By CHUCK OFFENBURGER

JEFFERSON, Iowa, Sept. 26, 2026 — A key part of local history is going to be celebrated here in one of my hometowns on Sunday, Oct. 4, at 4 p.m. at the Centennial Café on the northwest corner of the Greene County Courthouse square.

You’re all invited. There’ll be light refreshments and no charge. You, and especially those of you who care about small towns in Iowa, need to see what Jefferson has done. And how it does things.

What we’re celebrating at this event is the 150th anniversary of the “Centennial Block” building uptown. Yes, it was built in 1876, and was named in honor of the nation’s centennial that year. It’s one of the two or three oldest commercial buildings here.

The Centennial Block building in Jefferson, with today’s Centennial Cafe on the ground floor. (Photo from “Why Not Us” owners group)

The building’s owners, a group of 73 mostly-local women who organized as “Why Not Us,” are hosting the celebration. They’re not just going to tell how the Centennial Block building came to be built, share photos, display artifacts and show you around.

They’re going to “bring the building’s history to life,” as they’ve announced.

They’ve booked several local people — and some are characters themselves day in and day out — to re-enact the stories of the developer from long-ago, as well as some of the first and most notable business tenants. They’re calling the program “If These Walls Could Talk.”

If indeed the east wall of the 2-story building could talk, it probably would tell a jaw-dropping story from the days right after February 5, 2019.

That is when the City of Jefferson’s building & zoning officer Nick Sorensen climbed to the upstairs, inspecting horrendous damage after a frozen water pipe burst in an unoccupied apartment. An estimated 44,000 gallons of water cascaded through the building, essentially destroying the fine, very popular Angie’s Tea Garden restaurant on the ground floor.

“I was upstairs in that apartment, and I just happened to push a little on the east brick wall of the building,” Sorensen told me. “Honestly, it kind of wavered, like it could have fallen anytime on that one-story Henkel building next door,” which houses an accounting service. “So in a way, all that water damage was a blessing, because it made us realize how much of that building needed work if it was ever going to be usable again.”

Was there consideration then of just tearing down the Centennial Block building?

“No,” said Sorensen. “We’d already done a lot of improvements around our square. Main Street Iowa says Jefferson has one of four ‘complete’ town squares in the state that haven’t lost any of the original buildings. We were already determined ‘we aren’t losing a tooth in our smile,’ as we said back then.”

Sorensen, a former policeman in his hometown of Exira and then in Jefferson, too, had learned construction skills from his late grandfather Charlie Sorensen, of Audubon, who years ago led a group of teenagers in local building repairs. When Nick was all grown up, a pro and leading renovation efforts in Jefferson, he once told me, “I’m not scared of old buildings.”

How it looked in its early years, and note the number of steps leading up from the sidewalk. (Photo from “Why Not Us” owners group)

It is at this point I want to share my new nickname for the Centennial Block building. I’ve come to think of it as “The House of Five Miracles.”

—First miracle, that way back in 1875 and ’76, the Head brothers — among the founders of Jefferson — decided to help their friend Charles Bofink from the western Iowa town of Dunlap, build the special new business facility here and open “The City Bank” in it. Bofink brought the lumber he used from his lumberyard in Dunlap and bought bricks from a brickyard in our neighbor town of Grand Junction.

—Second miracle, in 1928, the owner of the building decided that the half-dozen steps up from street level to the door of the first-floor businesses, were inconvenient and inaccessible for some. Electricity was available by then, so basement windows weren’t necessary to allow light to enter there. Two or three businesses in the basement were closed. “Jacks” were installed down there, and over a period of at least weeks, the whole building was slowly “lowered” by workmen adjusting the jacks “a quarter-turn a day.” The businesses on the main and second floors kept operating the whole time.

—Third miracle, the 2019 water disaster, happened on a weekend when a major winter storm, with ice, shut down Jefferson from Friday night until Tuesday, Feb. 5, when restaurant owner Angie Peterson arrived and found the wreckage. No one was hurt and, despite how bad the damage was, the building could be saved.

