Quick Facts

NPS Description

102-106 South Main Street. Foster Furniture Company Building, 1906. 

Contributing 

Description

The Foster Furniture Company is a Neoclassical three-story brick retail/mixed use building that occupies a prominent corner at the intersection of West Broadway and South Main Streets. The decorative main (east) façade wraps around to the first bay on the north (side) elevation and features raised end piers, with those on the third floor finished like quoins with alternating bands of raised and recessed bricks (three courses high). These piers rise to a broad brick entablature with dentil band below the frieze and a massive projecting Classical cornice with oversized dentils below. Each floor is separated from the others horizontally by a narrower projecting cornice with a smaller band of dentils below. The third floor is the most intact portion of the original façade and retains its fenestration pattern of six windows across the east elevation and two on the north, although the original double-hung window units have been replaced with three-pane fixed windows. The second story originally had similar quoined piers and featured large display windows with three-paned transoms above, three on the east elevation, separated by decorative cast-iron columns, and one on the north elevation. The cast iron columns and interstitial cornices are the only original features that remain; currently the second floor consists of replacement brick with wider non-quoined raised piers, and the fenestration pattern and window units now match the third floor. Similarly, the original first floor storefront featured the quoined brick end piers and had a center entry flanked by glass display windows with three-paned transoms on the east elevation, and on the north elevation a large plate-glass display window with three-paned transom. Currently, the storefront is also replacement brick. It has a recessed center entry with wood and glass arched windows and an arched transom over the door. Sets of triple-arched replacement windows flank the center entry and wrap around to the first bay of the north elevation. 

The north (side) elevation continues the front’s form in the bay nearest the corner of West Broadway Street and South Main Street. Past this bay the second and third floor is red brick with rock-face brick string courses above and below the third-story double-hung windows with their transoms and rectangular stone lintels and sills. The second floor, with double hung windows with transoms and rectangular stone lintels and sills, is separated from the first floor by a thick strip of painted brick. The first floor is a newer and lighter red brick with a concrete brick water table that switches from one to three courses along the length of the north elevation. Fenestration on the first floor includes three square casement windows, with stone lintels and sills, and a replacement double-hung window in a doorway infill. A thick strip of painted brick is also below the square windows on the first floor but stops at the doorway infill. Capping the north elevation is a projecting cornice with dentils similar to the primary façade. At the northwest corner is a three story decorative pier similar to the primary façade’s third-floor piers. 

The west (rear) elevation is of painted brick with fixed three-pane replacement windows on the second and third floors with an exterior fire escape and two entry doors on the first floor, one with a boarded up arched transom. The south (side) elevation is only partially visible due to adjoining buildings. The area visible is faced in yellow brick. 

History 

The lot at the southwest corner of Main and Broadway was occupied in 1866 by one of Mt. Pleasant’s earliest businesses, the firm of Babbitt and Nelson, who moved their dry goods store from Isabella City to Mt. Pleasant. In the late 1800s, the site where the present building stands was two lots, with Babbitt and Nelson’s dry goods store in a two-story frame building at the corner. The other lot had a one-story frame meat market in 1884, but by 1890 a two-story building housing a boot and shoe store had been built to the south of Babbitt and Nelson’s. In 1897, Foster Furniture and Hardware purchased the corner building from Babbitt and Nelson. They “improved and beautified” the property and expanded into the building to the south. In June of 1905, the building burned, and the Foster company constructed a new three-story brick building on the double lot, “one of the best corners for business in the city,”12 completing it in December of 1906. The new building had a metal cornice on the exterior, metal ceilings at the first and second floors, iron posts, and an elevator at the southwest corner. Around 1920, the business was purchased by Ed Bonnell and Ed Bixby and renamed Mt. Pleasant Hardware and Furniture. It remained a hardware store, first by that name and later as Scott’s Ace Hardware, until 1970. From 1971 to 1980, it housed Oren’s Department Store. In the 1980s and 90s, Downtown Drugs and Downtown Discount occupied the building, expanding into the storefront at 110 South Main next door. Upstairs was the Smith Energy Company and a number of other professional and business tenants. FirstBank has occupied the building since the early 1990s, eventually expanding to hold the entire building plus 110 South Main. 

Integrity Analysis 

The building has had a large presence on this corner since its construction in 1906. It retains much of its original brickwork on the north elevation and the third floor, as well as the historic cornice. Photographs from the early 1910s show a balustrade above the cornice, which was gone by the 1940s. The first and second-floor storefronts have been altered the most. The second floor on the Main Street façade and wrapping around to the first bay on the Broadway Street side had large plate glass windows with tripartite transom windows above, designed to display the store’s goods. The first-floor storefront was a traditional center entry one with iron columns and glass display windows with multi-paned transoms above. Both the first and second-floor storefronts remained in place until at least the 1950s, but by the early 1980s had been altered to the current configuration. New brick was installed over the original at the first and second floors on the Main Street façade and the first bay of the Broadway Street elevation. The plate glass windows on the second floor were replaced with smaller individual windows to match the third-floor fenestration pattern. At the first floor, the center entry was retained but the storefront was infilled with newer brick and the display windows replaced with sets of triple arched windows. The third-floor windows, which were originally double-hung wood units, were replaced with double-hung units with transoms. 

Sources 

Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps (Mt. Pleasant: 1884, 1890, 1895, 1900, 1910, 1924, 1931, 1950); Mt. Pleasant City Directories, 1925-1998; Past and Present of Isabella County, 1911; City of Mt. Pleasant Building Permits; historic photographs. 

12 Fancher, Past and Present of Isabella County,351.