Historic Structures

Pittsfield East School, Pittsfield Illinois

East School was the first public school, as we know them today, built in Pittsfield. The contract price of the building was $35,000 for which bonds were sold. The actual cost amounted to $45,000. Leading citizens of the community, such as, Judge Chauncey L. Higbee, Colonel William Ross, and William A. Grimshaw, a lawyer, were the moving spirits toward construction of the building. The building was located in the northeast part of the city. The stone was brought from Joliet by way of the Illinois River and the brick was burned in Pittsfield. Construction was begun in 1861, interrupted by the Civil War, and completed in 1866. At the time it was considered as one of the largest and finest examples of a modern educational building.

Zoe Theatre, Pittsfield Illinois

The City of Pittsfield is located near the geographic center of Pike County, Illinois, and lies approximately 70 miles west of Springfield and 80 miles northwest of St. Louis, Missouri. The city was established in 1833 expressly for the purpose of being the new county seat. The city was named after Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and was home to John Hay, Abraham Lincoln's personal secretary, ambassador to England under President William McKinley, later Secretary of State for Theodore Roosevelt, and creator of the Open Door Policy in China. As county seat, the town was one of the various places in central Illinois where Abraham Lincoln practiced law as part of the circuit court, working on 34 cases between 1839 and 1852. Aside from being a center of government activity, Pittsfield's prosperity was closely linked to the rich agricultural business of Pike County, which led to the development of the city's large central commercial district. The district, with an impressive collection of primarily nineteenth-century buildings, including the imposing Pike County Courthouse (1894-95). The same year that the current courthouse was constructed saw completion of the K.P. Opera House at 120 South Madison Street. The opera house was converted to a movie house in the early 1900s, and was purchased in the 1920s by Clark Armentrout who refurbished the theatre by adding air conditioning and other amenities, and renamed it the Clark Theatre. The Clark Theatre entertained movie goers until 1950, when Armentrout renovated an existing auto parts store at 209 North Madison into a modern movie theatre, and named it Zoe after his granddaughter.

Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Depot, Plano Illinois

The Chicago, Burlington, & Quincy Railroad was one of the country's major railroad companies. Freight and passengers were being moved between Chicago and states to the west on the C. B. & Q. Railroad line, with the main tracks to and from Chicago going directly through Plano. The C. B. & Q. Depot was constructed of brick to replace the aging wooden depot and to provide a solid statement of support to the community of Plano from the railroad company. Plano was not built upon a river as its neighbors to the east, Yorkville and Oswego had been. Instead, it was built around the railroad. When the engineers from the Aurora Branch Railroad were making preliminary surveys, a route through Little Rock which was approximately five miles northwest of Plano, was considered. Lewis Steward suggested a route farther to the south would be less expensive and he promised to build a "good live town" for them, and it was done. Plano has often been called "The Child of Lewis Steward's Creation." Lewis Steward laid out the town, planted trees, set up provisions for a water works, and put in a grain elevator.

Rosecliff Mansion, Newport Rhode Island

Rosecliff is a fine representative in Newport of the later work of McKim, Mead & White, who had executed earlier residential commissions, and the Casino, there; but all in either the Queen Anne or Colonial Revival styles. This house shows the firm at work in the academic, neoclassical, and often eclectic or adaptive, manner for which they became widely known, (With other documents of the firm, the original drawings for Rosecliff are at the New York Historical Society.) It is also a good representative of the house of desired formal appearance, planned at the turn of the century especially for frequent and elegant entertaining according to the protocols of the era, and (very often French in architectural style and furnishings) which in the 1900s was wanted in Newport, in New York City, Lenox, Morristown, Chestnut Hill, Lake Forest etc. Such houses were built less to house a family than to accommodate large numbers of guests, to provide backgrounds for their graceful activities, their gowns and jewels. For this, a grand entrance and/or stair, a succession of salons, a dining room of size, and a ballroom were generally required. These spaces and their contents should be as imposing and beautiful as possible, and so (particularly when one could have a free-standing building) should be the facades encasing them. The facades could both please the arriving guests and also inform the passing public of the grandeur of the occupants and events within.

Claremont Mansion - The Trianon, Colorado Springs Colorado

The Trianon, also known as Claremont, was built by Mr. and Mrs. Charles Baldwin in 1906-1907. Baldwin was a well-known esthete from New York and Newport and Mrs. Baldwin was a Howbart, inheriting a fortune from Nevada gold, silver, and timber interests. The Baldwins came to Colorado Springs, as did many others, for their health and as a remedy in those days for TB. The Baldwins decided to make a real "eastern" showplace out in the West. General Palmer had already built a "castle", Glen Eyrie, but Palmer was a rather austere town founder and Glen Eyrie was not the sort of place where congenial and convivial people could congregate in the way they were doing in the east in the great mansions of Newport, along Fifth Avenue, and in North Carolina.

