The town came and went, but the brick abides.
In Iowa, many little towns were born alongside the new railroads that crisscrossed the state in the late 1800s. The town where I live is no different. Here is a brief timeline with special emphasis on one business: The Maloy Savings Bank.
TImeline:
1887 — The Chicago Northwestern Railroad is built, and the town is born
1896 — The bank is built
1901 — The town is incorporated as the City of Maloy
1910-1930 — Rural depopulation has already begun
1929 — The Great Depression begins
1931 — A devastating fire burns 9 businesses, a church, and several homes
1933 — The bank is put under state control to prevent a bank run
1934 — The bank closes
1990 (approximately) — The former bank building is briefly used as a restaurant
1996 (approximately) — The building is torn down
When the bank building had been knocked down but not yet buried, I got permission to grab a few bricks. I loaded up some160 nice bricks, which were intact and had very little old mortar stuck to them. Then, I repurposed the bricks to make large circles around two tiny, new trees in my yard: a redbud and a river birch. Here is a current photo of the now 30 year old redbud:
Recently, I decided to dismantle the circle of bricks around the river birch. Those old bricks, 130 years after the building of the bank, now have a new (temporary) job; they are holding down some plastic sheeting, which will be there all summer to kill off the existing vegetation. That area will become a bed for some peonies to be transplanted in the fall.
Conclusion. Each brick reflects a lot of history — of Iowa, of the town, and of my time living here. More changes are no doubt coming, but it’s likely that somehow the bricks will abide.
Sources and supplementary photos. To tell this story thoroughly would take a lot of time and research. Here are some of the sources I used for this very brief account:
Sources of information.
- Railroad Maps: https://iagenweb.org/johnson/history/railroad/railroad_maps.html
- Census Data Table: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maloy,_Iowa
- The Redding Herald, Feb. 8, 1934: http://ringgoldcounty.advantage-preservation.com This is a searchable database, but the search engine seems somewhat glitchy. The full page that I accessed is available here.