The sight of workmen building paved parking lots on public and private property in the segment of downtown Marion North West of the Tower Square Plaza calls attention to another of the ongoing programs to enable a municipality founded in the 19th century to accommodate late 20th century demands.
The object of today’s near frenzy of removal and construction is designed to provide people with more room to drive and park their automobiles so they can visit stores, shops and public and professional offices.
So far, the program has improved the appearance of downtown and has enabled retailers and professional people to remain there.
It seems fitting to look at some of the structures which have given way to parking areas, and to remember when they formed an important part of their community before the need for their sites outweighed the contribution the buildings themselves and to the community.
Much of the improvement that has been made in the area surrounds the multi-million dollar facility of the General Telephone Co. which originated in a small two-story brick building at the corner of North Van Buren and West Union Streets. In the beginning it was the Murphysboro Telephone Co. which operated under that name as late as the middle 1920s. The one small building on the corner housed the telephone exchange and business office. By 1928 the company had become a part of a smaller organization under the name of the Illinois Commercial Telephone Co. which later became a division of General Telephone. (Technically, the first phone company was the Ohio and Mississippi Valley Phone Company.)
When the new and expanding telephone company had outgrown the building on the corner, it moved to the block west on Union Street, and then began filling in the gap between the old building and the new with subsequent additions to the first new structure.
When the phone company was on the old corner it was next door to the Marion Fire Department adjacent on Union Street to the east. The fire department’s occupancy of that location dates back to the World War I era and the days of a horse-drawn “fire wagon”. The horses in their stalls, awaiting the alarm that would drop the harness on their backs and signal their race to a fire, were the object of admiration of school children who passed that way going home from the Washington School two blocks to the west.
Harry Cash, oldest of Marion’s former firemen, served part of his long tenure as chief during the horse and wagon days.
Part of the block between North Van Buren Street and the alley behind Campbell’s drug store was occupied by a hitch yard, and it was only natural that it should become one of the first automobile parting lots, along with the former hitch yard north and east of the city hall. The transformation of the fire department hitch yard into a parking lot for cars was advanced by abandonment of the old fire station less than a decade ago, with construction of the new one on North Court Street. It is being completed this year with paving of the sites of the old telephone building, the former Moose Hall at the north end of the block and the residential site In between the two.
The Bank of Marion joined in the creation of more parking areas downtown when it acquired buildings on the north and devoted part of their sites to parking during expansion of its banking house. Removed in the process were the buildings that once housed a barbershop owned by W.T. Hudspeth, and later a restaurant owned by Pete Poulus. The two-story building which at different times in Marion history was occupied by the old Reid Hotel, the A & P Store, a gift shop, I.C. Silver’s ladies store, and later Sam Sanders’ Shoe Store and then the American Brokerage in the late 1950’s. (Pete Poulus owned Pete’s Snack Shop which was cozied up against the back of the bank building during the 1950’s.)
One of the buildings acquired by the bank was Hay’s Mercantile originally owned by C.W. Hay and later occupied by other stores, and the building adjacent to it on the west which more than 50 years ago housed Duncan Baker Hardware Store, and in later years, the Roberts Drug Store and the J.V. Walker & Sons clothing store. Part of its site is the bank parking area today.
In the second block on North Market Street where the bank established additional parking space, there once stood a “rag restaurant,” so named because it was constructed of canvass stretched over a wood frame. About 1922 a brick building was erected on the spot, its first floor was occupied by the John L. Jones Furniture Store, and the second floor housed Browns Business College. A destructive fire some 30 years later left the lot vacant again. (This reference is to the east side of Market at the corner of Union where Kimmel Auto Supply sat for years and was destroyed by fire on December 17, 1963.)
The lot between Jefferson and Jackson Streets west of the Christian Church was occupied by a brick building fronting Jefferson Street, and some residential properties to the north before it was acquired by the Christian Church about 40 years ago. The brick building was occupied 50 years ago by the Bracy Supply Co. which retailed foodstuffs and miner’s supplies. At one time a machine shop occupied part of the building, and another room was a storage place for the Heyde Hardware Co. Upstairs rooms, included a hall, used variously for union and lodge meetings.
According to the 1908 Marion City directory, the house at the west end of the block on the site of the present office building of Dr. John Kaeser, was the home of Mrs. Otis L. Glass, widow of the local Missouri Pacific Railroad superintendent and Marion City Commissioner. The lot purchased by the Christian Church adjacent to the Kaeser building and the residential buildings fronting on Van Buren Street was developed as a paved and metered parking lot as a cooperative project by the church and the City of Marion. (At the time Dr. Kaeser’s office was at 301 N. Van Buren St.)
Pioneer In that sort of arrangement was the development of the Methodist Church property at the corner of West Union and North Van Buren streets. Absorbed by the parking lot was the former church parsonage occupied 50 years ago by Dr. J.W. Cummins and subsequently by other pastors and their families up to and including the Rev. Carl Hearn, now again a Marion resident.
Across the street from the parsonage on the present telephone company lot was a two-story house occupied as late as 1923 by Mrs. Mary Gallagher widow of the founder of the Gallagher Lumber Yard which once stood at the corner of North Market and East Jackson Streets.
In that era the corner across Van Buren Street east of the Methodist personage where the Knapp Oil Co. building occupies about half block was transformed from a mule ban into an automobile sales garage. The mule barn operated by Joab Goodall had a capacity of 150 mules and through it there passed hundreds of animals acquired for the Army in World War 1, for it was a mule buying center for a large area of the Midwest. Maurice Hayton sold Studebakers there until he moved to North Market Street and later Mrs. Rita Hartwell operated the Oakland and Pontiac Agency there.
This was the busy business corner of town in an era which didn’t need so much space to park cars. But the transformation of the garage building was a harbinger of things that have come to the city since.
Aside from the city-owned and managed parking lots, the county is adding to one new area and overhauling a second near the court house, and the telephone company is developing its surplus ground for employees parking to relieve the pressure on the space available in one of the city’s most congested sections.
(Glances at Life by Homer Butler, published May 20, 1978; Notes added in parenthesis for clarification due to time passage by Sam Lattuca)