Commercial Buildings Archives - Page 49 of 75

Market Street, Portsmouth, NH

August 4, 2015 by Derek Strahan

Looking north on Market Street from the corner of Daniel Street at Market Square in Portsmouth, around 1914-1920. Historic image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

Market Street in 2015:

These photos show a view very similar to the ones in this post, and as was the case there, not much has changed here either. Market Street is located at the northeastern end of Market Square, and is lined with historic early 19th century commercial buildings on both sides, most of which were built in the immediate aftermath of several disastrous fires in the first couple decades of the 19th century. These were constructed with fire safety in mind, with brick walls, slate roofs, and firewalls extending above the roofs between buildings. Most of this street was destroyed in a 1802 fire, and the buildings on the left were built by 1807, when Daniel Webster opened his law office on the second floor of either the building with the yellow storefront or the one beyond it with the maroon awning.

The fireproofing efforts seem to have been successful, because this street was already considered historic when the first photo was taken. Today, a century after the first photo was taken, and two centuries after most of the buildings were built, everything from the first photo is still there. Even one of the businesses is still there: Alie Jewelers on the far right side, which was established in 1914 and provides the earliest possible date for the first photo.

Market Square, Portsmouth, NH

August 4, 2015 by Derek Strahan

Looking northeast in Market Square in Portsmouth, facing Market Street, around 1902. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

Market Square in 2015:

These views show part of Portsmouth’s historic Market Square, which as the photos suggest hasn’t changed much in well over a century. In fact, it would require going back nearly 200 years, before the invention of photography, to notice much of a difference here. The area around Market Square has been the commercial center of Portsmouth since the 1700s, when the seaport town was rapidly growing as a major port and shipbuilding center. Its heyday came in the early 1800s, with many historic buildings surviving from this time period, including much of this scene here.

Portsmouth was hit with several disastrous fires in the early 1800s, including one in 1802 that destroyed most of Market Square. The area was soon rebuilt with brick commercial blocks, many of which survive today, including the Portsmouth Athenaeum building on the far left. The distinctive building was completed in 1805 as the home offices of the New Hampshire Fire & Marine Insurance Company, but the company went bankrupt just eight years later because of the effect that the War of 1812 had on the New England shipping industry. The Athenaeum, a private library and museum, purchased the building in 1823, and it has been there ever since as one of the few remaining private membership libraries in the country.

Today, Portsmouth is no longer a major shipping center, and hasn’t been for a long time. With the Industrial Revolution of the early 1800s, much of New Hampshire’s industry moved from shipping to manufacturing, and the inland mill towns became the state’s centers of economic activity. By 1900, the population of Concord and Nashua was five and ten times larger, respectively, than it had been in 1830. In Manchester, the increase was even more dramatic, growing from 877 people in 1830 to over 56,000 in 1900. Meanwhile in Portsmouth, the population had grown by just 32%, with virtually no population change at all between 1850 and 1890. However, little population change also meant little development projects, which is part of the reason why the Portsmouth of today has so many historic early 1800s buildings, including virtually the entire scene here. By my count there are 14 buildings in the first photo, and all 14 still exist today, which is exceedingly rare to find in a 113 year old street view of the commercial center of a city. The only building that doesn’t appear in the 2015 scene is the one on the far right, at the corner of Pleasant and Daniel Streets. It is still there, but I couldn’t fit it in the frame of my camera.

West on Merrimack Street, Lowell, Mass

July 29, 2015 by Derek Strahan

The view looking west on Merrimack Street from Kearney Square, around 1908. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

Merrimack Street in 2015:

These views show the same section of Merrimack Street as the ones in this post, just from the opposite direction. This area has long been the commercial center of the city, and it saw significant development in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Since then, however, there haven’t been many major changes, so this stretch of Merrimack Street is lined on both sides with a number of historic buildings, including three prominent ones that appear in both of these photos: the Colonial Building (1906) on the far left, the Wyman’s Exchange (c.1880) just beyond it, and the massive Hildreth Building (1882) on the opposite side of the street.

