Above Ground in Des Moines: The sites that remain
I have many memories of visiting Des Moines, but as is the case when you visit family, most of my memories are of holiday meals and being at my grandparents’ home and store. I also have memories of being at Bubbie Mamie’s house and playing in her cellar. But I am a visual learner and so for me to reconstruct family history, I needed to see it. And drive around in it.
I must have taken a different route than we took when I was a child because I remember knowing you were almost there when we saw the huge tire on the side of the road at the Firestone Tire Factory. But I didn’t see it.
I stayed near the river in downtown just across from the Capitol building. Both sides of the family first settled in that neighborhood by the capitol. My guess is that in 1890, that was most of the town area. In fact, the first addresses listed in the 1890s for both Abraham Jacobs and Ruben Rubenstein were on the same block. The 600 block of East 2nd Street. I may have been about 3 years too late to see the buildings they lived in because the neighborhood has been leveled and has all new apartment buildings, town houses and lofts. None of the addresses the family lived at before 1920 still exist.
The 600 Block of East 2nd Street. Rebecca and Abraham Jacobs and kids, as well as Ruben and Bessie (nee Sparberg) and then Ruben and Ida (nee Kurtz) Rubenstein, lived on this block in the 1890s until around 1910. Perhaps Joe Jacobs and Mamie Rubenstein knew each other as kids.
Ruben and Ida next lived just down the street and around the corner at 513 Maple. This address would have been a riverfront building. The river is right on the other side of this lot. Reuben and Ida and kids lived here from 1910ish to 1921. Joe and Mamie must have lived there with them for a bit after they married. Joe put it as his address on his WWI registration card.
Befuddling, is that starting with the 1910 Census, Joe lists his birthday as September 8, 1891. On t he 1900 census his parents listed it as December 1889. Since Abraham emigrated in 1890, this is mysterious. There are many examples of immigrants choosing new birthdates for various reasons. Nothing obvious with this one.
We know that Ruben and Ida moved to 3401 Amherst on July 11, 1921… because of Ruben’s criminal record. 😉
Here he is in an undated photo of Ruben in front of the house on Amherst.
Here is the house today at 3401 Amherst.
Sideview of 3401 Amherst. Perhaps it has had some additions made over the last 100+ years.
Abraham and Rebecca Jacobs moved from the 600 block of 2nd Street to the 1000 block (which is now a playground) and then by 1920 had moved to live with their daughter, Anna (nee Jacobs) Lutz, son-in-law (Morris Lutz) and grandchildren (Jeanette and Jullian) at 2600 Grand Ave. This address is in the neighborhood from which the Children of Israel cemetery has been cut off by the highway. The Lutz family seems to have been grocers, according to some ads in the newspaper, far longer than the Jacobs family and is perhaps how Joe and Mamie got started in that business, eventually passing the vocation down to Phyllis and Harry.
Undated photo of Anna (nee Jacobs) and Morris Lutz.
Sideview of 2600 Grand Ave.
All around the neighborhood of the Lutz Grocery Store are remnants of grandeur. Many of the paver streets are still there. Again it is hard to explain how visually obvious it is that the highway construction destroyed the neighborhood. The Lutz house is walking distance, albeit across I-35 from the cemetery. The book, The Jews of Des Moines: The First Century, explains that the Jewish community was already moving west, but that the Children of Israel synagogue which had built its most recent building in 1911, a brick structure that seated 250 people, eventually gave it up because of highway construction.
As stated in the 1920 census, Mamie and Joe Jacobs, along with Phyllis who was born in 1918 lived in this house for about five years. This house is at 2901 5th Ave, exactly one block west of the their first grocery store which was at the same address on 6th Ave. The house was built in 1918 so they may been its first occupants. I have a developing list of topics that have piqued my interest for later discovery. One top is the grocery store culture in Des Moines. Even driving around today, you can see the remnant in these neighborhoods of the stores that once existed. 6th Ave in particular is noted as having been the street that had many stores, grocery and otherwise, where the owners had living quarters in the back. That isn’t the case with this one, they were on the next block over. But it was in fact the case with the with the Lutz store, which had living quarters enough for three generations.
I can’t imagine it was a very profitable business, but the community depended on it. Turns out it was a fairly dangerous business. I remember hearing whispers as a child that Grandma Phyllis had been held up again in Oster’s grocery. If you put in any of these names in the newspapers search engine…that is what you find…over and over again these stores were robbed at gunpoint. Yet they persisted. Perhaps their way of life required that they cleaned up and continued on for another day. I think I remember a photograph of the family behind the counter at this first store at 2901 6th Avenue, but I have not located it.
This was Joe and Mamie Jacob’s first store. In the 1920 census, Joe still lists himself as a plumber which was his first profession. Mamie is listed as a grocery store merchant.
