Quick Facts

This is the newest building in the Historic Strip on Broadway.

NPS Description

139 East Broadway Street. W. T. Grant Company, ca. 1950s. 

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

Description

One-story brick commercial bank building on the corner of East Broadway Street and Court Street. The primary façade is covered in EIFS with a small projecting cornice. The storefront is covered in EIFS with a veneered brick covered pier with a stone plinth to the west and an elongated hexagonal column covered in veneered brick with a stone plinth under the east corner. The entry is aluminum and glass recessed in with an angled northeast corner. Above the recessed entry is a Postmodern classical frieze with a denticulated cornice. 

The east (side) elevation mirrors the primary façade. The storefront continues onto the east elevation with a slight change from the primary façade by the aluminum and glass recessed entry curving to become flush with the east elevation. A lower one-story rear section is also covered in EIFS. The north (rear) elevation is one-story to the east and two stories to the west and is also clad in EIFS. A recessed entry leads into the one story portion to the east and the two doors to the west have a projecting fabric awning and lead into the two-story portion. The west (side) elevation is covered in EIFS. 

History 

This site was formerly the location of the easternmost storefront of the Devereaux Block (139 East Broadway) and also of the Bennett Hotel (140 East Broadway). An 1875 article on the fire that consumed the original businesses on the north side of Broadway notes that the fire ended around here, having burned the Bennett barn but not the house. In 1883, Cornelius Bennett built a three-story hotel, a “fine brick structure,” on the corner of Broadway and Court Streets. It would become one of the longest running and most consequential hotels in the city. Over the years it was operated by a number of different owners, but it remained known as the Bennett House. In addition to rooms on the second and third floors, the hotel had at various times a dining room, saloon, and barber shop. After the construction of the Devereaux Block to the west in the late 1890s, the easternmost bay adjoining the hotel (139 East Broadway) accommodated some of the hotel’s rooms on its second floor. The storefront at 139 housed a number of businesses in the early twentieth century, including Kate Feeney’s millinery shop. From 1928 to 1940 it was a beauty/barber shop, and then became the Bennett Cocktail Lounge in the 1940s. Both 139 East Broadway and the Bennett Hotel were demolished in the early 1950s. In their place was constructed a one-story building for the W. T. Grant Company, a chain merchandise store, in the late 1950s. After the Grant company went bankrupt in 1976, the store became a Ben Franklin Variety Store. Isabella Bank and Trust has occupied the building since the 1980s. 

Integrity Analysis 

The W. T. Grant Store, constructed in the 1950s, was a long, one-story building with a yellow brick façade. Every sixth row of brick was recessed and laid in a soldier course to create horizontal striping on the building. The original storefront is not clear, but in the early 1980s it was finished in glass and metal with wood trim. When Isabella Bank took over the building in the mid 1980s, it was refaced 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; City of Mt. Pleasant Building Permits; historic photographs.