The Colonial Building is one of the newest buildings in this scene, and in the 1908 photo it looks like the finishing touches aren’t complete yet, because the storefront windows are still covered in paper. It was built on the site of Barristers’ Hall, a church-turned-lawyer’s office that had been built in 1843 and burned down in 1905. The owner, Joseph L. Chalifoux, was a clothing merchant who rebuilt the site and leased the new building to Nelson’s, a five and ten cent store that was probably in the process of opening when the first photo was taken. Since then, the building was expanded in 1929, and has continued to house retail space and commercial offices, enjoying a prominent location on the corner of Merrimack and Central Streets.

On the other side of Central Street is Wyman’s Exchange, which replaced an earlier building of the same name that was built in the 1830s. Over the years, a number of businesses have used the storefronts along the Central and Merrimack Street sides, with the upper floor being used for professional offices such as lawyers, doctors, and dentists. The one major change that has occurred since the first photo was taken was the addition of a fifth and sixth floor atop the original building. The upper floors match the rest of the building, and it was probably done soon aftert he first photo was taken. Today, aside from being taller by 50 percent, the building retains much of its historic appearance.

The Hildreth Building was built in several stages between 1882 and 1884, beginning with the part closest to the camera. One of the building’s first tenants was S & H Knox and Company, a five-and-dime store that was still operating out of the building on the left-hand side when the 1908 photo was taken. Within a few years, the owner of the company would merge with his cousins’ stores to form F.W. Woolworth. The storefront on the other side was the home of King’s, a clothing company that asks prospective customers “Why not give us a try?” in a sign over one of the windows. In 1908, the east side of the building featured a large advertisement for Uneeda Biscuit, made by the National Biscuit Company. The biscuits are no longer made today, but the company has since shortened their name to Nabisco, and they still use a variation of the logo seen on the sign.

East on Merrimack Street, Lowell, Mass

July 29, 2015 by Derek Strahan

Merrimack Street in Lowell, looking east from the corner of Kirk Street around 1908. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

Merrimack Street in 2015:

The city of Lowell was once one of the major manufacturing centers in the country, and for much of the 19th century it was the state’s second largest city. This section of Merrimack Street became the commercial center of the prosperous city, but by the mid 20th century most of the factories had closed, the population declined, and there wasn’t much economic development in the downtown area. From a historical preservation perspective, this actually worked out, because today’s Merrimack Street includes a number of historic late 19th century commercial buildings that may have otherwise been demolished and redeveloped. The city has since undergone a revitalization, thanks in part to the creation of the Lowell National Historical Park and the growth of UMass Lowell.

Among the many historic buildings that survive from the original photo, probably the most prominent is the Bon Marche Building, the large yellow brick building on the left. It actually consists of two 19th century buildings, with the section on the far right having been built around 1874. The much larger section was built in 1892, and was the home of the Bon Marche department store. In 1927, the department store expanded, with a matching addition on the left-hand side that gave the building a little more symmetry. The addition replaced the much smaller brick building that had the large “Bon Marche” sign on the front in the 1908 photo. The Bon Marche closed in 1976, and the space was used by the Jordan Marsh department store until it too closed in the 1990s. Today, the building is home to the UMass Lowell Bookstore and several other businesses, but there is at least one reminder left from its past – the faded paint of the white sign on the top of the 1927 addition, which reads “The Bon Marche.”

Other historic buildings include the 1846 Welles Block, visible on the far left. (The 2015 photo was taken from a little further back, so more of the building can be seen in it than in the 1908 photo.) In the distance at the center of the photo is the Runels Building, also known as the Fairburn Building. It was built around 1892 for retail and office space, and in 2004 the upper floors were renovated and converted into condominium units. On the right-hand side of the street, probably the most obvious surviving building is the 1893 Middlesex Safe Deposit and Trust Company Building, another one of many commercial buildings on Merrimack Street that was built in the 1890s. The building, with its distinctive oval window on the side, is at the corner of Merrimack and Palmer Streets, and over the years has been used as a bank and as a fur company. Today, the exterior of the building is well-preserved, and the retail space on the ground floor is a bakery.

