Stein Brothers Building

The Stein Brothers Building in Hastings, Nebraska, was for twenty-seven years the location of a progressive and urbane retail establishment. Drawing shoppers from a wide region, the business attained a high reputation and added a cosmopolitan air to an otherwise medium-sized Great Plains community. Architecturally, the building is one of the most refined turn-of-the-century edifices in Hastings and is notable as being a rare example in Nebraska of Prairie-style features appearing in commercial architecture.

In 1902 Edmund and Herman Stein, natives of Harvard, Nebraska, purchased a dry goods business and an adjacent hardware store in Hastings. The building containing these stores burned three years later and the brothers were forced to relocate while Charles H. Dietrich, a prominent Hastings citizen, and a former Nebraska Governor and U.S. Senator, had a new building constructed to house the Steins' business. (For additional information on Dietrich, see National Register nomination of the Nowlan-Dietrich House, Adams County, submitted to Washington, D.C., February 16, 1979). Dietrich's new building was completed in 1906 and the Steins rented the building for nineteen years, purchasing it from the Dietrich estate in 1925 for $72,500 (The Hastings Democrat, June 11, 1925, p. 1).

The 1890s in Hastings and Nebraska had experienced high taxes and low prices for farm commodities, and between 1890-1900 Hastings' population decreased from 13,584 to 7,188 (Creigh, Adams County: The Story, p. 37). But the twentieth century's first decade was a social and financial renaissance for Hastings: "The weather had been favorable, the crops fine, and prices held; new businesses were coming into town, buildings were being constructed, and there was an air of optimism about everything in general".

The Stein brothers selected a strategic time to locate a general-type retail business in Hastings, and as prosperity increased they phased out such items as groceries and furniture to concentrate on finer merchandise:

Buyers for the store made regular trips to Europe, buying Belgian laces, Bavarian china, Bohemian crystal, English silver, French kid gloves, and other goods directly from the manufacturers. An old-time Stein employee recalls that the only time buyers were chided upon their return home was when they did not buy large enough stocks.

The Steins, who also purchased from manufacturers throughout the United States, were among the first advertisers in local papers to list specific stock and prices, and seasonal displays in the expanse of windows facing West Second Street were anxiously anticipated by residents and shoppers. The Stein Brothers Store came to enjoy the patronage of the people in a wide area of central Nebraska and northern Kansas--a reputation for up-to-date merchandise being no small factor in its success (Hastings Daily Tribune, Nov. 17, 1933, p. 1). "old-timers who knew the store say now that neither before nor since has any single store in Hastings provided the quality, volume, and variety of goods that the Stein store supplied.

With the Great Depression, the Stein Brothers Store was closed in 1933. Between the closing announcement and the final day of business, even the most impoverished citizens flocked to make their last purchases from a store that had been an important part of Hastings' business community. From 1934-68 the building housed a Chicago chain department store, and since 1968 it has either been vacant or used for storage.

The 1906 Stein Brothers are among the best-preserved older commercial structures in Hastings. Interestingly, it exhibits those tendencies that numerous contemporary residences were experiencing; proportions are low, there is a strong horizontal emphasis, the cornice treatment is quiet, and the edifice is generally lacking in those neoclassical tendencies so indicative of early-20th-century commercial buildings. The product can properly be termed a Prairie-style building, with its being surprisingly advanced for a community under 10,000 (ca. 1906) removed from the great metropolitan centers.

The name of the Stein Brothers Building's designer has not surfaced, but it is known that a professional architect was involved. February 17, 1906, issue of the Hastings Daily Tribune reported: "Both Mr. Dietrich and Mr. Cromier went to Omaha this afternoon to consult their architect...". The Omaha architect referred to in the newspaper was probably John Latenser (1858-1936), a native of Liechtenstein who had attended the Technical School in Stuttgart, Germany, before emigrating to the United States, where he worked in Chicago and Cedar Rapids, Iowa, prior to settling in Omaha (Lincoln State Journal, Dec. 7, 1936, p. 1). Several characteristics of Latenser's works appear in the Hastings building. These characteristics include; the use of color as opposed to red brick, the application of classical motifs in stone and terracotta, an emphatic horizontality, and abstract compositions proclaiming the facade's tern Latenser did not limit his designs to Omaha; on occasions, he planned buildings in central Nebraska, among these the Custer County Courthouse and Jail in Broken Bow, 140 miles northwest of Hastings (see National Register nomination for the Custer County Courthouse and Jail, submitted to Washington, D.C., February 23, 1979).