Quick Facts

This building used to be 3 stories tall, but the top floor was removed in the 60's.

NPS Description

120-128 East Broadway Street. Commercial Block, ca. 1885. 

Contributing 

Description

Late Victorian two-story retail/mixed use brick building on the corner of East Broadway Street and South University Street. The upper façade is of painted brick with stone string courses and separated by brick piers with rusticated stone caps and bases into three bays. A paired double-hung replacement window with rectangular transoms under a flattened arched opening flanked by engaged Romanesque colonettes is in the west bay of the second floor. An original paired wood double-hung window with rectangular transoms under a flattened arched opening is centered in the center bay with an original wood double-hung window with rectangular transom to the east and a replacement double-hung window with rectangular transom to the west. The east bay contains three wood double-hung windows with rectangular transoms on the second floor. The storefront of 120 East Broadway Street is painted brick with fixed display windows, decorative stone piers flanking the windows and rusticated stones at the east corner and flanking the recessed walk-up entry to the west. The walk-up entry is a wood door with two arched panel lights and a rectangular transom. Above the transom is a small cornice with dentils and around the door are paterae corner blocks and plinth blocks at the bottom. In front of the 120 East Broadway Street storefront is a walk-out basement shop with iron decorative fencing. The storefront of the walk-out basement is painted brick. Capping the storefront of 120 East Broadway Street and the walk-up recessed entry is the original projecting denticulated cornice. The storefront of 122 East Broadway Street is painted brick with recessed wood and glass fixed windows and wood and glass entry door with transoms. The storefront of 128 East Broadway Street is also painted brick but with aluminum and glass fixed windows and aluminum and glass entry door with rusticated stone at the northeast corner. Capping the storefronts of both 122 and 128 East Broadway Street is a newer painted denticulated cornice. 

A continuation of the primary façade storefront is on the northeast corner of the east (side) elevation with an aluminum and glass fixed window flanked by rusticated stone piers. The east elevation is covered with EIFS but retains stone accents, stone string courses on the second floor, EIFS piers with stone accents on the south side of the first floor, and two projecting fabric canopies on the south side of the first floor designating side entry into the building. Double-hung wood windows with transoms, both single and paired, make up the fenestration of the second floor; the paired windows are separated by decorative metal columns. 

The south (rear) elevation is of brick covered in EIFS with double-hung wood windows and transoms on the second floor. The west (side) elevation is not visible due to adjoining buildings. 

History 

This block is one of the older occupied sites in downtown Mt. Pleasant. In 1869, William Harris built a dry goods/grocery store on this corner. In 1875, Major J. W. Long converted that building and one next door into the St. James Hotel, removing the roofs of the stores, creating a common roof, and putting rooms in the second and third stories. A photograph taken from the top of the courthouse in the late 1870s clearly shows this large, three-story frame building. The St. James Hotel burned in 1882, and was temporarily replaced by a one-story frame skating rink and another small frame building, seen on the 1884 Sanborn map. In the mid to late 1880s, a three-story brick and stone commercial building was constructed at what was then 136/137 East Broadway. Known originally as the Brown Block, its chief tenant was the Brown, Harris and Company Bank. In 1885, the Commercial Bank took over Brown, Harris, and the building became known as the Commercial Block (although Sanborns would continue to identify it as the Brown Block until 1900). In 1888, the People’s Savings Bank was established in the basement of the building. The two banks consolidated in 1895 and then closed in 1897. The bank signage painted on the west elevation of the building would remain visible for many years after. Given its size, the Commercial Block housed numerous businesses over the years, including retail establishments on the first floor and basement, offices on the second floor, and civic organizations on the third floor. Both the IOOF and the Maccabees held meetings in the Commercial Block in the early 1900s and 1910s. Retail tenants included dry goods and clothing stores, groceries, barbers, and banks, while a number of city departments, professional and business offices, and residential tenants came and went in the upper stories. Notable tenants were the Marsh and Graham Company in the 1910s, the Palace Barber Shop (1930s-50s), E. L. Conrick Inc. (1930s), McKnight and Duhamel (clothing, later the Duhamel Style Shop, 1930s-early 1970s), Cartwright’s Shoes (1960s), Ken’s Men’s Shop (1980s), the French Collection (1980s-90s) and Headliners (1980s-90s). The city of Mt. Pleasant housed some of its offices in the building until the construction of the new city hall in the 1950s. One of the early histories of Mt. Pleasant notes that the Mt. Pleasant Indian School originally opened in the Commercial Block in the 1880s or early 1890s. 

Integrity Analysis 

As originally constructed, the Commercial Block was a three-story structure with decorative facades on both East Broadway and South University (previously College Street). The first floor storefronts were flanked by stone block columns and topped by a projecting cornice, while the upper stories were of a dark red brick with decorative stone accents. The second and third floors had wood double-hung windows with transoms, and there were arched windows on the end and corner bays of the third floor. The building was crowned with a decorative cornice and a projecting gabled parapet on the northeast corner of the building. Access to the basement was via stairs in front of the west storefront bay, while a stair to the east of the west storefront bay gave access to the upper floor tenants. 

The parapet gable was removed sometime in the 1940s or 1950s. The building remained otherwise intact through the 1950s. After that, perhaps in the 1960s, when building permits reference the installation of a new roof, the third floor of the building was removed. Building permits also list the removal of the storefront cornice in 1965; this was for the east two bays of the storefront as the west bay is still intact. The east two storefronts were remodeled, probably around the same time. Those storefronts were again remodeled with brick in the 1980s and, more recently, a dentilled cornice was added above the new brick (but not in the same position as or a replica of the original cornice). The second floor windows are replacements but replicate the original wood double-hung units. The building has also been painted. 

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.