Main Street, Laconia, NH

July 31, 2016July 28, 2015 by Derek Strahan

Looking north on Main Street in Laconia at the intersection of Pleasant Street, probably in 1907. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

Main Street in 2015:

As far as I can tell, only one building from the first scene survives today: the brick building on the left side of Main Street, just to the right of the center in both photos. As was the case in many other parts of the country during the 1960s, a number of Laconia’s historic downtown buildings were destroyed as part of an urban renewal project. However, the most prominent building in the first scene, the Eagle Hotel, was gone before then. It enjoyed a prominent location right at the intersection of Main and Pleasant Streets, and was just a block away from the railroad station. Around the time that the first photo was taken, it was one of Laconia’s most popular hotels (and, at $2.50 a day, one of its most expensive as well). By the 1950s, the former hotel had been demolished and replaced by Woolworth’s, as seen in some of the pre-urban renewal photos featured on this Weirs Beach website. Today, the site is occupied by a one story brick building with commercial storefronts. This might be the same building that Woolworth’s was once in, but if so it has been heavily modified over the years.

Part of the urban renewal projects involved changing some of the traffic patterns in downtown Laconia. Today, Main Street south of here (behind the photographer) is a narrow, single lane one way street that carries northbound traffic. The buildings on the left-hand side of the street in that section extend about 40 feet closer to the center of the road than the pre-renewal buildings did. In this scene, the road is as wide as it was a century ago, but it still has just one way northbound traffic, with angled on-street parking taking up what was once the southbound travel lane. Pleasant Street is now one way, southbound, and any traffic on the street must circle around the former Woolworth’s site and head back north on Main Street.

Although the first scene is mostly deserted, there are a few interesting things going on. The man on the far left appears to be a street sweeper; he is pushing what looks like a large, wheeled canvas bag while holding a broom and probably a pick. He is looking at the ground, and it seems like he is about to walk into the path of the oncoming trolley. The trolley has a handbill on the front, advertising for “Adrift in New York,” which would be showing at the Moulton Opera House on Tuesday, September 17. The Library of Congress estimates that the this photo was taken in 1908, but September 17 fell on a Tuesday in 1907, so the photo was probably taken in early to mid September of that year. Plays weren’t the only form of entertainment that was available at the Moulton Opera House, though; a sign on the sidewalk reads “Don’t Fail to See the Great Moving Pictures Tonight.” The “moving pictures” would have been early silent films, most of which were not preserved and have long since been lost to history. Likewise, the trolleys have been lost to history; the Laconia Street Railway shut down in 1925 amid growing competition from cars and buses.

Main Street, Plymouth, NH (1)

July 27, 2015 by Derek Strahan

The east side of Main Street in Plymouth, seen from the corner of Court Street around 1908. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

Main Street in 2015:

The first photo shows a town center in transition. On the far left is an old house, which probably dates to the early 1800s. This was likely one of many that once lined Main Street, but over time they were replaced with brick commercial blocks, like the 1898 Rollins Building that appears in the center of both photos. Eventually, the house would be demolished and replaced by more commercial storefronts, which today make up the bulk of the east side of Main Street in the downtown area. The days were also numbered for the Pemigewasset House, the hotel seen in the distance on the right side of the photo. It was built in 1863 and burned down in early 1909, probably less than a year after the photo was taken.

Aside from the transition from residential to commercial buildings on Main Street, we also see changes in transportation. The wood-framed commercial block just to the right of the Rollins Building has a sign out front that reads “Automobiles Stop Here for Gasolene,” and there is at least one car in the scene, on the far right. However, the photo also includes several horse-drawn carriages that would have had no use for the “gasolene,” and would have instead used the watering trough in the middle of the street in the center of the photo.

Today, all of the buildings are gone except for the Rollins Building. When the first photo was taken, the left storefront was the Fred W. Brown drugstore, which according to the sign on the left side of the building offered “Lowney’s Chocolate Bonbons.” The storefront to the right was a market, and tables of produce can be seen under the awning. More than a century later, the building is still used as a grocery store, the Chase Street Market.