—Fourth miracle, in the fall of 2019, four friends Peg Raney, Deb McGinn, Jacque Andrew and Shirley Stapleton, started talking over coffee about how, without Angie’s Tea Garden, tour buses had stopped bringing visitors to Jefferson, as they had for years. “We all kept saying, ‘When is somebody going to take that building and do something with it?’ ” said McGinn. The conversations spread among other friends and, in a subsequently meeting called “for women who might be interested,” one participant Sandy Drewry had an answer about who could do something about that damaged building. “Well,” Drewry said, according to McGinn, “why not us?”

—Fifth miracle, as we head into this celebration set for Oct. 4, the “Why Not Us” LLC (limited liability company) now consists of 73 women, ranging in age from the 40s to the 90s, have each invested at least $5,000, with no expectation of dividends or other financial rewards. I’m proud to report my wife Mary Riche is one of them. Their investments, with another $20,000+ in donations from the “Friends of Why Not Us,” who can be anybody and any amount, have helped woo hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants from governments and non-profits. “Why Not Us” has now put $1.2 million into buying the Centennial Block from the City of Jefferson, paying for a total renovation, assisting two younger women (first Sara Ostrander, now Bailey Porter) in opening and operating the Centennial Café, and most recently completing the renovation upstairs of two nice one-bedroom apartments that are both occupied.

That cafe, which is now open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on weekdays, has quickly become a favorite of locals and visitors alike. It features three breakfast items, and, of course, soups, salads, sandwiches and wraps, and save room for dessert! Features of those are lemon cream pie, large Scotcheroos, bread pudding and their caramel apple cake may be the “signature” dessert. Occasional evening dinners, like a “French cuisine night,” are being planned, reflecting Porter’s extensive travels and culinary experiences.

Three of those who started “Why Not Us” — left to right Deb McGinn, Jacque Andrew, Peg Raney. They were together in Des Moines last week to pick-up an award from the Iowa Architectural Foundation for their organization’s work on the Centennial Block building in Jefferson. (Photo from “Why Not Us” owners group)

Wow! A celebration is certainly in order. And it’s about so much more than a building being 150 years old.

What does Jefferson’s “Centennial Block” building now symbolize? What are its lessons for other communities dealing with historic but dilapidated old buildings?

“Well, it’s a really good symbol of resilience,” said Deb McGinn. “And it’s a reminder about keeping the past but being geared to the future. It also shows a difference between men and women. We women are not getting any payback for what we’ve put into this. Doing something for the greater good of Jefferson, while we’re living here, makes us happy. Men always want a ‘ROI’ — a financial return on their investment. I tell guys, this should be a challenge. Can’t you at least get us a bakery?”

Nick Sorensen, the former Jefferson building and zoning inspector, now an administrator of workforce and historic tax credits for the Iowa Economic Development Authority, said when it comes to deciding if you’re going to try to save an old business property, “instead of looking at things as ‘challenging,’ flip it. Start seeing them as ‘opportunities.’ With challenges, too often there’s only one path. With opportunities, there are multiple paths.”

I asked Mike Palmer, the retired city administrator who oversaw the Centennial Block miracle in Jefferson, if, in retrospect, such a project is worth it. “It definitely is,” he said. “You have to have the right people at the right time — and Jefferson was all of that. It was such a big, long-term project, but our city council was agreeable to it, they could see the benefits. And when the work was happening and people could see that it could be done, they started having more hunger for ‘What can we do next?’ ”

Peg Raney, the key community leader who rallied people to the cause, said “the moral of our story is that people working together can do great things. You bring together people with different backgrounds, experiences and expertise who want to do something good for the community. And there has to be an element of trust. People have to accept and be OK with decisions that a board of directors will be making. And maintaining communications is so important. You have to keep your people informed.”

The current Centennial Cafe owner-operator is Bailey Porter. (Photo by Coltrane Carlson, Raccoon Valley Radio)

Nick Sorensen, who is “not afraid of old buildings.” (Photo by author)

Mike Palmer, the city administrator, now retired, who oversaw a lot of the renovation and re-development of the Courthouse square business district in Jefferson. (Photo by Margaret Hamilton, Greene County Historical Society)

Note the details and faces on the “Victorian window hoods” above the windows of the Centennial Block building. (Photo by author)

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