Kickapoo Hotel (36 rooms) was at 730 Main St, Peoria, IL, and built over a Shell Station... is it me? Or is having a gas station under your hotel a bad idea?

above, 1964

notice the area just under the Shell Station, blank in the above photo, but below they used it for the Hotel signage

notice that below that is the Anheuser Busch eagle... Why? The Kickapoo Building was built in 1911, by St. Louis brewery Anheuser-Busch. During that era the brewery built several establishments to serve their products. The buildings often had distinctive architecture.

The bars/pubs/saloons that were connected to a brewery, or had a contract with one, were "tied houses" in contrast to a "free house" which was un-affiliated with any other particular company, and did business however they chose to  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kickapoo_Building

1945

but skip ahead to the current time,

and the Busch sign is now where Hotel was

the building was originally used as a tied house for the Anheuser-Busch Brewery, which sought to expand its presence in Peoria's large brewing industry.

 The two-story building has a flatiron shape, (flat iron, the ancestor to a steam iron, still has that triangular shape) a design which took advantage of its triangular lot.

Flatiron buildings were once commonly built in Peoria as a necessity of the city's geography; while downtown Peoria was built on a grid aligned with the Illinois River, its subsequent additions were usually aligned with the cardinal directions, and extensions of streets from the additions into downtown led to the creation of many triangular lots.

The Kickapoo Building's lot was created by three of these streets, Main Street and Glendale Avenue from the original downtown and Knoxville from the boundaries of several later additions; while it was not the first building on its triangular lot, it was the first one to take full advantage of the space.
It's the last flatiron building in Peoria

Modern commercial development and freeway construction eliminated many of Peoria's diagonal streets downtown, including Knoxville Avenue itself, and took many of its flatiron buildings with it; the Kickapoo Building stands out among the survivors for its decorative commercial storefronts on all three sides.

this photo from the other side, as you can see from the lower left, where the van is at the old gas station was

It’s been the site for a saloon, hotel, gas station, restaurant, architectural office and uniform company, to name a few.

Anheuser-Busch recognized Peoria as the national distilling and brewing center it was in 1911. That was a time when the city had 11 distilleries, 14 breweries and 323 saloons and St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch wanted in.

So the brewery established a tavern amid all this competition that only served Anheuser-Busch beer.

The so-called “tied house” concept went out with Prohibition making the building, with its flat-iron shape, all the more unique

https://www.apartments.com/kickapoo-apartments-peoria-il/g7l0bdz/
https://www.pjstar.com/article/20140412/BUSINESS/140419717
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Kickapoo-Building/923973607656714

Western Flyer X-53 Super was the top of the line bicycle built by Murray Ohio Mfg. Co. for Western Auto store chain from 1953 to 1958

http://www.nostalgic.net/1955-western-flyer-super-x-53

the nicest Dart I've seen that wasn't at a concours

I asked him what he roughly had in it, thinking the answer was 30-40, but he surprised me when he said 17-18. I'm serious, this is amazingly nice in all respects

spotted around the neighborhood while on walkabout

this truck is in amazing condition for 40 some years old

a Power Wagon collector! How damn cool is that!

I bet someone really great to talk to lives here, not many RVers have a concours old Jeep in military get up

pretty uncommon to find a Scout just neglected on the street

used to be someone's pride and joy

How many times do you have to be asked if your Challenger is a Hellcat before you decide to get these license plates?

I'll be damned, I haven't seen a set of slotted mags with Pro Trac N50s since I sold my Challenger 25 years ago

Notice that the Chevy has the front slotted mags, and the Charger has the back ones... believe it or not, I bought a set of unilug slotted mags for the front of my Challenger, and the big slotted mags were Mopar spaced, because I bought them from a guy in Ct when I was stationed in Groton, because he'd bought them for his 67 or 68 Road Runner, then found they wouldn't fit, and he refused to mess with his concours Road Runner to make them fit. No mini tubs of air shocks for him

I see that needs some translation to make sense... my 71 Challenger that I sold in 194 had soltted mages front and back, the unilugs on front, and the big 10 inch with Pro Tracs on back.
Seeing that there are 4 slotted mags here, it's not impossible that these used to be mine, is what I was trying to say

You don't see these hanging out in shopping center parking lots anymore...

about twice what I'd say it's worth... it's not a 390 with the AMC speed parts, or even a 401.