San Carlos Hotel, Pensacola Florida

The Pensacola Hotel Company, organized by J. M. Muldon, Sr., F. F. Bingham, George B. and Charles H. Hervey, P. K. Younge, John E: Stillman, H. L. Covington, F.C. Brent, T. A. Jennings, A. A. Fisher, Henry Hyer, Max Bear, W. S. Keyser, Sol Cahn, William Knowles, and John Merritt, constructed the building at the height of the "building boom" in Pensacola that lasted from 1906 to 1910. The San Carlos and the "building boom" reflected the optimism in progress, commercial growth, and prosperity that saturated Pensacola at the turn of the century. One visitor in Pensacola in about 1916 commented, "The taxi cab took us along a neat boulevard to an overgrown hotel on Palafox Street. It is known as the San Carlos and has a slightly Waldorfian manner, going in rather too extravagantly for marble pillars, palms, gold and gilt, steam heat, page boys, telephone girls, lounges, cigar stands, express elevators, and sky-scraper proportions. It did not seem possible that there could be a great enough floating population in Pensacola to warrant the magnificence of the hotel. It was built, we were told during Pensacola's boom....when the inhabitants of the little 'deep water city' were shouting themselves hoarse about her-miraculous growth and equally miraculous future. At that time superlatives ceased to be conversational olives and got to be the bread and butter of daily speech. A 'reasonable amount' of hotel wouldn't do for a city that was destined to be a 'largest port', a naval station, a manufacturing centre and a fashionable resort all rolled into one. So the towering San Carlos rose above Pensacola like a lonely mountain peak in the centre of a desert, a target for windstorms, and a symbol of the future." The San Carlos Hotel, constructed at a cost of $500,000 and standing seven stories high, opened on February 1, 1910, the first day of Mardi Gras. Encouragement for its construction came from both community and commercial interests. Hotel resources in Pensacola at that time were inadequate and the need for a "luxury" hotel that would make a favorable impression on businessmen and tourists, with the hope that they would return and invest in Pensacola, was needed. The hotel also provided a gathering place for the area's social elite, for dinner, for Mardi Gras balls, and for musical entertainment.

Stratford Shoal Lighthouse, Stratford Connecticut

Stratford Shoals Lighthouse is significant for its important place in the aids to navigation system in Long Island Sound, standing in the middle of the Sound as its other name, "Middle Ground," implies. The middle ground shoal had long been a hazard to shipping. Stratford Shoal Lighthouse replaced several earlier efforts to mark the hazard. In 1831 Congress appropriated $1,000.00 to erect a beacon on "the middle ground between Stratford and Crane Neck in Long Island Sound." A lightship was commissioned from a New York shipbuilder in 1837 for $8,500.00, to be positioned over the shoal; it had to be removed in 1866 and was replaced in 1868 with a new lightship. Ice floes were a formidable problem. The uncertainty of the lightship's mooring and its wavering beam during heavy weather finally made an investment of the magnitude of a masonry wave-washed tower justifiable to Congress in 1873.

LeClaire Hotel, Moline Illinois

Historically, as late as the 1910s, Davenport, Iowa, Rock Island and Moline comprised the Tri-Cities; as early as the 1930s, Rock Island, Moline and East Moline comprised, with Davenport, Iowa, what came to be called the Quad-Cities. Moline was the product of riverside development dating to the second quarter of the nineteenth century. The town sprang from the impoundment of a subsidiary branch of the Mississippi (Sylvan Slough) between 1837-1841. David B. Sears and associates' development of the water power potential between Arsenal Island and the Illinois shore shaped the character of the new town; it would thereafter be linked to industrial improvement. The original town plat surveyed in 1843 entailed about twenty blocks, its location now bounded by the river (north), Twelfth Street (west), Fifth Avenue (south), and Eighteenth Street (east). Moline's situation did not lend itself to exploiting the high level of nineteenth-century river traffic, with rapids separating the townsite from the main channel of the Mississippi. This impediment to navigation was mitigated by the excellent quality the town site had for mill seats, a factor quickly exploited by the construction of mills and manufacturing enterprises. In the mid-nineteenth century, the proliferation of water-powered mills led to the town's naming as Moline, a slight corruption of the French moulin, or mill town. The town was first incorporated as a village under Illinois law in 1848; its later incorporation as a city was completed in 1872. Through the mid-nineteenth century, the character of Moline took shape. A central business district formed along the wide northeast-southwest oriented boulevard called Main Street (now Third Avenue). By the 1880s this thoroughfare was lined with hotels, banks, shops, and public buildings. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, an increasingly industrial character overtook the area, and led prominent businessmen to establish a second enclave to the south on Fifth Avenue, as is detailed below. Both commercial districts were sustained by clients dependent on the growing industrial base of the town. In the second half of the nineteenth-century new industry sprang up along the mill strewn riverside, and it attracted manufacturing entrepreneurs, the most notable being John Deere, whose manufacturing enterprises came to play such a prominent role in the community's progress. Deere was drawn from his home in Grand Detour to this emerging industrial center in 1847. Credited with fabricating the first steel moldboard plow, Deere's farm implement business was officially incorporated as Deere and Company in 1864. Deere's business expanded, picking up numerous subsidiaries, and Deere and Company branched out into wagon building and plow and farm implement manufacturing. Moline's overall manufacturing sector grew as well, aided by the arrival of the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad and Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad in the second half of the nineteenth century. By the end of the first decade of the new century it was said:

