Demo Day!

After weeks of clearing out the previous owners possessions, the interior of 211 Main looked like this.

Remember me mentioning the crude door and hallway that was erected between the two buildings?  The picture above is a fairly good view of that doorway.  Notice, too, the copper tubing that runs the length of the wall.  The previous owners had a Glacier water machine on the sidewalk out front.  This copper pipe carried the water from the small restroom at the left rear corner of the room and through a hole chiseled in the front wall to the machine.  If you trace the pipe from the left of the photo to about 2/3 of the way to the back wall, you'll notice that the pipe bends up, over a ways, then down again.  When the previous owner's possessions were still in the building, there was a desk with a computer monitor on it sitting in that raised area.  In other words, they didn't move the desk to install the copper tubing.  They simply went 'around' it.  Melanie and I got a good laugh out of that bit of engineering.  

The day the dropped ceiling came down was definitely a day of celebration!

Yep.  Just as we'd hoped, we found a tin ceiling hiding above.  At one point the building had central heat and air--proven by the duct hanging down in the second picture above.  The ductwork remained, but the units themselves were long gone.  

We were beyond delighted to discover the tin was in fairly good condition, considering it's age.  Obvious repairs were made to the tin in the past, as some of the tins are of a different design.  But the entire ceiling is tin, with no squares missing, which is a bonus.  Lots of electrical ran between the tin ceiling and the dropped ceiling, which will have to be re-routed, an added expense to the restoration budget, but well worth it.

Now the next two photos require studying and comparing.  If you look closely in the first photo, you can see the 'lines' of where once were windows.  

We haven't been able to find an old picture of the interior of the building, but in the oldest photo we've found of the building's exterior you can see the placement of those windows.  The windows were probably covered over years later when the building that currently resides beside it was built, as the two buildings share a wall.

 On the opposite wall, the one that had the doorway chiseled out, we discovered shadowed impressions of two other smaller windows high up on the wall.  Melanie is a bit of an architectural sleuth and was determined to reveal the windows.  Hanging off a ladder and manned with a hammer,  she slugged away at the plaster and stone until she'd completely uncovered the wooden frame that surrounded the windows.  Lo and behold, within the exposed space, she also uncovered iron bars!  We can't prove anything, but we believe that since the building was once Florence State Bank, the teller counter would have been beneath these windows, as the tellers wouldn't have wanted a window directly behind them.  Bank robbers, you know.   The bricks you see behind the bars were used to fill in the hole on the exterior of the building when the windows were covered up.

As with everything in life, we discovered some oddities.  When Melanie was hammering away at the window on the right, she discovered wads of toilet paper stuffed amongst the rock and rubble.  What?!  Unused, thankfully, but definitely toilet paper.  It was unwound from the roll and wrapped sort of in a beehive shape and stuffed into the opening.  We pondered several different scenarios that would require placing wads of toilet paper in the opening, but none of them really made sense.  Sure makes for a good story, though!

The window on the far right revealed another hint of the building's history.  One of the iron bars was cut off and the remains of a rusty pipe were revealed in the opening.  Obviously, some type of wood stove was once placed beneath the window and the chimney pipe ran through the window and to the outside.  It must have been installed poorly, because the bricks in that window are covered with soot.  

Melanie is determined to uncover and retain as much of the building's history as possible, so don't think for a minute that these small glimpses of the past will disappear.  They won't.  She has come up with ways to keep them in view and give them a new purpose, as well.

Next up, demolitions continues!