Rex's dream

Sometimes I get a chance to eat my words, especially when I have been skeptical about spending taxpayer's money. Case in point: I squawked about putting the taxpayer on the hook for renovating the Keystone Hotel in McCook. On a blustery day last week Matt Stebbins gave me a tour of the reconstruction in progress. I'd like to now share my optimism for the project as I think it will become a shining jewel downtown "on the bricks." From what I saw it, I think it will work!

It has always been there, well all my life. "It" being the old Keystone Hotel located on the corner of Main Street (now Norris Avenue) and D Street in McCook, Nebraska. For several years it has been looking shaggy and abandoned but wait; yellow barrier tape and noisy activity of construction machinery signal change. In progress at the moment is a serpentine outside escape stairway a building on the north side adjacent to the Fox Theater.

When I was a kid I was always intrigued with the old counterweighted "fire escape" that is in the process of being replaced. It seemed a neat idea to exit the building on an upper story then walk down the stairway to the last flight of stairs that were stowed in a horizontal position. How far would one have to walk out on that last section before it would swing down to the ground? What a ride! Fun and exciting for a kid, terrifying for an old guy!

During World War II, the GIs from the McCook Air Base seemed to gather alongside the Keystone. Even for a time, war hero and McCook Air Base Commander, Col. John "Killer" Kane lived there with his wife and 6-year-old son. Maybe it was a bus stop for the base shuttle or maybe it was the normal activity of young single men looking for a chance to ogle pretty young girls going to and from the busy Fox Theater. Jeanne Boyle Oldweiler tells of her older, eligible, sister parading Jeanne and her younger sibs down that very sidewalk in front of an appreciative GI crowd in her book Ant Hill Challenge.

The Keystone was constructed in 1922 and they built it strong as a bridge. The architectural style is Renaissance, evidently meaning rather Spartan brick with a few fake concrete column and capstone decorations. The lobby, however, was truly grand with a huge chandelier hanging from the second floor ceiling down through a large square opening to form a second floor mezzanine. Terrazzo floors and marble panels abounded. The front desk was elaborately trimmed with polished brass. For me it always had the ambience of a cool, hushed, grand, opulent building. Yet, decorated for Christmas, it left for me a warm and enduring memory of pure richness.

Interesting to me on my tour was the top two floors, yet vacant. Present plans are for them to be made into condominiums. I saw bare-bone walls and naked support columns. Carefully examining the empty floors one can discern the pattern of hallways and individual rooms when the place was a "modern" hotel. Supposedly, it was billed as the only fire-proof hotel between Denver and Chicago. Hollow tile and brick on the outside and the room dividers were constructed of "bricks" about 12 by 24 by 3 inches made of pressed gypsum each with three parallel internal tunnels to lighten. Each wall was then plastered as were the outside walls and ceilings. No way could a fire spread from room to room, even in an unsprinkled era. Each room had a bathroom with a floor raised one step up to allow for necessary piping. Not too handicapped accessible, those, and no air-conditioning, either. I can imagine that sleeping in a sun-baked southern exposure room after a hot 100 degree August day must have been a little tough.

The first floor will mostly retain its original pattern with a large lobby already decorated in its 1920 motif. The beautifully restored ornate plaster work is complete. Painting is finished with colors tastefully chosen by Sue Shaner.

Only the replica period furniture and fixtures need be added back. The grand dining hall will be there again available for public use. The large kitchen will now be a catering kitchen. No more steam laundry as that space is filled with multiple heating and air-conditioning units for individual zone comfort in all the occupied areas.

The forever Chamber of Commerce corner home office will have a new tenant and the coffee shop should be back in its forever location. The chamber will relocate to the second floor. The rest of second floor will be modern office spaces, mostly spoken for and already pretty well finished.

Next floor up will be dedicated to spaces for a "business incubator." Helping new business to get a sound start is a development dream of the McCook Economic Development Corp. the present owner and developer.

The entire fourth floor, also not too far from being finished, is the raison d''tre, home of 21st Century Systems the software making firm that is presently operational mainly at the college. A large part of their requirements are to maintain security for their classified operations and that is accomplished through controlled access.

The basement is yet open and bare. The large meeting room is still there complete with small stage but its opulent wooden floor is ruined and gone, the walls are all bare and the public rest rooms are no longer functional, the barber shop is long gone. Ideas?

And now I offer a sharp-eyed reader's update to last week's column: "Dick, I'm sure that you have heard from Jimmy Leeward, the P-51 pilot that you gave the credit to for making a safe landing at Curtis. Jimmy had just sold the Mustang to Phil Petrik in Sidney, Montana, and Phil was ferrying it home to his home base in Sidney, Montana, from McKinney, Texas, when it threw in the towel -- or should I say threw a rod. Phil is a hell of a pilot. So is Jimmy." -- Glenn Snyder in Texas."

That is the way I saw it.