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House moved from Lincoln Way
Unpublished Tribune photo from August 12, 1957

This house was moved last week from its location in the 400 block on Lincoln Way to make way for the new Goodyear Service Store.  The house was moved to a location about a mile south of Ames.  The new Goodyear store is scheduled for completion Oct. 31 and will vacate its downtown location at that time.

The photo looks southwest towards the huge house being removed from 402 Lincoln Way.  The Square Deal Oil Co. station at the corner of South Walnut and Lincoln Way is visible down the street in the distance.  Quite a few homes along the Ames Lincoln Way corridor were removed in the 1950s as the first step in the transition to a commercial area.  Van's Grocery at 404 Lincoln Way had already closed and the narrow structure moved to East Lincoln Way and abandoned, perhaps because of competition from the rather new Rushings Grocery nearby.  View photos of other Ames homes being relocated.

Vicky Hubby wrote to identify the police officer in the photo:
I am sending you a quick note about a picture that was in the Ames Paper a few weeks back. It was a picture of a house being moved to make room for a Goodyear Store on Lincoln Way in 1957.  There is a young police officer in the picture directing traffic. That police officer was my father, Clifford Ball. I thought it was him because of the way he had his hat tipped, so I called my mom and we looked on the website to get a better look and sure enough it is my dad!  Several members of my family were police officers in Ames.  Both the city force and the University force as well.

This portion of a 1920 Sanborn Insurance map shows the location of the house being moved.  The map also illustrates the many homes ("D" for domicile) that once lined Lincoln Way.  Of these houses, only the one at 403 Lincoln Way survivies today.