October 31, 1997
Freeport Journal Standard
Olga Gize Carlile
Residents brave storm to celebrate Lincoln-Douglas Center’s 100th birthday
It was time for a birthday party at the Lincoln-Douglas Center – the building is 100 years old.
Big ads in The Journal Standard invited Freeport and area residents to “Celebrate with us.” And many, many came braving Freeport’s first snowfall of the season.
It was like going home for this reporter, who remembered when The Journal-Standard newsroom was on the third floor. Then the room was decorated with murals of Freeport and there was always the incessant clatter of typewriter keys as reporters met daily deadlines.
The linotypes were on the second floor then, the business office on the first floor and the pressroom in the basement.
In January 1960 The Journal-Standard moved to its newly remodeled plant in a building first built by Henry Koppein on the corner of South State Avenue and East Main Street.
The move was made imperative by purchase of a Hoe press, which was in use until 1994 when a new Goss Urbanite offset press was installed.
The newspaper moved its offices in January 1960 to what was then the Gene Marchesi auto dealership (Freeport Lincoln-Mercury), now The Journal-Standard building for many years.
The pressroom was moved first in 1959, followed a few months later by the moving of the linotypes – out of the second floor window of the 1216 N. Galena Ave. building to the new facility. (Huge cranes lifted these monoliths to waiting flatbed trucks.)
The newsroom moved about the same time.
Open house was held for more than 3,000 visitors in June of 1960.
In the beginning, the Lincoln-Douglas Center was the German Insurance Building. It was built in 1897.
The German Company headquartered in the former Winneshiek building when it first opened its doors, grew rapidly with vigorous selling and now ideas such as tornado insurance. They outgrew the old building, and in March 1897 erected the large three-story office building and occupied it on December 15, 1897.
In 1897 the German Company was reputed to be the largest insurance company west of Philadelphia. Then insurance companies had no good actuarial tables. It was this lack which caused the German Insurance Company and others to be ruined by the San Francisco earthquake and fire.
It was renamed the Cheeseman Building in 1967 and then later was renamed the Lincoln-Douglas Center by the law firm of Plager, Hasting and Krug, Ltd. which purchased and refurbished it completely “to help preserve the unique heritage of Northwest Illinois.”