116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
History Happenings: A Third Avenue address through the years
Clairvoyant, Chili Bowl once next door to old Cedar Rapids Public Library
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We were checking out posts in the “You Know You Grew Up In Cedar Rapids, IA in the ’70s & ’80s Because …” Facebook group recently. Only one of us actually grew up in Cedar Rapids in the 1970s and 1980s, but we both enjoy the posts.
One that caught our eye was about what used to be located next to Carnegie Library in downtown Cedar Rapids. The space has been occupied by the more modern half of the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art since 1989. The museum acquired that land in 1985 and built a new building that is joined to the former library building.
Participants in the Facebook group were reminiscing about a restaurant known as the Chili Bowl, with one writing, “My dad used to take us there to eat. Loved the ‘show’ Mike would put on after you placed your order. Still gives me a laugh to this day.”
That seemed worthy of more exploration, so we turned to a document kindly provided us by Peter D. Looney in which he lists what businesses were located at a given address over time.
In this case, the address in question is 418 Third Ave. SE, and it turns out many interesting businesses were located there. (We should note that Looney is careful to point out that his document is a work in progress and subject to correction as he uncovers new information.)
Clairvoyants, palm readers
Appropriate to the spooky month of October, Looney’s list notes that the address housed “clairvoyants and palm readers” from 1896 to1903. And, indeed, we found a listing a 1900 listing in the Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette for a “Madame LeClaire’s” at “No. 418 3d ave.”
She was announcing a sale: “Parlors are crowded daily. In order to benefit the poor, her $2 and $5 readers are now $1 and 50 cents.”
We discovered a brief item in the Dec. 31, 1897, edition of the Evening Gazette that gave some sense of how these mediums were perceived around that time:
“Another discrepancy has been found in the new Iowa code. In the old code, fortunetelling, clairvoyants and the like were classed as vagrants and punished as such …
“[T]he police officers of Ottumwa compelled a clairvoyant to leave the city, but … [w]hen the police arrested him and took him to the station, he informed them they had no right to touch him. …The police looked the matter up and found that the clause pertaining to fortunetellers and clairvoyants had been omitted entirely. Thus, the gates swung wide.”
Hair parlor, ‘live wires,’ caramel corn, hobbies
By 1907 (two years after the Carnegie Library opened), 418 Third Ave. SE housed The Modern Hair Parlors, offering, according to a 1910 ad in the Evening Gazette, “Turban Braids, Switches, Puffs, Etc, at very lowest prices …. Electrolysis for removal of superfluous hair, warts and moles — worked guaranteed. Chiropody for sore feet. Electric Facial and Scalp Massage. Shampooing and Manicuring.”
Several years and businesses later, the address housed Winter-Horton Electric Company (Slogan: “Get To Know The Live Wires.”), followed by a bicycle shop (first Chambers & Morgan, then Chambers & Chiverton) until the early 1930s.
Karlmelkorn was in the space from the early 1940s until the late 1950s, and all was not peaceful in the popcorn biz.
As reported in The Gazette on Oct. 30, 1947, “Popcorn candy at four blocks — that’s the form of the latest legal duel in Linn County District Court. The Karmelkorn Corp. Chicago, and G. H. Gregersen, who operates a Karmelkorn shop at 418 Third Ave. SE, Wednesday filed suit against Harold R. Bright, who operates a shop selling popcorn candy at 109 Third Ave. SE … under the name of Dixie Carmel Corn. … They charge that ‘Carmel Corn’ is a colorable imitation of Karmelkorn and is an infringement on the corporation’s trademark.”
In the 1960s, the address was home to a hobby shop, which operated under the name Hobby Town before becoming Box Kar.
The Chili Bowl
For its part, the Chili Bowl — the business that sent your two intrepid scribes scurrying to investigate the history of the address — opened in the late 1960s, according to Looney’s list. Our newspaper search resulted in our favorite bit of the history we turned up.
On Thursday, Dec. 27, 1973, The Gazette reported, “Wieners Taken — Mike Zervas, owner of the Chili Bowl restaurant, 418 Third Ave. SE, reported six pounds of wieners and $19 missing.” That is the entirety of the report.
Meanwhile, we were unable to turn up anything about the “show” Zervas apparently put on for his customers at the Chili Bowl. Which means we’re interested in your memories of the Chili Bowl — and of any of the other businesses that were at that spot over the years.
You can contact us, as always, at historicalclines@gmail.com.
Jessica Cline is a Leadership & Character Scholar at Wake Forest University. Her dad, Rob Cline, is not a scholar of any kind. They write this monthly column for The History Center. Comments: HistoricalClines@gmail.com
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