200 North Main St | Bloomington, Illinois | 309-827-0428
200 North Main St | Bloomington, Illinois | 309-827-0428
Back in the early 20th century baseball was not only the National Pastime but the National Obsession. At this time even tiny communities such as Cooksville fielded competitive teams—though it’s possible this club included a “ringer” or two from elsewhere!
Located north of Ellsworth, Lone Star was one of eight one-room schools in Dawson Township, which is east of Bloomington. The interesting name speaks to the fact the schoolhouse, painted white, was easily spotted from afar on the “lonely prairie.”
This boy is being vaccinated for tuberculosis in the fall of 1961 by two nurses working for the McLean County Health Department.
Billy Kletz (left) and Jim Heafer get ready for the upcoming Small Fry Boxing Championship at the Western Avenue Community Center.
Farmer Joel Yordy (right) and his son Willard pose in front of a smartly trimmed Osage orange hedgerow in Heyworth.
The view here is looking south. Today, there’s a new high school and more residential in-fill, but some of what’s seen here remains much the same 83 years later.
Seen here are pallbearers bringing the casket of Joseph “Private Joe” Fifer into the old downtown Bloomington Unitarian Church. A longtime Bloomington resident, Fifer served as Illinois governor from 1889 to 1893. He had passed away two days earlier at the age of 97.
This photograph, taken Sept. 15, 1953, shows three Illinois State Normal University freshmen rubbing their aching feet after a busy opening day of Orientation Week.
From 1920 to the mid-1950s, Meadows Manufacturing Co. made clothes washers from its plant on Bloomington’s near southeast side. n the spring of 1954, the company, then part of Thor Corp., began making electric stoves as well.
This early photo shows a full daytime force of operators on the “local board” at the Wabash Telephone Co.’s which handled about 60,000 calls a day.
The Illinois Hotel survives today as the Illinois House, where this tap room and coffee shop was one of several businesses on the hotel’s street level.
This is BFD Chief Roland Behrend, who was now able to talk to firefighters back at the station or those “on the trucks” and racing to a fire.
In mid-September 1938, members of the “roundhouse gang” from the Alton Railroad Shops on Bloomington’s west side helped coworker Orville Jolly erect an antenna mast for his new custom-built radio.
In mid-September 1938, members of the “roundhouse gang” from the Alton Railroad Shops on Bloomington’s west side helped coworker Orville Jolly erect an antenna mast for his new custom-built radio.
Seen here are the gridiron “Red Birds” who went 3-4-2 in 1941, with losses including a 7-0 heartbreaker to Illinois Wesleyan.