Mike Berry column: Kewanee's Chestnut Street had its heyday, but that's gone now

Star Courier
·3 min read

One of the last vestiges of what was once a bustling street in downtown Kewanee is gone now.

.
.

The Butterwick Building, which was torn down this week, had been closed to the public since the Kewanee Historical Society moved its museum out of the building a couple of years go. (While the new museum in the former Vogue ladies apparel building at Second and Tremont is terrific, I still miss the old — should I say, historic — atmosphere in the Bob and Marcella Richards Museum in the Butterwick.)

But the Butterwick Building was a reminder for us old-time Kewaneeans of what once was in the 200 block of North Chestnut Street.

When I was a much younger man in the 1970s, the west side of the street contained, moving from south to north:

  • A liquor store at the northwest corner of Second and Chestnut.

  • A storefront that once was the site of a restaurant operated by Tony and Lisa Rashid. After moving through a couple of locations, the Rashids opened La Gondola on Tenney Street.

  • A small tavern called The Pub, which had the reputation of being a spot where one could get a drink even if they weren’t yet 21, and where the bartender dressed in a white shirt and tie, just as bartenders had done many years earlier.

  • The Pla-Mor bowling alley, which at one time was one of three alleys in Kewanee. Bowling is no longer possible in Kewanee, of course, as none of those alleys still exist.

  • The Butterwick Building, which ceased being a hardware store in 1965 and housed a youth center and a nightclub before being acquired by the Historical Society and turned into a museum in the late 1970s.

The businesses attracting diners, drinkers, dancers and keglers to that block weren’t confined to the west side of the street.

On the east side, at the corner with Second, stood a large two-story brick building where, in my younger days, Jack Graham had a tavern. It later became home to the first place in Kewanee where one could go to get tacos — and they were very good tacos, as I recall.

Mitchell’s store and the Zodiac tavern occupied the ground floors of a couple more large brick buildings on the east side of the street. All three of the buildings were eventually demolished to make room for the beer garden next to the Pioneer Club, a tavern and restaurant in the middle of the block.

After owner Tom May sold that business it was remodeled and renamed the Boiler Room, and eventually went out of business. The building now is used by Moore Tires for storage.

North of the Pioneer (back when it was known as the Dome tavern before May acquired it) was another bar called Mitch’s 77 Club. Sporty’s tavern now occupies that building and it’s now the only business on the block that’s open to the public.

These former businesses are just the ones I can remember. Going back to the early days of Kewanee, the 200 block of North Chestnut Street was the heart of “Whiskey Row,” a collection of taverns that catered to the many workers in the city’s factories.

Downtown Kewanee isn’t the same anywhere as it was 40 or 50 years ago. I’m sure there are few if any towns in the U.S. where the downtowns haven’t changed.

But in the rest of of our town, most of the buildings that date back at least to the middle of the last century are still there.

The 200 block of North Chestnut has lost more buildings than any other block downtown, and for those of us who remember what it once was, the loss of the Butterwick Building is a little sad.

This article originally appeared on Star Courier: Mike Berry: Kewanee's Chestnut St. had its heyday, but that's gone now