When these workmen climb down from their scaffold for the last time, the Roellich Building is going to look closer to the way it did in 1914. The building has been owned by Cash's Reality for many years. A facade grant from the federal government pays for about half of the restoration. |
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Old Town Building gets Face Lift
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
9 comments:
I told 'em to go easy on that building when they came into town on Monday at 8:00 a.m.
Vince, the man who owns the antique shop, said they're going to restore the clear glass windows above the display windows, just the way the windows are in the old photographs. Do you have any of those shots of the Jess Mason Store when it was in its glory days. 'Twould make a great "Then and Now" post.
I'll try to get to that after History Camp, J.C. I just ran across the Jess Mason pictures the other day trying to find a horse and buggy picture.
Vince found an old grocery store advertising poster in the wall during the work. He showed the kids who came by from History Camp!!Thanks, Vince!
You'd have to go back to the early teens or 1920s to see the glass skylights in the photos. I looked at the Jess Mason ones and they had billboards there in the 50s and 60s.
I remember hearing Jess Mason on the radio. He used to broadcast from a telephone booth outside his store. All I remember is the radio voice vowing to open or close the old barn door at the beginning and end of the show. He had a P.T.Barnum flair back when merchandising was fun. Carlson and Sherk was like that too: A "Museum of the World's Industry" according to their ads.
Ah, yes! In the 1920s, there was a museum display of historic artifacts from the Revolutionary and Civil Wars in the windows of the Carson and Sherk Store (on Railroad Street and burned down in 2000.)(Read more about it in the Vol. II Book)It is a real time travel piece.
Could it be possible that Sherwood's historically significant people were aware of how historically significant they really were?
By contrast, did most people living in the year 1 A.D. know that they were living in the most important year in the history of western civilization? I guess not! They left no record of how they felt about it.
Apparently our Old Sherwood Town people did leave a record of how they felt about the world they were living in, which June Reynolds is slowly and carefully learning to uncover. Good work June.
We know that at the turn of the last centuries (1800, 1900, and 2000)There was fear and trepidation about what would happen next. Everyone was so sensitive, that when a series of random earthquakes hit Oregon,in the early 1900s, people thought it was the "end of the earth." So what were people worried about in 2000??Remember?
Certain evangelists were worried that our base-10 numbering system was also followed by God. That meant something awesome would happen on December 31, 1999.
Many of us were worried about whether or not the clocks on the world's computers would successfully get from December 31,1999 to January 1, 2000 without crashing.
Nothing happened much. Except that we were better prepared for September 11, 2001 than we might have been.
Post a Comment