A name you remember. A building you pass. A story you want to know. Explore our growing collection of Hooper history.
61 published stories · 20 tour stops · 748 source references · Growing with every discovery
Matching passages and citation notes from our published collection.
The name Brickyard Hill remembers work that has largely disappeared from view. Where the self-guided tour now points to a house and a residential subdivision, Hooper once had clay pits, drying sheds, kilns and a rail connection for shipping finished brick. The photographs preserve the workers as well as the buildings: men standing behind loaded carts, with the company’s name written across the picture.
The house at 302 North Nebraska Street has two named chapters in Hooper’s self-guided tour. The Historical Committee says it was built in 1934 for Ernest M. and Marguerite Luther and sold in 1969 to Dr. William G. and Mona M. Heusel. Those names lead beyond a property transaction to local clubs, veterans’ service and family medicine.
The 2026 self-guided tour identifies it at 103 West Howard Street. Its history reaches from railroad travel in the nineteenth century to a family restaurant and bar in the twentieth, with several changes of ownership and one short-lived name that might surprise people who remember only the Inn: the Peppermint Steakhouse.
In “Coming together as Redeemer”
The old Grace property continued to change under its new congregation. The self-guided tour dates a parsonage south of the church to 1960 and describes a passage linking the two basements. Those improvements came after the merger: they belong to Redeemer’s years at the former Grace site.
In “1875–1909: classrooms, a school hill and a fire”
The school sites remain part of Hooper’s self-guided history tour. The hilltop site and the later Maple and Park school grounds represent different stages of the story.