Oh, and the parts they replaced, that's nice, but, that's only about 500 dollars worth of parts, and a couple hundred for labor. And as to repainted, yes, that's not bad at all! But, we all know that a repaint is used to hide things, and make a car look good for selling. 

Someone's daily driver... as hard as that is to believe. CK20 I thnk it said on the badge

When's the last time you saw anyone actually drive their Prowler?

If you'd like to buy a 1944 Baldwin 2-10-4 ( "Texas" type locomotives ) from the Bessemer & Lake Erie Railroad, for the price of a McLaren, you're in luck, and this might be in better condition than any other similar size train engine on the market

The 1940s saw seventeen more "Texas" types added to the B and LE roster. They were acquired in three orders.

Ten of them designated as Class H-1g with road numbers 638 through 647, came in 1943 and 1944.

The H-1gs weighed 523,600 pounds.

The entire B and LE fleet of forty-seven "Texas" type locomotives was built to the same basic specifications which included 64" diameter drivers, 31" x 32" cylinders, a boiler pressure of 250 psi and were rated with a tractive effort of 96,700 pounds. These locomotives were equipped with a trailing truck booster, which added 13,100 pounds of tractive effort making the total tractive effort 109,800 pounds.

The firebox was of radial stay construction. The combustion chamber extended 49.5" into the barrel of the boiler. There were three thermic siphons, two in the firebox and one in the combustion chamber. The evaporative heating surface was 5,912 square feet and the superheater added 2,368 square feet. The boiler evaporative capacity was 84,300 pounds per hour (nearly 10,500 gallons per hour). At 250 psi and 250 degrees of superheat, boiler horse power was 4,690 HP. The piston valves measured 15" in diameter.

All of the engines had an 8,000 US gallon/hr capacity except for the first five 1936 engines. Filled to 2 gauges of water, the boiler held 5,890 gallons weighing 41,937 lb; sand box capacity totalled 6,736 lb.

The first tenders carried 22,000 US gallons of water and 23 tons of coal; they weighed 377,600 lb loaded. Later tenders carried 1,000 gallons  more and three more tons of coal.

This is the only surviving B and LE "Texas" type locomotive. It was previously stored west of the P and LE shops in Mc Kees Rocks, PA and is now at AGF warehouse, "bottoms" section of Mc Kees Rocks, PA.

this is the last page of the definitive article on this class of train, I recommend you take a look if you're into steam locomotives:  http://ctr.trains.com/~/media/import/files/pdf/0/b/6/winter_2000_ctr_bessemer_article.pdf
of course, like most everything that seems like something you'd like to do, if it's easy and not a pain in the ass, this is indeed going to prove to be a pain in the ass.

They have already removed the tracks that are needed to get this back on the main line. Yeah, it's landlocked.

Not that some enthusiasts and a railroad company couldn't just build some railroad, replacing the missing section, and have this back to rights, so this could be towed or pushed somewhere the buyer wants to fix it up... there is very little that is impossible if enough money and enthusiasm is thrown at it. Hell, scientists have taken a photo of an atom, operated a remote control robot on the planet Mars, and all sorts of other incredible things.

The Bessemer and Lake Erie Railroad ran 153 miles from Lake Erie to North Bessemer, PA near Pittsburgh, PA. From early spring until the first freeze the B and LE hauled iron ore from the lake boats to the steel mills and carried Pennsylvania coal back to the lakefront.

Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, a 2-10-4 locomotive has two leading wheels on one axle, ten coupled driving wheels on five axles, and four trailing wheels on two axles, usually in a truck. These were referred to as the Texas type in most of the United States, the Colorado type on the Burlington Route and the Selkirk type in Canada.

The 2-10-4 Texas wheel arrangement originated and was principally used in the United States of America. The evolution of this locomotive type began as a 2-10-2 Santa Fe type with a larger four-wheeled trailing truck that would allow an enlarged firebox. A subsequent development was as an elongated 2-8-4 Berkshire type that required extra driving wheels to remain within axle load limits. Examples of both of these evolutionary progressions can be found.

Some 2-10-4 tank locomotives also existed in eastern Europe. One extraordinary experimental 2-10-4 tender locomotive, built in the Soviet Union, had an opposed piston drive system.

thanks Gary!
https://www.ebay.com/itm/233227123031?ul_noapp=true
https://www.steamlocomotive.com/locobase.php?country=USA&wheel=2-10-4&railroad=ble
https://barnfinds.com/railroad-find-1944-baldwin-ble-643-locomotive/
https://www.classicstreamliners.com/lo-2-10-4-texas.html