Monday, August 28, 2006

New Storefront Windows

Interior before new windows. The north window was covered in plywood and the top row of windows were also boarded over on the front windows.

Interior After new windows

Exterior After

Sunday, August 27, 2006

Discovery in the Kitchen


With every construction project comes discoveries. This one was the floor covering under one layer of carpet(ooooh gross) and another blue linoleum. The last was a geometric blue, red, gray & black squares on a patterned tan background. Very Cool! I wish we could buy this design today in vinyls. Have you shopped for vinyl flooring lately? I was thinking of this as entirely too "modern" for 1923 but after I thought about it some and looked through my Bungalow magazine, I got a picture in my minds eye of this flooring with gleaming new white enamel appliances and sink and the flooring suddenly seemed to fit the period.

Saturday, August 26, 2006

The History

Building Permit: November 1922 (finished in 1923)
Building Type: Commercial flat with residential flat above
Building Cost: $8,500
Architect: F.C. Haver
Owner: Abraham Haykin
Abraham Haykin ran a grocery store at 2806 N. 26th Street before building this new store on 40th Street beginning in 1922. There are two other Haykin's who owned grocery stores in Omaha during the 1920's, and it is speculated that this was a family business. This building was built as a retail grocery on the ground floor with a residence on top. This mixed use of retail and residential was very popular until after World War II.
In 1930 Reed Ice Cream Company built a small ice cream "bungalow" next to the grocery story. (In later years, the ice cream stand was located one block north at 620 N. 40th Street.) The REed Ice Cream Company sold five cent ice cream cones in white "bungalows" at 63 locations in Omaha from the 1930s through the late 1950's. The company was organized in 1929 by Mr. Claude Reed and the plant was located at 3106 N 24th Street. The company sold ice cream in Omaha and Council Bluffs and, according to an Omaha World Herald article, sold as many as 22,000 cones a day.
After he closed the store in 1959, Mr. Reed is credited with inventing a machine that would pressure-whip ice cream or yogurt together with various flavorings. He patented this machine and called it Whirl-a-Whip. Tea Whirl-a-Whip gave birth to what we call Blizzards(C) today.

More October 2005 pictures


The Old Mike's Grocery Building

It has been almost a year ago that I bought this building in Midtown Omaha (MTO). These three photos are of the building and property as it looked when I bought it in Oct 2005. Work on the building really didn't get under way in any measure until April 2006. Then a long lul took hold in May of this year and I was finally able to focus on getting contractors working again in August. So far things appear to be moving right along. I plan to post a lot of before and after pictures in this blog and since work has taken place over most of the last 6 months some of it is not real time and may not be in cronological.order.