On occasion a true gem of a picture shows up and such is the case with the picture this week. Recently Arch Weigart purchased the Inez Leeper property and contents. In going through an old book he mace across this postcard picture of the west side of the square.
There are no dates anywhere on the card but from other pictures I think the picture can be dated rather closely. Somewhere along the line I seem to remember that street lights were placed around the square in Grant City in 1906. There does not appear to be any in the picture so that give us one date to use.
For those of you who have kept a file of the old pictures which have run in the Halfway Worth Mentioning columns you can make some interesting comparisons. The May 11, 1983 picture is also of the west side of the square but it is taken from the northwest corner of the square. That picture, taken about 1900, shows the north half of the street with very similar architecture. On page127 of the Worth County Centennial Book it shows the collapse of the buildings which were located where the Pixie Shop is now located. The caption says that those buildings collapsed in 1904.
Since the buildings that collapsed had been rebuilt it would seem that the picture running this week was most probably taken in 1905.
There are a lot of very interesting things to notice in this picture. Previously, the Lowry Building has appeared in two pictures. One was taken in 1982 and the other in 1888. In each of them the building was just the north half of the building as you see it in this picture. Notice how the south half which was added later matches the older part.
It appears also that none of the buildings on the south half of the street were the same as they are today. It appears that the building on the south end is sided with corrugated siding. Even with a magnifying glass I can't seem to make out the sign on the side of the building nor the one along the top front. The first word on the top sign is CORNER but that is as far as I can get with that one. The first word on the sign on the side seems to be WARNING.
A copy of this picture will be placed in the archives of the Worth County Historical Society and we express our appreciation to Arch Weigart for sharing the picture with us. I'm sure that there are other old treasures out there among the readership. The Historical Society would appreciate the opportunity to make a copy of them for our files and we would like to run some of them in this column.
Sometime in the not too distant future the county assessor is moving to larger quarters on the second floor of the courthouse and the Historical Society is going to occupy the area now occupied by the assessor. It will give the society a permanent place to store old pictures and printed material.
This is most likely repetitious of other information in the QRN but the Historical Society will not meet in January but plans to meet the first Sunday in February.