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Built October 1960; grand opening 2 January 1961
The laundry firm behind a bibliography line is real, dated, and dug here to the strength of the record. The Commercial District nomination's bibliography attests the hometown source: "New Building to House Laundry," North Liberty News, 6 October 1960. The nomination's resource entry for 103 West Center Street (Modern Speed Wash, 1960, contributing) supplies the course: work began in October 1960; the laundry opened just before year-end 1960, with grand opening on 2 January 1961; it was built by Modern Electric, the firm of the preceding article; its equipment ran coin-operated washers and dryers, folding tables, electric irons, and soda coolers; and a contemporary newspaper article sited it near "the new supermarket, drugstore, gas station, and post office" — the 1960 rebuilding of the town's trade in one sentence. The nomination's narrative confirms: "Also in 1960 a new coin operated laundry opened at 103 West Center Street." Six years on, an unnamed "Coin-Operated Laundry and Dry Cleaning, Open 24 Hrs., Lady Attendant 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., Monday thru Saturday" advertises in the 1967 yearbook — the only coin laundry in town on any carrier, the identification with 103 West Center printed as probable, not proven. The lot's own sequence is the corner's whole history in miniature: a concrete-block livery built about 1905 stood here, gone by 1917, the ground later carrying the Ford sales and garage of the dealerships leg. The wash's fate is a present-day negative: no laundry or dry cleaner appears on the current town links list, and the 1960 building's present occupant at 103 West Center is Country Taco — the wash building's ground now carrying a restaurant.