Cattle Bank

Illustration of the Cattle Bank Building from the 1858 Bowman Map.

Cattle Bank
102 E University Ave, Champaign
Building still standing as of 2022

In 1858, the Cattle Bank began operations in a two-story brick building that had been the temporary West Urbana location for a branch of the Grand Prairie Bank since 1856. It got its name by providing banking and loan services to the cattle raisers who drove their cattle to Champaign to ship them on the Illinois Central Railroad line to the Chicago beef market. However, the bank dissolved three years later (1861) due to a cattle baron importing cattle with hoof-and-mouth disease, causing the entire central Illinois cattle industry to collapse.

Advertisement for the Cattle Bank published in the Central Illinois Gazette, February 1, 1860.

The Cattle Bank Building post-fire still sporting the Heimlicher’s Sundries sign. Photograph taken in 1975.

Check issued May 11, 1861 from the Cattle Bank. The location on the check is listed as Champaign (late West Urbana), Ills.

Joan Severns displaying her Cattle Bank restoration plan. Champaign-Urbana Courier, May 26, 1978. Photograph by Gene Suggs.

The building was resurrected in 1865 by Nicholas Miller to be the site of his mineral water manufacturing, after which time it was leased as a drug store. It operated as the McGraw family grocery from 1893 to 1936 and William Kuesink’s local pharmacy from 1936 to 1951 before reaching its final commercial iteration as Heimlicher’s Sundries from 1951 to 1971.

Unfortunately, in 1971 a devastating fire swept through the premises, ending the sundries business and the practice of housing tenants in the building that had been in effect for 110 years. In 1975, the Preservation and Conservation Association of Champaign County (PACA) successfully added the Cattle Bank to the National Register of Historic Places. Joan Severns, Champaign City Council member and future Champaign mayor speared a campaign to save the building, and in 1978 her efforts were rewarded when the city purchased the building using funds from a federal Community Development grant. The building was renovated and housed the Champaign County Housing Authority. In 2002, the property found life once again when it became the new home for Champaign County History Museum. It remains the oldest standing commercial building in Champaign to this day.

The renovated Cattle Bank Building sitting proudly at the corner of E University Ave and N First Street, now housing the Champaign County History Museum. Photograph taken fall 2009.