Newcastle’s Christian Church and the Home Hotel

By Bri Brasher 
with Leonard Cash
NLJ Reporter 
 
The History on Main Series with Leonard Cash continues this week with Cash’s research and writing on the Christian Church in Newcastle. The church once stood where the Weston County Law Enforcement Center is now. As stated in last week’s News Letter Journal, the Christian denomination came to the Newcastle area in 1896. Most of Cash’s research on the Christian Church was compiled in the early 1990s. 
Continuing on into 1905, Cash wrote:
The members tried to keep the church going and by 1905, the Christian Endeavor group of the church had 55 members and was in flourishing condition under the leadership of Miss Carrie Ray. The young girls had a group that was called the Jolly Nine.
In July 1906, Rev. J.A. Banty of Ten Sleep came for a couple of weeks to check on the business interests of the church. From then on, the church kind of just faded away, and by March of 1913, the building had been abandoned and W.A. (Bud) Zook put a steam laundry in it. 
According to a Feb. 13, 1913, article in the News Letter Journal, the steam laundry owned and operated by W.A Zook was to open the next month. The laundry was expected to prove profitable because Zook was said to be an experienced laundry man. Cash said Zook took a break from the laundry business to engage in the agricultural industry, and he lived near Buckhorn during that time. It was only with the opening of the new laundry that Zook and his family moved back to town. Cash added that the business was called Newcastle Steam Laundry. 
Zook’s laundry was originally supposed to open in the building of D.A. Fawkle, according to the February 1913 news article, though Cash does not know where that building was located, and the News Letter Journal did not specify. Nonetheless, plans must have changed because the next article in the News Letter Journal, published on March 13, 1913, said that the laundry was moving into the old Christian Church. The article said that nearly all the necessary machinery had been moved in, and the machinery was all of the latest improved style. 
The next reports on the laundry came in April 1913 when it was announced that there was a delay in the remaining equipment’s arrival, though the News Letter Journal reported that Zook still maintained his customer service by contracting out to the Superior Laundry, a service out of town. The exact location was not specified, but Cash said that many stores in town sent their washing to a business in Sheridan before getting laundry service in Newcastle, so he suspects Zook did the same. Newcastle’s full-service steam laundry was up and running by April 24, 1913, in the old church building, as reported in the News Letter Journal. 
Then, on Nov. 18, 1915, Mrs. W.A. Zook and the family told the News Letter Journal that she and the family would travel to Crawford, Nebraska, to join Mr. Zook for the winter where he had opened another laundry. During their absence in Newcastle, the laundry was leased to Neil Morgan. 
Mrs. Zook came back to Newcastle from Crawford to look into a matter at the Newcastle laundry, according to the local news. This same year, Cash wrote of other new events at the laundry.
In 1916, Mr. Zook had built a building next to it (the old church/laundry) and moved out. In May 1916, William Poe had moved his carpentry shop and vulcanizing outfit into the church building.
The News Letter Journal then reported on June 27, 1918, that Mrs. Zook sold her resident property and the laundry to W.E. Holwell, and she returned to Crawford. The next month, the paper reported that Holwell was in the process of remodeling both properties to be used as residences. Mr. Tim Nolan Jr. was to occupy the residence that was formerly the laundry, while Mr. and Mrs. Ed Knapp would occupy the Zook family’s former home. The church property must have been leased from the church all those years, as Cash then continued his writings with the official sale of the property. 
In March 1920, church trustees I.C. Newlin, A.M. Nelsons, and W.H. Kilpatrick sold the property to August Piana and Mrs. D. Aimonetto for $1,000 (Cash said the two were brother and sister). A contract was signed by Statter and Miller for the erection of a modern 16-room house on the site of the old Christian Church on Summit Street. The roof was taken off of the church and a second story was added to the structure. Gus Piana had the building erected. Later, it was turned into an apartment house.
Cash added to his initial research stating that Piana remodeled the building to be used as a hotel with 16 rooms, and the hotel was called the Home Hotel. The address was 25 N. Summit Ave. Cash said Piana leased the business out to several different managers over the years before it was turned into an apartment house. The building suffered a fire in 1935, and the News Letter Journal reported that the damage was estimated as very light. Apparently, oil-soaked rags were left on the floor of the basement, and the heat from the furnace caused the rags to ignite. A few years later, the hotel switched to an apartment building, though the apartments maintained the same name. The exact date of the switch is unknown to Cash, though he suspects the change was made in the late 1940s or early 1950s during an oil boom. Cash’s writings state:
The building remained in these families until Mrs. Aimonetto’s (Shoemaker) daughter and husband, Mary and Lee Haynes, sold it to the county for the law complex building in Sept. of 1982. 
“Lee Haynes was a real estate agent. Him and Jim Piana had A-1 Agency. I think Jim was a cousin of Mary’s, but I’m not sure,” Cash said.
Cash explained that Mrs. Aimonetto was first married to Pete Aimonetto—he passed away and she married Shoemaker. He said that when the county bought the building from Mary and Lee, they also bought the remainder of Block 8. The city owned City Hall, but the county purchased all of the privately owned property on the block around the same time as the apartments. The county then tore down the apartment building, and constructed the Weston County Law Enforcement Center that is still used today.
With the old Christian Church’s timeline complete, we return to the church’s happenings outside of the building. Cash wrote the following:
The ladies continued meeting in each others’ homes trying to keep the church going. On March 21, 1934, they elected officers. Mrs. Margaret Babbage was elected President, Mrs. Frank Roberts was elected Vice-President, Mrs. Nellie Thoeming was Secretary, and Mrs. Jennie Kirkwood was elected Treasurer. At this point, there was $400 in their savings and $15 in their checking account.
At the Oct. 6, 1937, meeting, they paid for flowers and a telegram that they sent for the late Rev. Green. The balance of their checking account – $11.65 – was donated to the Red Cross.
The Feb. 19, 1938, meeting was held at the home of Mrs. Jennie Kirkwood. The sum of $400 was put into the Missionary Society Trust Fund for a period of 10 years. This was the last official meeting of the Christian Church.
It was not until this research was being done that the present First Christian Church knew that they were of the same branch of Campbellites. 
Cash added that the Rev. Ed Hoff came to Newcastle around 1950 and started the Church of Christ, yet no one knew that the two churches were connected back to the Campbellites. Hoff held services in the front of his home until the new church on Cambria Street was built in the late 1950s, early 1960s. Hoff left and several other ministers came through Newcastle. The dance school on Cambria Street sits in the church building. The church then moved to a new location below the Anna Miller Museum—The Church on the Hill. 
Even though it has been reported that the Church of Christ recently merged with the Church on the Hill, a nondenominational church in the Newcastle community, Cash said that most people thought the Christian Church, the First Christian Church and the Church of Christ did not stem from the same roots. In fact, he said, they all originated from the Campbellites. Cash explained that the Campbellites were founded by Alexander Campbell in 1841. The Campbellites are a religious group with historic roots in the Restoration Movement. The original Campbellites were Scots-Irish immigrants, and the reform effort was led by Alexander and his father, Thomas.