Historic Buildings
616 N. Washington:Cozy TheaterOpening in November 1918, the Cozy Theater had the finest motion picture equipment in the Midwest. The building shows influences from the "Prairie School" of architecture originating at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair Columbian Exhibition.
602-612 N. Washington:Bartell HouseOpened in 1880 by A.H. Bartell and John K. Wright, the Bartell House offered 66 rooms, parlors, offices, and a dining room with murals painted by Junction City artist Bertrand Hartman. There were street-level shops, and the Junction City Post Office was located in the southeast corner of the building from 1888 until 1917. Among famous guests at the hotel were General Funston, General Wainwright, Sally Rand, Ann Sheridan, Gene Tierney, Al Jolson, John Phillip Sousa, W.C. Fields, and Gloria Vanderbilt. When it closed as the Lamar Hotel in 1979 it was the last operating hotel in the City.
601 N. Washington:Exquisite Bottling WorksThe stone archway on the 6th Street side of this building was an entrance for Ira Bermant's Exquisite Bottling Works, a turn-of-the-century soda bottling works. The front of the building included Bermant's Lyric Theater, and later, the Palace of Sweets, a soda fountain and candy store.
607 N. Washington:Rialto BuildingThis
building dates from around the turn-of-the-century, but what the name "Rialto" at the cornice signifies, remains unknown. Mike Frey, later a postmaster in Junction City, ran a restaurant here in 1908. From 1919 until 1977, the lower floor housed the Good Eats Café operated by the Maduros brothers.
615-617 N. Washington:Blattner & Blakely BuildingThese two buildings were built before 1882 and were the homes of Blattner and Blakely's hardware, stove, and agricultural implements stores. The date "1888" at the top of the building indicates a remodeling of the building in that year.
619 N. Washington:Zee-Dee BuildingThis building was built in 1905 by local contractors, Charles Ziegler and J.T. Dalton (hence the "Zee-Dee" at the cornice line) to replace the Pegues and Wright Store at this location which had burned. This building was later occupied by the J.C. Penney Store from 1926 until the late 1980s.
Photographs courtesy of Geary County Historical Society
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