J.C. Penney Building, Newberg Oregon

The J.C. Penney building was constructed in 1927 during a period of prosperity and economic growth. It was the first chain department store to establish a location in Newberg. After two decades without national competition, two other companies opened catalog shops within a block of the store. However, J. C. Penney was the only one to have an actual storefront with merchandise in the community. It remained in its original location on E. First Street for over 50 years. The J.C. Penney building property is part of the J.B. Rogers Land Claim, which was acquired by Walter Edwards from his father, Jesse Edwards, Newberg's "founding father." In December 1926, the heirs of Walter Edwards transferred this property as part of his estate. The 1/26/27 Newberg Graphic reported that C.J. Edwards received a consideration of $10.00 for the 104x80.6 parcel, which originally included this lot and the one to the west.

F.W. Woolworth Store, Lexington Kentucky

The F.W. Woolworth building is located in Lexington, Kentucky which is located in the center of Fayette county. Lexington is in the heart of the inner-Bluegrass region and serves as a commercial hub for the smaller towns that surround it. By the early twentieth century, Lexington's Main Street was well-established as the city's retail center and the entire region. Lexington's first Woolworth's opened in 1902 at 268 West Main Street. The Lexington store, #152, was located in an existing commercial structure. This was part of the corporate strategy in this early phase of expansion. In 1912 S.S. Kresge opened a store just two doors down from the Woolworth red front. These two stores co-existed with each other, bringing the dime store giants to Lexington. By the early 1940s, according to city directories, Lexington's central business district had eight department stores, two dime stores, and numerous specialty shops. To stimulate consumer interest during the Depression years, Lexington stores began modernizing their Main Street facades. Montgomery Wards and Sears revamped their stores in 1933 and 1934, respectively. Soon other stores were remodeling their storefronts with Art Deco and Streamline Moderne characteristics. World War II interrupted construction and remodeling activity, but it soon resumed after the war. The SS Kresge tore down its old store and rebuilt a new modern store in 1947. Woolworth's followed in the modernization campaign by constructing a new location at 106 W. Main Street in 1948. The Wolf Wile department store updated its image in 1949 but departed from the Deco aesthetic and instead chose to use the burgeoning International Style.

Brown-Proctoria Hotel, Winchester Kentucky

The Brown-Proctoria Hotel, situated at the corner of the crossing of Lexington Avenue and Main Street in downtown Winchester, the county seat of Clark County, was begun in 1904 during a period of expansion and growth in the town's history. The county's location at the foot of the Appalachian chain that runs through the eastern part of the state gave rise to great expectations that Winchester would participate in the development of east Kentucky and become the region's "gateway to the Kentucky mountains." Although these hopes went largely unrealized, there was sufficient traffic through the city to maintain the elegant hotel, which, for many years was the finest in the area. A massive block of Indiana limestone and granite brick trimmed with Colonial Revival detail, the structure strives toward a Beaux Art contemporary ideal of power and easily dominates the Lexington-Main intersection. The interior also contains many fine details, such as marble wainscotting, mosaic tiles, and Victorian woodwork. Winchester, located on the old Lexington Mt. Sterling turnpike, was established in 1793, following Clark County's formation in 1792, the year Kentucky became a state. The lot on which the. Brown Proctoria is built was number 67 on the original plat. In 1804, Peter Flanagan constructed a log house on this lot, using it as a tavern. It was sold in 1805 to Chilton Allan who replaced the log building with a much larger brick inn. The hotel became quite well-known and had many famous guests, among whom were General Andrew Jackson, then President of the United States, who stayed at the tavern while on the way back to Washington from his home in Nashville.

