Quick Facts

NPS Description

125 East Broadway Street. Devereaux Block, ca. 1895. 

Non-contributing (built within the period of significance but subsequent alterations have sufficiently impacted integrity to render it non-contributing) 

Description

Two-story brick retail/mixed use building with a frontage of 22 feet on East Broadway Street. The upper façade is brick with an EIFS facing, corner piers, simple cornice, and string course under the second-floor windows. The three aluminum double-hung replacement windows on the second floor are framed in EIFS paneling with arched window surrounds reminiscent of the “Commercial Italianate” style. The storefront is of replacement brick with aluminum double-hung windows trimmed in wood and a recessed entry. A fabric awning stretches the length of the building atop the storefront. 

The north (rear) elevation has a one-story painted concrete block addition with glass and aluminum east side door and fixed window trimmed in wood. 

The east and west (side) elevations are not visible due to adjoining buildings. 

History 

The Devereaux Block was a six-storefront long block that originally encompassed what is now 125, 129-131, and 133-137 as well as the west 22 feet of the site of the present building at 139 East Broadway. The Devereaux Block was constructed in 1895 to replace several buildings in this portion of the block that were destroyed by a fire in March of 1895. That fire had apparently started in Dittman’s Shoe Store at 117 (now 133) and spread east, destroying two more buildings and damaging the Bennett House hotel, and west, destroying the three-bay brick Hance and Devereaux Block (1883). Hance and Devereaux immediately commenced rebuilding a larger structure encompassing the entire area that had burned. Michael Devereaux, for whom the block is named, was at the time one of the leading businessmen and politicians in the city. A former educator, he came to Mt. Pleasant to practice law in 1876. With his later partner, J. W. Hance, Devereaux opened a real estate and loan business in 1882, later branching out into lumbering. Devereaux was elected prosecuting attorney of Isabella County in 1878, and served as mayor from 1890 to 1892, 1896 to 1898, and 1907 to 1908. 

As originally constructed, the Devereaux Block was a two-story, Late Victorian brick building with six center-entry storefronts. The storefronts appeared to be standard, center-entry ones with glass and wood display windows to either side and transoms above. Second-story open entry stairs were located between the second and third bay storefronts and the fourth and fifth bay storefronts. Above each storefront on the second story were a group of three double-hung wood windows; each grouping had a square-headed window in the center flanked by two segmental-arch head windows, all with transoms and capped by matching hoodmolds. Above each second-story entry was a blank opening with corbelled brickwork and a flat hoodmold above. Very early photographs show a relatively simple projecting cornice divided in three sections along the building with a parapet wall above. This had been removed by the 1930s. 

This section of the Devereaux Block contains the original westernmost storefront. In the early 1900s a drug and jewelry store occupied the space. Foland’s Optical was located here from 1925 to 1938, when they moved next door to 123 East Broadway. It was then a series of jewelry stores until 1976, first Young’s, then Shephard’s, then Scully’s. From 1978 until the 1990s, it was Tuma’s Market and Downtown Party and Deli. Max and Emily’s restaurant has been here since the 1990s. 

Integrity Analysis 

Christmas-time photographs from the 1940s show that the transoms above the three second-floor windows at 125 East Broadway had been infilled. A storefront remodel was referenced in 1976 city building permits. After 1991 the upper façade was covered with EIFS. 

Sources 

Isabella County Enterprise March 22, 1895, p. 1; 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, pp447-449; City of Mt. Pleasant Building Permits; historic photographs.