Quick Facts

NPS Description

215 East Broadway Street, ca. 1920. 

Contributing 

Description

Commercial Brick two-story professional building at the corner of East Broadway Street and North Franklin Street. The upper façade is of dark brown brick with corbelling at the cornice and piers at the east and west edge of the building that extend down to street level. Two aluminum fixed replacement windows with stone sills are above the red wood shake pent roof over the storefront. The storefront has glass and aluminum display windows with red brick below and a recessed entry. 

The north (rear) elevation has a slightly lower two-story addition with brown sheet aluminum siding. The east elevation is dark brown brick with corbelling and two-story piers. Windows on the second floor are fixed aluminum replacements with stone sills while the first-floor windows are boarded up with stone sills. The west elevation is of brick covered in brown sheet aluminum siding. 

History 

Like the Breidenstein Block at 201-3, this building was also constructed in the late 1910s to early 1920s, according to the Sanborn maps. It similarly replaced a series of earlier one and two-story frame buildings containing a variety of uses from a laundry to a pool parlor. From 1930 until ca. 1950, the present building was the site of the Bishop’s Ready to Wear store. It then continued into the 1950s and early 1960s as the College Town Shop, briefly housed the One Minute Lunch eatery in the mid 1960s, and became the College Inn from 1968 to 1972. In 1972-1980 it housed an H&R Block office, and then after a short vacant period in the early 1980s, it housed William J. Wood Associates through the late 1980s and 1990s. The current tenant is the American Red Cross. *as of 2014

Integrity Analysis 

The exterior remains mostly intact, except that the storefront has been altered with infilled brick of a slightly different shade of red and a wood shingled pent roof. Photos show the original windows to have been double-hung, six-over-one units, but these have been replaced. 

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.