Douglass School, Lexington Kentucky

The Douglass School, part of the state's "separate but equal" educational policy, was built in 1947. At the time of its completion, there were only 62 public High Schools for black students in the state and only 13 of these were, like the Douglass School, county facilities. Following the Civil War, Kentucky faced the challenge of providing public schools for thousands of freedmen. African Americans held statewide conventions in Lexington (1867) and Louisville (1869) to petition for public schools. Rather than admit blacks to existing schools, the General Assembly created a separate system of common schools for blacks in 1874. In 1891 the revised Kentucky constitution legalized segregated public education. According to all reports, black schools were even more inadequate than those for whites.

Duffields Depot, Shenandoah Junction West Virginia

The B&O Railroad, the first class one, common-carrier railroad in the then-young United States, was incorporated under Maryland State charter in 1827, and began construction westward from Baltimore, Maryland in 1828, when the first stone was laid on July 4. The goal of the company was to reach the Ohio River, to bring the commerce of that region to Baltimore City and its port, and to carry goods and commodities as well as passengers inland to the Ohio River region, and beyond (the B&O reached Pittsburg-as it was then spelled--Pennsylvania in 1871, Chicago in 1875). By 1836 the B&O had reached Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Between 1836 and 1842, the portion of the railroad between that location and Cumberland, Maryland on the upper Potomac River was under construction. During this early period, the B&O found it financially expedient, whenever and wherever possible, to use existing structures like inns and hotels as station stops by mutual agreement with the owners, or to make contractual arrangements with adjacent landowners like Richard Duffield, for provision of suitable depot facilities for freight and passengers.

Staats Mill Covered Bridge - Tug Fork Covered Bridge, Ripley West Virginia

When the Staats Mill Covered Bridge was constructed in Jackson County, West Virginia in 1887, it was only the latest of many such wooden structures to dot the countryside of West Virginia and the United States. Today, however, the Staats Mill Bridge, is one of only 18 remaining in the state. The Staats Mill community of Jackson County, West Virginia, was founded by the Staats family. Abraham Staats (1750-1826) and his wife Ann King Staats (1755-1811) were the progenitors of the Staats family in Jackson County. Abraham served in the Revolutionary War. Their son Cornelius served in the War of 1812 and married Ann Carney. They were the parents of Issac Staats, who built the first water-powered mill on Tug Fork of Big Mill Creek at the site that came to be known as Staats Mill. The present covered bridge was built adjacent to the mill and near the store, both owned by Enoch Staats, the son of Issac Staats. Thus, the bridge site has played an important role in the history and development of Jackson County since the 18^th century.

Walkersville Covered Bridge, Walkersville West Virginia

Following submission of a petition by J. E. Spriggs, G. I. Dennison, and H. O. Wilson and others to the Lewis (bounty court on June 13, 1902, the court-appointed W. E. Wick and W.D. Anderson as a committee to locate a site for a bridge across the right fork of the West Fork River, about one mile south of Walkersville. The committee was to evaluate the nature of the ground for the placement of abutments, the required length of the bridge and all other details necessary for arriving at a cost of construction. On July 1, 1902, the court decided to build three iron bridges, one of which was to be located south of Walkersville. W. S. Smith was authorized by the court to draft specifications for the stone abutments of the three bridges, and advertise for sealed bids for their construction. Smith was appointed on July 9, 1902, to have the stone abutments and the approaches constructed for the bridge above Walkersville. The stone for the abutments came from Morgan Galfords farm. During the next few months the court apparently decided to build a wooden bridge instead of the previously planned iron bridge. Because on December 10, 1902, John G. Sprigg was awarded a contract to build a wooden bridge on the abutments that had been completed at the West Fork River approximately one mile south of Walkersville. On March 13, 1903, the court ordered that drafts be issued payable to John G. Sprigg for $567.00 for building the wooden superstructure of the bridge.

