercial buildings, as well as a large Haymarket warehouse (Hardy Building). From the mid-1940s until the ‘70s, a taxicab garage operated in this building and the north addition of 1949, resulting in substantial changes to the interior and storefronts. The damaged building’s rehabilitation and return to retail uses in 1986 demonstrated both vision and commercial courage. Dale Gibbs was architect for the ‘Burlington Arcade.’ |
Capitol Bedding Building
| Categories: | Learn, Historic Haymarket Tour |
| Address: | 727 R Street (Map) |
| Additional Info: | Year Built: 1923 This simple industrial building is noteworthy only for its abundance of windows, which provided ample natural light for its manufacturing functions. The structure was built for Westover Building Metal Co., but its longest-term occupant, from the 1930s through the 1950s, was a mattress factory. More recently the Burton Harpsichord Co. operated here. That firm switched from manufacturing finished instruments to kits when it found that fully a third of its completed harpsichords were being damaged in shipment. Since a damaged harpsichord often is harder to repair than it was to build new, the company began selling already ‘broken down’ kits which the customer could assemble. Their orders increased 500 percent. |
Carter Transfer Building
| Categories: | Learn, Historic Haymarket Tour |
| Address: | 311 North 8th Street (Map) |
| Additional Info: | Year Built: 1916 Built in 1916 on part of the Seaton & Lea Foundry site, this sturdy warehouse is the second Olson Construction Co. project of our tour and the first Fiske & Meginnis design- combining the district’s most prolific contractor and designer. The brick-clad structure is massively built of reinforced concrete to carry the heavy loads of moving and storage operation. On the fourth floor are specially heated rooms for the safe year-round storage or pianos. The loading dock in the first of our tour that is fully sheltered by a canopy- a common feature along 8th Street which adds much to the special flavor of the Haymarket district. The building is one of the few in the Haymarket to continue in a single function (thought for various owners) from its construction to present. The single-story addition to the north dates in large part from 1957, but incorporates fragments of an early structure on the site. |
