An old horse stable?

The back end of the building that houses Walter's Auto Electric is being remodeled--the building permit was issued in March. The very end of the building was once the Food Pantry.

 The building has served a number of functions over the years, but the process of remodeling has revealed that it was probably originally built as a horse stable. I would not have been able to tell that, but people who know more about what a stable would look like find the clues convincing.

 As I looked up at the ceiling, I remarked that it looked like there must have been many roof leaks in the past. There were, but the owner, Dave Walter, suggested that the lumber was probably reused lumber. Back when the building was built people would have wanted to use cheap materials for a stable. Lumber was expensive and labor cheap, so it made sense to reuse materials. Now it usually does not.

 The little door shown below was one of the bits of evidence that the building was a stable. The circular hole was a later addition and was probably for a stove.

 The photo below may show an old bridle hook. There is another on the second picture, on the post.

The concrete floor was cracked and there was a section seen below where it had been removed to allow plumbing to be installed. Before the current demolition, there was a wall running from the top to the bottom in the picture below, so the timber lying on the floor had been protected for many years. Note its extreme wear, wear that makes sense if horses had stepped on it for a number of years.

Because the concrete is stable, it will be left and a new floor put over it. The board above will be removed, and after the remodeling, there will be a lot less evidence that the building was ever a stable.