The Sioux City Walking Tour

I thought that this weekend would be a good weekend for the Sioux City Walking Tour. At the museum, I found a few brochures that had maps and “historical areas” in Sioux City. It was cold at the time, so I filed them away for a sunny say. The weather finally turned decent recently-- after snow on April 25th, I was starting to wonder.

So I took the maps off the shelves, dusted them off, and had a look. My first thought was that wandering around looking at what really is a bunch of identical buildings wouldn't be very interesting. I looked at one in particular on the corner of Nebraska and 3rd and thought “Hey, wait a minute, I have been to this corner about a zillion times and I have never seen that building before.” It was then that I noticed the fine print: “Buildings in italics are no longer in existence.” Great. Of the 16 buildings that I am supposed to trek around the city to look at, only 5 of them exist and one of those is the warehouse district-- famous, yes-- famous for it's smell.

And let me give you a sample of the “historical” narrative that this pamphlet boasts. Here is the listing for one of the remaining buildings: The Warrior Hotel on the corner of 6th and Nebraska.

Warrior Hotel, 1955 Constructed as the Fontenelle Hotel in 1930, it was known as the Warrior Hotel by the time it opened in 1931. Omaha hotel magnate Eugene C. Eppley purchased the Warrior during the mid-1930's. Eppley hotels sold the Warrior to the Sheraton Corporation of America in 1956, after which time it was called the Sheraton-Warrior. In the late 1960s Sioux City contractors Jospeth and Frank Audino purchased the hotel and renamed it the Aventino Motor Inn. The building has been empty since 1972.

Oh sure, Kim, you are probably thinking, pick the most boring listing and of course it looks bad.Sadly, the rest of the listings are like this: a history of who bought and sold the building and a history of the various names and owners of the property. Some of the more exciting entries talk about elevators being rebuilt, but that really is the extent of it.

So, in other words, the best that Sioux City can do is to lead me on a tour of the city looking at where a bunch of rather drab and boring buildings used to be before they got torn down. Wonderful. Sign me up. Underground Tour, Seattle, watch out-- you've got some real competition here in Sioux City.