Downtown Rensselaer as it once was

In the late 19th and early 20th Century the Sanborn Company published fire insurance maps. Some of those for Rensselaer can be found on-line here. They offer a look of what downtown Rensselaer once contained.

Below is part of one of the maps from 1886.  Buildings in yellow are wooden structures, red indicates brick, and green concrete block. Almost all of these buildings are gone. The brick building at the top was DuVal's Livery, which was later converted to auto repair and a gas station when horses were no longer used for transportation. It was torn down in 2002 to make way for the Cooper Tire Building. The brick building below it was the Nowel's House, a three story building with hotel rooms on its second and third floors. It burned and was demolished in the 1980s. The wooden buildings across the street must date from the very earliest years of Rensselaer because on the 1899 map there is a notation, "These buildings are very old."

 There are three drug stores but two of them do more than sell medicines. One is groceries and drugs and another is drugs and jewelry. There are a couple of harness shops, a tiny cigar factory, a small shop for agricultural implements, plus barbers, restaurants, and dry goods. The second floors house doctors, dentists, and sellers of insurance. There is a millinery shop for women, so I assume the hats and B&S is for men, perhaps hats, boots, and shoes.

There are insurance maps for 1893 and 1899 that you can find online with the link above. Below is what the map of the part of the downtown looks like for 1904. Most of the wooden buildings are gone and many of the buildings still stand in the downtown. The Nowel's House is still serving as a hotel. Along the east side are four jewelers, the post office, and on the second floor the telephone office. On the west side of the street, the large three story building that became Wrights Furniture has been built and next to it Warner's Hardware, which is currently eMbers. There is a bicycle repair shop and a bakery (maybe two) in the old wooden buildings that remain. Several of the buildings constructed by Abraham Leopold are at the north end of the street and I think his dry-goods business occupies the space now used by Merchants Bank.

 There is another map from 1909 that you can find on-line but we will jump to the 1921 map. Notable are two movie theaters, the Star Theater and the Princess Theater. Murray's Department Store, currently a fitness center, was built in 1906, replacing most of the remaining wooden structures along Washington.  The Post Office has moved. There continue to be several small grocery stores. The building that currently houses the Beaver Law office now has a cement-block facing.

Below are pictures of the east side of Washington between Front and Van Rensselaer as it appears today. The building on the right is the oldest building in the downtown. It was built in 1868 and housed the McCoy Bank, which failed due to fraud in 1904. The next two buildings may have been built together because they are listed as having been built in 1898. The beige building was originally a two-story structure with the Ellis Opera House on the second floor. When I moved to Rensselaer the Penney's store was here. Among the many other businesses that have been at this location was the Ben Fendig Shoe Store.

The building at the edge of the picture above and fully shown below was built in 1895 and housed the Larsh and Hopkins Drug Store. The building next to it, today Willow Switch, was built in 1890 as John Eger' grocery store. Next to it is a building from 1899 that was Eigelsbaugh butcher stop. The Brewery building dates from 1899 and was originally the hardware store of William Eger. The building on the far right was built around 1910.

In addition to the Nowel's House, two other buildings stood where the parking lot is today.

There is also a 1942 Sanborn map that is not on-line. The Jasper County Library has a copy. It was made by taking the 1921 map and pasting changes on it.

Some of the information above was taken from the Walking Tour of the Rensselaer/Jasper County Courthouse Square Historic District. I believe the Jasper County Historical Society helped prepare it.