Today the CTS Tire store sits on the corner of Front and Washington. If you need a new set of wheels for your ride, it is one of the places to go. A few years ago a much older building was on this site, doing business as Arihood Tire. That building, according to the
Jasper County Interim Report, had originally been a livery stable, and maybe was a place where you could get a new set of shoes for your ride:
The J.W. Duvall Livery & Feed Building as Washington and Front streets is an outstanding resource illustrating the evolution of transportation in Rensselaer. Built as a livery and a hotel for accomodating travelers by horse-and-buggy, it was transformed into Rensselaer's first auto garage and gas station around 1910.
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It was one of the few buildings listed as an outstanding resource in the
Report, which dated its construction to 1883. I did not see any of the transformations that the
Report discussed, but I did witness some of the changes that took place in the last decade, and I am happy to share them with you.
The rest of the pictures in this post are dated July 17, 2002. I took them with one of my first digital cameras, and the quality was not all that high. (Notice the color distortion at the sides.) Unlike most of the pictures I post, I did not resize or compress these. If you click on them, you get the original.
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I have a few more that I will share later. Notice that the
historical plaque for James
Hanley has not yet appeared on this corner.
2 comments:
In the last photo you see the city parking lot across the street from the old Arihood place. I remember when that lot was occupied by another old brick building. I probably wouldn't have remembered it if it wasn't for watching them tear it down using a wrecking ball attached to a crane. For a young boy, knocking buildings down with a wrecking ball is about as good as it gets!
these photos aren't jogging any memories for me, no matter how many times i look at them.
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