Historic smokestack important piece of city’s heritage

By Beth Chacey DeBoom

With a belly like a beach ball and a chin to spare, my grandfather's delight over fine cuts of meat was legendary. At his funeral in 1990, a co-worker from Wilson & Co., where my grandfather worked for 42 years, told us he never saw my grandfather on the job without some sort of food in his hands. “Product testing,” he called it.

In The Flats, the southeast quadrant neighborhood that sprouted up around the meatpacking plant, my Irish grandfather found a spirited Czech bride and started a family. With no hulking Mount Trashmore in existence back then, the 193-foot smokestack of Wilson & Co. (formerly Sinclair) was a towering industrial icon on the flat horizon.

The factory that employed my grandfather, and off and on other family members as well, had been founded in 1871 by Thomas Sinclair, the man whose fortune later built our beloved Brucemore. At one time the world's fourth largest meatpacking plant, its work force largely Czech, by the 1940s Wilson & Co. was the city's largest employer. When it closed in 1990, the factory left a rich legacy, its labor force having played a major role in building our city.

In the coming days, city leaders will move forward with complete demolition of the 30-acre site's hodgepodge of buildings, a necessary razing and cleanup if we are to use the space for community development. The brick smokestack, considered a hazard, would be the first piece to come down.

But city leaders, while they are to be lauded for finally getting the brownfield cleared, have in their haste undervalued the historic importance of the iconic smokestack they plan to erase. They have also underestimated the resources available to preserve it. And they have not yet done due diligence in studying whether the smokestack is indeed a safety hazard.

The city's Historic Preservation Commission has listed specific funds that can be tapped for such projects. The group wants to at least have the smokestack thoroughly inspected by a professional with a background in preservation of such structures for evidence of defects or an estimate for masonry repairs. And none of this work, they say, would slow the demolition, put workers in harm's way, or detract from the city's pressing flood-relief efforts.

Preservation Commission Chair Maura Pilcher says most of the demolition can proceed immediately, well outside the perimeter of the smokestack. Also, the site is eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places and thus preservation funding is available. And the Commission will spearhead the study and funding search, so our city workers would not be bogged down by yet another task.

It would behoove city officials to accept the Commission's help and input.

Council members Pat Shey and Justin Shields want to see if the smokestack can be saved. Pardoning the smokestack from demolition, at least temporarily, will be a test of our new mayor's commitment to historic preservation and to moving the city out of the mud of the flood and into the vibrant future we crave.

In his campaign, Ron Corbett vowed to remember and respect the city's pre-flood community planning efforts, which include preservation and development of the Third Street SE arts and entertainment district, an area that includes the Sinclair meatpacking property.

It would be a shame for that area to flourish again without some tangible testament to the blue collar immigrant industry that built it in the first place. It would be best to serve up the complete story of our city, from plant to plate, with a bricks and mortar smokestack paying tribute to workers like my grandfather.

Beth Chacey DeBoom is a writer and native of Cedar Rapids.