Quick Facts

NPS Description

205-211 South Main Street, ca. 1880s. 

Contributing

Description

Commercial Italianate two-story retail/mixed use brick building at the corner of East Michigan Street and South Main Street. The upper façade is two colors of painted brick with brick piers and rows of stacked stretcher corbelling underneath the cornice line. The cornice is split into three sections: the north section on 205 South Main Street is a projecting metal cornice painted white with brackets and dentils. The cornice section on 209 South Main Street is missing and replaced with slightly projecting aluminum siding. To the south on 211 South Main Street, the cornice is similar to the north cornice but painted green. The segmental-arch-head window openings in the second story, three in each of the building’s three sections, remain evident, but window units in the second floor vary between three double-hung vinyl replacements with small arched transoms on 205 South Main Street, to two double-hung vinyl replacements with arched wood panel transoms with the center arched window opening paneled over, to three casement windows with arched wood panel surrounds. A unifying element to the second-story windows are the brick segmental arches above with decorative keystones. The storefront on 205 South Main Street is of replacement brick with fixed vinyl replacement windows and a south side entry has concrete keystones above. The storefront on 209 South Main Street is of a different replacement brick with a recessed south side entry and fixed vinyl replacement windows. The storefront on 211 South Main Street is of replacement brick similar to 209 South Main Street with fixed vinyl replacement windows and a north side recessed entry. Stretching across the entire façade above the storefronts is a red wood shake projecting pent roof. 

The north (side) elevation is covered in aluminum siding with a parapet that steps down from west to east. The east (rear) elevation is covered with horizontal vinyl siding with a two-story painted concrete block addition on 205 South Main Street. Steel multi-light fixed windows are on the first and second floor of the concrete addition. Two doors with projecting fabric awnings lead into 209 and 211 South Main Street from the rear. The south (side) elevation is not visible due to adjoining buildings. 

History 

This one-story building, extending from 127 to 131 South Main, replaced a series of one-story frame buildings that had existed on the site from the 1880s into the 1920s. It was likely built around 1930; the city directories separately list 127, 129, and 131 under the name N. D. Gover in 1930 rather than listing business names, and the building as it is today is shown in the 1931 Sanborn map. From 1934 to 1943, 2 separate businesses are listed here: the A&P at 127, and the Pure Food Shop and Oren’s Down Stairs Store at 131. Oren’s Department Store occupied the building from 1943 to 1970. After no listings for the early 1970s, the building housed Sam’s Brothers clothing store from 1978 to 1992. Goudreau Wakely and Associates Architects moved here from the 200 block of Main Street in 1992 and remain in the building. 

Integrity Analysis 

Photographs from the 1940s show the building with its original cornice in place across the entire roofline; the windows were double-hung one-over-one units without transoms. At that time, the original storefronts had been replaced with glass and aluminum entries and a long horizontal aluminum transom covering and projecting canopy that extended from 201 South Main (now gone) all the way across to 213/215 South Main (but not 217). The world “Household” appears on the transom, apparently referring to Household Appliance. A metal screen was installed over the front of 209 South Main in 1969, with the cornice for that portion of the building probably removed around the same time. A 1981 building permit references a “new front” installed at 209, probably a new storefront as the metal screen was still in place into the late 1980s. The second-floor windows at 211 were boarded up in the early 1980s and then later in the decade altered to the current smaller windows with wood infilling the rest of the opening. The current cedar shake pent roof was installed in 2002. 

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.