1920 Census for Joe and Mamie Jacobs
Joe and Mamie’s first grocery store at 2901 6th Ave.
That building/storefront is still there today. It is a little grocery and restaurant. It has been expanded into the building on the left…and they reoriented it so the main entrance is from the back. You can see where the threshold of the front door was when it was ‘Jacobs' and however many things it has been in-between then and now.
The food was pretty good. The fried yuka was outstanding. I chatted a little bit with the woman who was working. We had a pretty significant language barrier, but I gathered that her husband’s parents have owned the place for about 20 years. I showed her the photo of the store and said our family had a grocery tore here and gave her a copy of the photo from the newspaper article. She told me one of her sons is named Jacob.
One more street over is the entrance to what was the Riverview amusement park. The amusement park opened in 1915. I have to imagine having a corner store one block east of the entrance to an amusement park was considered a pretty prime location. 100 years later, the park has been redeveloped with a 9000 person capacity amphitheater. The whole place is made to look like an amusement park. I walked from the El Salvador Del Mundo to the entrance. Looks like a great venue to see a show. Read more about it here in the Des Moines Register.
Head north a few streets and you hit Oak Park and Highland Park where Mamie and Joe Jacobs raised Phyllis and Marvin…where Phyllis and Harry raised Enid and Helaine. The location of Oster/Locketz/Damsky Thanksgiving. The house at 3827 8th Place, Harry and Phyllis’ House still stands. The neighborhood looks ok. Definte signs of regeneration after a fairly long period of decline.
3827 8th Place
The Alley. I remember it being longer and darker, but this is how we walked to and from the Store when I visited. Out the side door of the house and through the gate to the alley.
I drove down the alley. Got a photo of the back of the house…not looking as good as the front. When I exited the alley and turned the corner, there was a police car circling the block. Maybe a guy driving around taking photos raised someone’s concern. He followed me for a few blocks and then peeled off. It reminded of the last time I was ever in the house. My buddy Seth and I drove round trip from Madison, WI to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena over New Years 1993/94. On the way back we stayed overnight in Des Moines. Grandma Phyllis was a great host! After dinner, we went for a walk down the alley to the store and Bubbie’s house as I gave Seth a tour of the neighborhood. Standing in front of the store, which was empty, but still standing at that point, a squad car pulled up and asked us what we are doing. I seem to be a target in Des Moines! Below is a photo of Grandma and me from that last time I was in the house. Not sure why I am wearing a Duke sweatshirt and a Michigan hat on the way home from a Badger win at the Rose Bowl. 💁🏻
Phyllis (nee Jacobs) Oster and me January 1994 - Des Moines
When you come out of that alley, you are facing what used to be the store. First it was Jacob’s Grocery, then it was Oster’s. It is worthy of its own post later on. The building that was the store at 805 Seneca is gone. Just an empty lot now. The house next door, where Joe and Mamie lived most of their adult lives…the one with the amazing cellar with the trap door in the middle of the kitchen…still stands. It is the brownish one in the photo next to the empty lot.
Mamie (nee Rubenstein) and Joe Jacobs standing in front of Jacobs Grocery at 805 Seneca in the Oak Park neighborhood in Des Moines Iowa. Photo was taken circa 1943.
Harry Oster in front of Oster’s. Same building. Taken July 1, 1970 for a news paper article titled, “The Casualty of Change: The Corner Shop” which appeared in the Des Moines Sunday Register on July 5, 1970. I am working on getting a digital copy.
Except for the store being gone, the neighborhood looks exactly how I remember it. I remember Grandma Phyllis had, or borrowed a bike for me when I would visit and I could go up and down the streets as far as Oak Park School. In places it is really run down. In places you can see the beginning of renewal.
The business district at Euclid and 6th Ave has been listed on the register of National Historic places. I am sure that limits what can be done there and hopefully some investors have plans because it is a mess. I’d say it is 10% occupied. But there too, there are traces of renewal. There is the Highland Bakery which was full and boasts having been there since 1946. So not new, but an anchor. I walked into a coffee shop next to the bakery that had a Black Lives Matter sign in the window which drew me in. It is called the Slow Down Coffee Company. It is owned and operated by a couple who started their business during the pandemic. It is a super nice coffee shop and the owners seem very civically minded. It is in the space that had been the Park Hardware store for 90 years before. The owner retired and worked with the coffee shop to transform the space. Many of the fixtures were repurposed to honor the history.
I chatted with the proprietor for a bit and told her about the family and Oster’s. I left her with a copy of the photo of Grandpa standing in front of the store. She told me to come back in a couple of years and see that the area is gong to be vibrant. I don’t know if I’ll be back. But I bought a tee shirt and would make a point of stopping in there again if I ever do return to Des Moines.
