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A historical building and regular meeting place for the residents of Kimball, the Corner Bar, was destroyed by fire early Saturday.
KIMBALL — A historical building and regular meeting place for the residents of Kimball, the Corner Bar, was destroyed by fire early Saturday morning.
Responding to a call at 12:45 a.m., the Kimball Volunteer Fire Department arrived at the bar located on the corner of 2nd Street and Chestnut Street.
“When we got there we could see flames coming out of the second story windows. We tried getting upstairs, but it was inaccessible,” said Dale Moore, chief of the Kimball Fire Department.
The firefighters went into defense mode soon after arriving and moved to save the bakery next door to the bar.
“Law enforcement was the first on the scene and called in the fire, they also made sure no one was in the building,” Moore said.
According to Sue Leininger, owner of the bar, there would have been no one in the bar as it had been closed for the night.
“My grandsons and I had put fresh oil on the wood floors yesterday and I wanted to make sure it dried completely. So I closed the bar around 8 p.m. when we left,” she said.
After receiving a call from one of her grandsons, Leininger arrived to see her business burning. The walls were beginning to lean out toward the streets and the decision had to be made to pull the structure down.
“When I arrived around 4 a.m. there were still flames and steam coming from the building. The fire department was controlling the fire and the roof had caved in,” said James Schnell, mayor of Kimball. “It is a historical building, but for public safety and to save the business next to it, we had to make a tough decision.”
Using a backhoe and other heavy equipment, Jim Wertz pulled the walls down of the business so the fire could be contained.
“We were lucky. If we had had the wind like last week, we could have lost all of downtown,” Schnell said.
Saturday morning Chestnut Street from 1st to 3rd Street was closed as debris was removed from the burn site.
“I would guess damage is well over a million dollars,” Moore said. “We don’t have a cause for the fire, right now, it is undetermined.”
The Corner Bar, or Stone Building as it is listed in the Nebraska National Register Site, was a national landmark. The two-story structure was built in 1893-94 of rough-cut, locally quarried limestone. It was the oldest commercial building in Kimball and was built by John Biggs, an operator of the lumber and hardware business. Leininger inherited the business from her husband 37 years ago when he passed away.
For the community it is not only the loss of a historical site, but also a loss of great cheeseburgers, morning coffee and a place to gather.
Leininger celebrated her 68th birthday Saturday and though she lost her business, she is looking forward.
“It’s just stuff and luckily no one was hurt. I look at it like an adventure to start a new career,” she said.
