This post doesn’t have a reference to the Iowa State Daily, but with the next Campustown building demolition taking place during the next few days, this quick history is timely.
These three buildings, 2512 Lincoln Way (left), 2516 Lincoln Way, and 2518 Lincoln Way, will soon be a memory. But this entry is about 2512 Lincoln Way. It is highly notable because in one of the earliest photos of Campustown, the building is present.
This photo, circa 1912, looks up Welch Avenue from the campus. On the left (east) side, you can see A.L. Champlin’s College Store, torn down in 2014. On the right (west) side is John Zimmerman’s giant boardinghouse, which burned down in 1910, and to its west is another building. That is 2512 Lincoln Way, built by barber Fred I. Banks in 1909 and last occupied by Taste Place in 2017.
The building wasn’t mentioned in the Daily’s archive. It’s opening was overshadowed by the opening of Champlin’s brick building. But The Ames Times still noted the new building in its edition from 28 January 1909:
NEW 4TH WARD STORES OPEN Business Interest at the West End of Boone Street Booming.—Two Stores and a Barber Shop Open up.
The residence district near the campus on the south and west is becoming a suburb in fact. Up to this time all the trading which the numerous boarding houses and residences out lying the campus had to do was either done is down town or at two small general stores, one south and one west of the campus.
Last week A. L. Champlin opened up his very excellent brick store building south of the campus. The building is 50x98 and is of pressed brick me with Bedford stone trimmings. On the ground floor are two commodious store rooms. A butcher shop opened up in one of these rooms and a grocery will occupy the other as soon as shelving can be put in.
Later in the week F.I. Banks opened up a barber shop in a substantial frame building which he had erected for the purpose.
These two concerns should do much to alleviate the dissatisfaction of the college people as they are right in the heart of the residence and boarding house district.
Before building his Lincoln Way location, Banks ran the College Barber Shop on campus. He sold it in late October 1908 to Frank Curtiss, of the OK Barber Shop in downtown Ames and who quickly ran the College Barber Shop into the ground amidst a scandal. According to land records, Banks bought the land a week after selling the college shop, and the building was built and ready for business by late January.
Banks’ barber shop is only listed at the address for a couple years, but a barber shop is frequently listed in the basement in later years. (Barber shops weren’t often noted in city directories in the early 1900s.)
Later Businesses
Businessman Lewis F. Romans moved his restaurant to the building around 1911, followed by Lincoln Candy Kitchen, and J.W. Linder’s and Trueblood’s shoe shops in the 1920s. In the 1930s, Campus Cafe began its 40-year run in the building. Barber shops in the basement included Sweeny’s, Lincoln Way, and Louie’s. After Campus Cafe came Grubstake Barbeque and for a bit, a sporting goods store in the basement (Cyclone Ice Shop, Sports Cellar). In the 1980s, salons returned to the basement with Penny Lane Hair Stylist and in the late ‘80s, the first location of Leedz Salon, which is still in business down the street. Grubstake Barbeque turned to Cafe Lovish, which closed around 2007. In the past decade, occupants have been Bombay Grill, Rice House, The Singer Station, and finally Taste Place.
