The City Climbs East Hill

The plat of the original town of York was registered in Seward County just before Christmas of 1869. The map and accompanying field notes were filed there because prior to 1970 the area designated as York County was attached to Seward County for administrative purposes.

On April 26, 1870 the people of York County went to the polls to elect those individuals who would organize the government of the county. Only eighty six votes were cast, and at first governmental functions were haphazard.

There was no court house in which to safely store county records, in fact in York there was only the pre-emption shack which sat near the current day Nebraskaland Glass building. The shack was used for county meetings, but the official records were kept by the elected officials.  The first County Clerk D. R. Creegan stored the record he was responsible for in his sod house in Thayer Township. “A cracker box under a very low bed” kept the records as safe as possible. Presumably the original plat of York remained at the Seward County Courthouse until it could be safely stored in York.

The original plat shows that the new town ran from First Street to Eleventh Street including the lots which abutted the north and south boundaries of the town.  The residential blocks that abutted the west side of York Avenue formed the town’s western boundary. The 66 foot right of way that runs along every section line later became Division Avenue, but wasn’t part of the original survey. Not surprisingly the town’s eastern boundary was formed by East Avenue.

As the year 1870 opened York was little more than parallel lines on a piece of paper. If it had a life beyond that it resided in the hopes of the few people living in the county. However before long the city was overflowing its boundaries.

Eventual new additions were surveyed and filed with the County Clerk. Then, with the actions taken by private organizations and individuals, the city began climbing East Hill.

In October of 1879 the Nebraska Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church established a seminary on the east edge of York, Nebraska. The campus of ten acres was located on East Hill overlooking the city. A building was planned to face East Avenue with a tower dominating the view up Fifth Street from the central business district.

In 1880 the Trustees of the Nebraska Conference Seminary acquired another 10 acre tract of land that joined the seminary grounds at the corner of East Fourth and College. The land was surveyed and platted as the Seminary Addition by A. B. Codding and filed with the County Clerk on January 10, 1881. Sale of lots in the new addition would be used to fund the seminary. 

Only the north wing of the proposed building was finished and occupied. The seminary closed in 1888 as part of the establishment of Nebraska Wesleyan. The campus and its buildings became the Ursuline Academy in 1889, and later St. Joseph’s Church and School.

 

The survey of the Seminary Addition plat was done in conjunction with the Stevens Addition which occupies the 10 acre tract just to the north. That addition is named for a Civil War veteran from Illinois named Thomas Stevens.

Stevens was a student at Marshall College in Illinois when the Civil War interrupted his studies. He left school to enlist in the 122nd Illinois Volunteer Infantry, Company B. During the war Stevens served his unit as an Orderly Sargent. In December 1964 he was wounded at the Battle of Nashville. A bullet through the left arm above the elbow left his arm permanently disabled. As a result of his wound, Stevens was discharged from the Army. He returned to Illinois where he married Eliza J. Fletcher and began a law practice.

In 1879 Steven’s came to York to establish a new home for his family. He bought the 10 acres on the east edge of the city which he had surveyed and laid out as building lots. In February of 1880 Stevens moved his family to York. He established a law practice and was elected the mayor of York in April of 1882.

The two additions have three streets running south to north from Second Street to Sixth Street. Bordering the additions on the west and running beside the former seminary is College Avenue.   Blackburn Avenue runs along the west edge of the additions, and today spans most of the town. That street may have been named for Rev. W. S. Blackburn who was appointed as pastor of the Methodist Episcopal Church in York in the fall of 1879. 

The heart of Seminary and Stevens Additions is Thompson Avenue. The first president of the Methodist Seminary was Dr. Edward Thompson. Though the spelling of the name of both the street and the college president varies through the years depending on the source material, it is assumed that the street was named for the first head of the school.

On the southwest corner of 6th and Thompson sits a house that today hides the fact that it once was the home of prominent members of the community.  The property was for much of its history known as 525 Thompson. 

When the home was first built about 1882 it was a small Folk Victorian cottage. Over the years it doubled in size and morphed into a Craftsman style bungalow before later renovations diminished its distinguishing features.

The house once served as the home of Franklin and Mary Baldwin. Franklin Baldwin was a retired farmer from Sandwich, Illinois when he moved to York. Baldwin worked as a realtor and abstractor out of an office at 610 Lincoln Avenue. In 1887 Franklin Baldwin was elected to the board of directors of the First National Bank and became Vice-President of the bank the following year. He retired from the bank in 1894. The Baldwins bought the home 6^th and Thompson in 1888, and enlarged it to its current dimensions sometime before 1909.  Franklin Baldwin died August 5, 1905.The house was home to Mary Baldwin until 1914

Sometime after 1922 a porch was added to the house. The porch was built in the Craftsman style which was popular in the Midwest during 1920’s. The addition featured a sleeping porch with windows on three sides to facilitate air flow. An open porch was supported by battered half columns on brick piers. The porch railing was composed of closely spaced square wooden balusters. Sometime after 1970 the porch was enclosed and the house which now opened up on 6^th Avenue took on the remuddled look of a house whose life cycle has it now serving as a rental property.

On the northwest corner of 5^th and Thompson sits a true Craftsman style bungalow. The house was built in 1923 by Walter and Catherine Seng of McCool Junction.

The bungalow has a low pitched side-gabled roof with a gabled dormer on the front. Under the gables are wide eaves with exposed rafters. There are also brackets under the gables. A partial width front porch is under a shed roof which is supported by tapered square brick columns. The walls are clad with brick up to the bottom of the windows and stucco from there to the eaves. The stucco is embedded with white and red quartz. The roof was probably originally tile. A matching garage sits behind the house.

The Sengs had bought a farm and moved from Illinois to Nebraska in October of 1887. Within six months they were welcomed to their new home by the Blizzard of 1888. The family stayed on the farm just two years before moving into McCool Junction. In town Walter Seng built an insurance and loan business. In 1904 Seng became the cashier for the newly organized Farmers and Merchants Bank of McCool Junction. He became President of the bank in 1911.

In 1923 Walter Seng bought the lot on the corner of Fifth and Thompson in York and built a retirement home. The Sengs moved to York in August of that year. However, Walter Seng became seriously ill just months after the completion of the new home. Despite treatment at the Mayo Clinic, he died on the morning of November 16, 1923. Before Mr. Seng died he transferred ownership of the home to his wife for “$1.00 and love and affection.”        

Catherine “Kate” Seng lived in her Thompson Street home for thirty-two years following the death of her husband. In 1953, two years before her death, she transferred ownership of the house to her four children for “$1.00 and love and affection.”

It is a time worn phrase, but there is truth in the saying, “If these walls could talk.” Up and down Thompson Avenue, and on every street in York, there are houses that serve as an artifact of past lives. The search for the story behind those artifacts reveals how the city grew beyond East Avenue.