Omaha Exploration

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 and Harney Streets in 1905.

Born in Pennsylvania in 1827, Daniel Baum worked as a farmer and railroad bridge contractor before settling in Lincoln, Nebraska, 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.

Under David’s leadership, the company continued to grow and merged with Omaha Iron Store in 1916. It became the largest wholesaler of iron products in the Midwest, serving Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and Idaho. When David passed away in 1938, he had served as president for 50 years and headed several other family businesses, including Baum Realty Company, Baum Holding Company, Sioux City Iron Company, and Wax Paper Products Company.

Baum Iron remained a family-owned business after his son-in-law, Sloan Allen, took over. Sloan, who was married to David’s daughter Margaret Greer Baum, was eventually joined by their son David at the company he led for decades. The eccentric father-and-son duo were known for walking the two miles each day from their home at 3722 Dewey Avenue in the Gold Coast neighborhood to the company headquarters—always dressed in full business attire.

The company evolved with the times, and by the 1960s its product line included ball bearings, hydraulics, and power transmissions. Margaret passed away in 1970, followed by Sloan in 1987. After succeeding his father as president, David was honored in 1993 by the historic preservation group Landmarks, Inc., for the company’s century-long stewardship of the building.

David ultimately declined the honor, wishing to avoid attention as he quietly funneled his father’s fortune into offshore accounts and shell companies before fleeing to Switzerland in 1990. By the early 2000s, the company—renamed Baum Hydraulics—was no longer in the hands of the family. By then it had become a wholesaler of bearings, hydraulic components, chains, sprockets, and machinery parts across the United States and Canada.

More than 145 years after its construction, the Baum Iron Building has witnessed the surrounding neighborhood evolve from a wholesale district to a produce market and eventually into today’s entertainment district. With nearly every historic building around it renovated and repurposed, Baum Hydraulics has no plans to leave the home it has occupied for 120 years. And the iconic advertisement—unchanged since 1962—will likely continue greeting Old Market visitors well into the future.

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Article Featured on Grow Omaha: Local History by Omaha Exploration | Grow Omaha

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