Quick Facts

NPS Description

200 East Broadway Street. Upton Opera House/Isabella County State Bank Headquarters, 1880; 208 East Broadway, ca. 1900; 210 East Broadway, ca. 1910. 

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

Description

200 East Broadway consists of three separate brick buildings covered with a unifying ca. 1973 applied façade. The north and west facades are similar, and the northwest corner is angled. The first floor is faced with two types of stone: a granite watertable with beige sandstone panels above. The windows are generally aluminum with three vertical glass panes and an aluminum spandrel panel beneath. A glass and aluminum recessed entry is located on the center of the north elevation. To the east of the entry are two aluminum and glass storefronts corresponding to the two separate buildings beneath. The west storefront has a low brick wall at the bottom. The second floor is covered with a continuous glass band across the north and west elevations, separated by applied aluminum vertical mullions that extend into the aluminum panels that border the glass band on the top and bottom. A plain painted brick parapet extends above the aluminum and glass façade. 

The secondary facades are brick and EIFS-clad, with the east side and lower floor on the south side covered by adjacent buildings. The interior has been remodeled, although portions of the Opera House on the upper floor may remain. 

History 

The current glass and aluminum façade covers three originally separate buildings. The oldest of these is the corner building, originally known as the Upton Opera House. Constructed in 1880, it extended eight bays along University and five bays on E. Broadway. The elaborate two-story brick building with stone accents and elaborate cornice was considered the “finest block in the village and the opera house is conceded to be the finest this side of Detroit…in this block is located the bank of Hicks, Bennett, & Co., real estate, and other offices.”1 Hicks, Bennett and Co had organized as a private bank in 1876. Later known as the First National Bank of Mt. Pleasant, it closed in the panic of 1895. Around 1898-99, Webber and Ruel, a private banking house, organized and opened in the “old National Bank Building”; in 1903 they sold the bank to John S. Weidman who incorporated it as the Isabella County State Bank. At around this time, the bank building expanded, demolishing the frame building immediately to the east and adding another four-bay section to match the original. With the early 1900s address changes in Mt. Pleasant, this building encompassed addresses 200, 202, 204, and 206 East Broadway. The Sanborn maps show the opera house still in place in 1910, but by 1924 the second floor was now serving as a lodge hall, probably for the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, who had rooms in the adjoining buildings to the east. The second floor continued to be used as a lodge hall into the second half of the twentieth century, in the latter years for the Masonic Temple (which was listed in city directories as late as 1976). The building remained the headquarters of the Isabella County State Bank (which changed its name to Isabella Bank and Trust in 1973) until it moved into new offices across the street at 139 East Broadway. For much of the first half of the twentieth century, Consumers Power and Western Union also had offices in the building. Another long-term tenant was Dr. Mary Maxwell (ca. 1960-1970); Mt. Pleasant resident Auburna “Burnie” Bonnell remembered that “dear gentle Dr. Mary Maxwell could give a heavenly back rub, head adjustment, and hear your troubles for $4.”2 Other tenants through the years included the Selective Service, American Cancer Society, the YMCA state office, and the Mt. Pleasant Chamber of Commerce and Convention and Visitors Bureau. 

The other two buildings contained under the current façade were originally designated as 208 and 210 East Broadway (formerly 141 and 142 under the old numbering system). At some point after these two buildings were incorporated into the 200 East Broadway parcel (ca. late 1970s), the building next door to the east, originally 212 (143) East Broadway, became 210 East Broadway. 

There was a two-story building on the 208 lot as early as 1884, but it is unclear if that was the present building. More likely, it was rebuilt in the late 1890s/early 1900s, when the bank next door expanded, as a building with a slightly different footprint appears in the 1900 Sanborn map. This was a grocery in 1900, but by 1910 it was an “electrical theatre” – i.e. movie theatre; one local history noted in 1911 that “there is another moving picture establishment just east of the Isabella State Bank owned by Westlake and Trevegno.”3 The building had been remodeled for that purpose, and indeed the 1910 Sanborn map notes the stage and scenery at the south end of the building. It appears to have been short-lived, probably eclipsed by its competitor farther down the block, the Broadway Theatre. Some sources believe this was the Vaudette Theater which closed when the Broadway Theater opened in 1920. From 1930 to ca. 1953, the first floor housed the Metropole Restaurant; it was the Fleming Studio and Gift Shop in the 1960s and by the 1970s had apparently been subsumed into the Isabella Bank and Trust operation next door. 

The lot at 210 East Broadway had also had a building on it as early as 1884, but it showed as an empty lot in 1900. Between 1900 and 1910 a two-story brick building, with metal cornice, was constructed on the site. It held a confectionery shop in 1910, but throughout the twentieth century it had a faster turnover rate than its neighbors. There was a grocery store there in 1925-26, the Mark’s/Peoples store was a tenant in the 1930s, and it was a liquor store in the 1940s. Scott Stevens Clothing store, Gittleman’s and the Variety House occupied the building in the 1960s. By the 1970s it was the offices of a variety of banking related services, including Mt. Pleasant Fidelity Credit Corporation and Capital Financial Services. At this time, the 210 address was subsumed into the 200 East Broadway parcel. 

Integrity Analysis 

200 East Broadway, the Opera House/Isabella Bank building, was constructed in 1880 and enlarged one lot to the east in the early 1900s. The addition appears to have exactly matched the original building. Sometime later in the early 1900s (probably the 1910s or 20s), the original brick entry at the angled corner of the building was altered with a more elaborate stone surround. A clock hung from the north elevation of the building for many years in the twentieth century, as well as signs for Western Union and Consumers Power. Aside from these and some storefront alterations, the building remained generally intact until the 1950s. The building appears to have been painted white during this period, and the corner entry was removed and infilled with a window. Photographs from the 1960s show that the cornice was removed by this time. A building permit pulled in 1969 referenced the replacement of the sign clock and interior renovations, while another dated October 3rd, 1973, documented the installation of the new exterior façade of granite on the first floor and aluminum and glass screening on the upper façade on the north and west elevations. 

208 and 210 East Broadway were two-story brick commercial buildings with metal cornices. The exterior of 208 was relatively plain, with a flat brick face and square second-story windows, while 210 had brick piers outlining the arched second-floor windows. In the 1930s or 40s, larger storefronts were installed, including large plate glass windows on 208 extending the height of the storefront. By the 1950s, the cornice on 208 was gone but 210’s was still in place. These two buildings were covered by the new granite, glass and aluminum façade of the rest of 200 East Broadway in the early 1970s. 

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. 

1 Portrait and Biographical Album: Isabella County, Michigan (Chicago, IL: Chapman Brothers, 1884), 567. 

2 Jack Westbrook, The Big Picture Book of Mt. Pleasant Michigan, Yesteryears to 2010 (Mt. Pleasant, MI: ORSB Publishing, 2010), 283. 

3 Isaac Fancher, Past and Present of Isabella County, Michigan (Indianapolis, IN: B. F. Bowen, 1911), 366