This pagoda-like structure casts a dark reflection in a nearby puddle, perhaps because its useful days are gone. There was a time, when the coal chute's concrete legs weren't chipped and surrounded by a crop of weeks, that this was the center of…
This Illinois Central Coal chute may well have been one of the first high-rise structures in Council Bluffs. Its use discontinued about 1954, a railroad employe[sic] said. The tall building was used to feed coal to hungry steam engines, and a few…