The three-story-tall, hand-painted Baum Iron sign facing 13th Street in the Old Market has been a local fixture for more than a century. Constructed in 1880, the building it adorns has housed only three businesses in its 145 years.
Located at 1221 Harney Street, the brick structure was built for the wholesale grocery firm Steele, Johnson and Company. Its most prominent features include an Italianate-style cast-iron storefront—manufactured in St. Louis and assembled on-site—and Egyptian-inspired colonnettes. Composed of four piers and nine bays, the building features rectangular windows accented with varied stone treatments.
Steele, Johnson and Company, founded in 1868, conducted business throughout the surrounding states as well as in Montana, Utah and Idaho. The company vacated the building in 1890, after which the Lee, Glass, Andreesen Hardware Company moved in. The wholesale hardware, cutlery and tinware firm added the fourth floor in the 1890s before outgrowing the building and relocating east to Jobbers Canyon at 9th & Harney Street in 1905.
Born in Pennsylvania in 1827, Daniel Baum worked as a farmer and railroad bridge contractor before settling in Lincoln, where he started the business that would become Baum Iron in 1857. Located at 1026 O Street, Baum Hardware sold tools, belting, guns, cutlery and wagon and carriage supplies to settlers heading west.
By the time he moved the business to Omaha in 1888, his sons James and David were heavily involved in its operations. The Baum family acquired Edney and Gibbon, an iron, steel and heavy hardware business at 1217 Leavenworth Street. As the company expanded, it relocated twice—first to 1210 Harney Street, followed by a move across the street to 1221 Harney Street in 1905…