321 Steele Street · Algoma, Wisconsin
The Wilbur Building
Before it was Yonder, it was a photographer’s building. In 1891 — the year still cut into the keystone at the top of the facade — George Wilbur raised a two-story block of Italianate cream brick on Steele Street and put his camera on the top floor: a gallery and reception rooms lit by a great north-facing skylight, the kind of steady, shadowless light a portrait photographer builds a whole studio to catch.
Below him, at street level, a drug store. That pairing — apothecary below, image-making above — held for the better part of a century.
Wilbur had bought out Frank McDonald’s photograph gallery in 1888 and, three years later, built a home worthy of it. Upstairs he made portraits; downstairs, a run of druggists kept the corner in blood tonics and pink pills and, by 1904, a soda fountain. The town library even shelved its books here for a spell.
The camera stayed on the second floor until 1936, when the studio finally became an apartment. Down below, the fountain and the shop kept on: Lindy’s Confectionary and its ice cream through the mid-century, then, in 2003, The Crow’s Nest — an antique shop and soda fountain whose owners, the story goes, kept it looking much as it had a hundred years before.
In 2019 the building changed hands again, to two artists. A place built for making pictures had come back around to making art — murals, puppets, prints, and the odd wonder — under the same brick and the same northern light.
A brief timeline
- 1866 A frame shoe shop — the first Reinhart store — stands on the site, west of where the brick building will rise.
- 1888 George Wilbur, a photographer, buys Frank McDonald’s photograph gallery.
- 1891 Wilbur raises his two-story cream-brick block — a photographic gallery upstairs under a north-facing skylight, a drug store below.
- 1896 The Ahnapee Drug Co. takes the basement and first floor; the druggists come and go for the next sixty years.
- 1904 A soda fountain is installed — the building’s long second life as a gathering place begins.
- 1905 For a time, the town library keeps its shelves here.
- 1936 The upstairs photo studio — a working gallery since 1891 — is converted to an apartment.
- 1953 Lindy’s Confectionary moves in: ice cream, magazines, and newspapers for the next two decades.
- 2003 Nancy and George Vierling open The Crow’s Nest, an antique shop and soda fountain.
- 2019 Don Krumpos and Erin LaBonte make it Yonder Art Land — a photographer’s building, an artists’ building once more.
A note on the record
On the date. The building wears its own answer: 1891 is carved into the keystone at the top of the facade, matching the Kewaunee County Historical Society’s records and the deed chain. (A 1970s state architectural survey lists 1881 — likely a mix-up with the 1879 Reinhart Building a few doors down — but the stone has the last word.)
On the sources. This account is drawn from a Kewaunee County Historical Society local-history file, the Algoma Main Street Historic Walking Tour, and the Wisconsin Architecture & History Inventory (where the building is recorded as an Italianate cream-brick structure, AHI #26562). The deed chain runs back to the 1858 Youngs & Steele plat.
Do you know this building? A hundred and thirty years leave more stories than any file folder holds. If you bought ice cream at Lindy’s, sat at the fountain, lived in the upstairs apartment, or have photographs or memories of 321 Steele in any of its lives — we would love to hear from you. Get in touch →