Gauley Bridge Railroad Station - C&O Station, Gauley Bridge West Virginia

The Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad Passenger Station at Gauley Bridge, in Fayette County, West Virginia, is an example of a small-town passenger station constructed in the late 19^th century that has survived down to the present time. It is one of the few remaining passenger stations out of many built by the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad for the many small towns and villages of Appalachia. Gauley Bridge, as a community, dates from around 1812, the period of its earliest settlement. The village was at first known as Kincaid's Ferry until 1822 when bridges were constructed across the Gauley and Kanawha Rivers here to accommodate traffic on the James River - Kanawha Turnpike. As a stopping point on the Turnpike, Gauley Bridge grew and thrived. The first church was established in 1835. The Civil War played havoc with the community. A covered bridge there was burned by Confederate forces in 1861, and a short-lived suspension bridge built by Federal forces met the same fate in 1862. The town was also the scene of much fighting and suffered from several artillery shellings. Partially as a result of the War, Gauley Bridge grew but slowly in the 19^th century. Another economic factor of this period was that the early railroads had bypassed Gauley Bridge. This situation was remedied, however, when the Kanawha and Michigan Railroad Company (founded as the Kanawha and Ohio in 1882, reformed as Kanawha and Michigan in 1890, and bought out by the C&O in 1914) extended its line from Charleston up the north bank of the Kanawha River to Gauley Bridge in 1893, making Gauley Bridge the railroad's terminus. This was done primarily to exploit the booming coal fields in the area. The C&O, in the same year, constructed the Gauley Bridge Passenger Station, primarily by local Black labor, using one of the company's predesigned architectural plans. Shortly thereafter the C&O constructed a branch line up the east bank of the Gauley River to handle the coal output of the area's mines.

Willard Covered Bridge, Hartland Vermont

One of two remaining covered bridges in the town of Hartland, the Willard Bridge is one of the most carefully maintained covered bridges in Vermont. Both its builder and exact date are unknown. In addition to a program of careful maintenance, the location of the structure on a lightly traveled road and its protection from washouts by a flood control dam will assure the survival of the bridge. Vermont's covered bridges are among the state's most cherished and symbolic historic resources. About one hundred bridges still stand in the state, the greatest concentration by area of covered bridges in the country.

Fairborn Theatre - Fairborn Twin Cinemas, Fairborn Ohio

Advances in transportation have historically defined the area that is present day Fairborn, Ohio. Early settlement began in the area in 1799 and by 1816 the village of Fairfield had been platted. The Mercer Log House reflects the early settlement of the Fairborn area, and the Bath Township Consolidated School represents the area's late nineteenth-century development. In 1850, railroad tracks for the Mad River and Lake Erie Railroad were laid one mile outside of the village of Fairfield. Named for the superintendent of the railroad, the town of Osborn developed along this railroad route. Osborn flourished while Fairfield declined in population until the War Department purchased 25,000 acres west of Fairfield for an air base in 1917, the precursor to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. The towns of Fairfield and Osborn merged on January 1, 1950, and the name Fairborn reflected the merging of the two municipalities. The Fairborn Theater, located on S. Broad Street or Rte. 444, provides a twentieth-century example of the way in which transportation, specifically the automobile, shaped development in the late 1940s. Broad Street has historically been a significant commercial corridor in the Fairborn area. Originally named Dayton Street, and then Main Street, this corridor was renamed Broad Street during the Osborn and Fairfield merger. The 1874 map in the Greene County atlas indicates the importance of Broad Street as a major county road, likely important in the transportation of goods and people. A tavern, known as The Ohio, was located on the corner of N. Broad and W. Xenia Drive. The importance of this transportation continued in the 1880s as the interurban streetcar lines ran down present-day Broad Street.

Hotel Roodhouse, Roodhouse Illinois

The Hotel Roodhouse provided first-class lodging and dining to railroad travelers, railroad management and line personnel as well as business people. It is the only remaining hotel in Roodhouse retaining its original integrity which was built during the period when the town of Roodhouse was a thriving railroad center. Roodhouse's development had its earliest beginnings in the 1850s, when the area on which Roodhouse was founded was referred to as "The Crossroads" - the place where a state road crossed another public road and connected the Illinois River with the eastern part of the state and the country. John Roodhouse, who had moved from Tazewell County in 1854, purchased 400 acres of land in this location which was to become part of the town of Roodhouse.

Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Depot, Huntington West Virginia

Huntington began after the Civil War, born of the necessity of obtaining a western terminus for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad. Between October 1870 and July of 1871, Colis P. Huntington purchased most of the land west of the Guyandotte River. He then formed the Central Land Co. and hired a Boston architect to lay out his city. The city of Huntington began as a railroad town and remains such to this day. In the empire-building days of 1890 progressive Huntingtonians built a north and south railroad between Guyandotte and Kenova, the Huntington and Big Sandy Railroad. A few years later this operation was taken over by the Ohio River Railroad which by September 1901 was incorporated into the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad system, the oldest railroad system in the United States operating under its original charter. The location of the B & 0 depot was superior to that of the C & O for it rested squarely in the center of the business district, and hence came to play an important part as the focal point of Huntington.

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