Hy-Vee Trivia --- Two stores on the Chariton square

When this advertisement was published in The Herald-Patriot on Oct. 18, 1951, the two Hy-Vee grocery stores on the Chariton square still were known as Supply Stores. One advertisement served both.

We've been working at the museum this winter, between snowstorms and arctic blasts, on collecting material for a new interpretive display about Hy-Vee, a major economic force in Lucas County since 1945. We haven't either the resources or the artifacts to approach the spectacular display at Hy-Vee headquarters, now located in West Des Moines, but certainly can do a better job than we've been doing.

While working on a timeline this week, I've finally sorted out one of my nagging Hy-Vee trivia questions: Exactly when were there two Hy-Vee grocery stores on the square in Chariton and what were their circumstances? So jot this down if you play Hy-Vee trivia and then neither of us will have to fuss about it again.

The Lamoni-based partnership of Charles Hyde and David Vredenburg entered the retail market in Lucas County for the first time during August of 1936 when it purchased Max Gendler's grocery store on the southeast corner of Chariton's square and rebranded it the Chariton Supply Store.

Nine years later, during 1945 after a search for a location with access to mainline rail transport, Hyde and Vredenburg, Inc., purchased the Chariton Wholesale Grocery Co., then located at the intersection of North 11th Street and Auburn Avenue --- just south of the C.B.&Q. Freight House. Company headquarters and warehouse operations were moved immediately from Lamoni to Chariton. The company's new headquarters and warehouse on Osceola Avenue, to the northwest, was built during 1948.

Then during July of 1951, Hyde & Vredenburg purchased several Iowa Super Valu stores from Midwest Foods of Des Moines. Included was the Chariton Super Valu, located in an Ensley Building storefront just south of the alley on the west side of the square. This store had been operated until 1944 by Clifford Norman of Corydon. He sold out to Midwest Foods during May of that year.

After that, the southside location was known as Supply Store No. 1 and the westside location as Supply Store No. 2. During 1952-1953, Supply stores were rebranded Hy-Vee, a shorthand version of Hyde & Vredenburg selected after a renaming contest, and thereafter Hy-Vee No. 1 and Hy-Vee No. 2 continued to operate on the square.

Hy-Vee's first Chariton supermarket, located at the intersection North Main Street and Auburn Avenue, opened for business on July 21, 1955, and the location on the west side of the square ceased operations. Hy-Vee retained the westside location as the site for a Regal Stamp store. By 1960, however, the Regal operation had outgrown the location and was moved during October of that year to the Hy-Vee headquarters building.

During November of 1960, Charles Ensley --- who still owned the Ensley Building --- announced that the storefront vacated by Regal had been leased to LeRoy Johansen of Audubon as the site of a new Coast-to-Coast hardware store. The Johansens took possession during January of 1961 and the rest, as they say, is history, but Hy-Vee's presence on the west side had ended.

The southside store, now Chariton's Hy-Vee No. 2, continued to operate for 10 more years --- until overnight Dec. 17-18, 1966, when a second-floor fire gutted offices and apartments and heavily damaged the store below. Hy-Vee already had planned to close the store early in 1967, after an expansion of Hy-Vee No. 1 had been completed, and now did so immediately. The Hy-Vee supermarket expansion, which doubled floor space and added an in-store bakery and second parking lot, was completed during February of 1967.