Main Garage

 Work on the exterior of TopLink Business Center (formerly the County Annex and before that the REMC Building) revealed an old sign.

The building was once a garage. The oldest picture the owners have of the building dates from the 1950s when it was the REMC building. What was it before?

I looked for the Sanborn Fire Insurance maps and found one for 1921 and the building was a garage then, but no name was on it.

Going back to the picture of the REMC building in the 1950s, I noticed a name on the building: Shafer. A search for that name in the Evening Republican on the Hoosier State Chronicles turned up this article:

Cornelia Street is the former name of Kellner Street. The Maxwell Motor Company was in the early years of the 20th century a major automobile manufacturer. It failed in the 1920s and was absorbed into the Chrysler Company.

The garage was not named the Shafer Garage but rather the Main Garage. It is mentioned in the following article from the Evening Republican from May 29, 1914 (page 3). I have included the entire article in honor of a race that takes place on Memorial Day and also because it is an amusing look at the past.

There is much more you can learn about the Main Garage in the Hoosier State Chronicles, which have a digitized and searchable archive of all preserved Rensselaer papers through 1920. (Some issues and years were lost and are gone forever.) I will close with one last but very important update from the Evening Republican.

Nelson Shafer was the first commander of the American Legion in Rensselaer. He is buried in Knox but his son is buried in Weston Cemetery.