North Side of Main Street Bridge

North Side of Main Street Bridge

1st Set of Buildings, pre-1884

Wooden buildings on pilings in the Flat River once nearly filled the area on the north side of the Main Street Bridge with only a small section of water flowing freely beneath the roadway to the dam at the Lowell Flouring Mill (today King Milling).

J. E. Lee built a building with five business addresses on the west end of the bridge containing a restaurant, saloon, barbershop, Robinson’s Harness, and a Meat Market. After a gap for the water, the next building to the east was the three-shop front, two-story building of J. C. Train. It contained a Boot & Shoe store, Flanagan’s Saloon, and McPherson’s Bazaar. Jarvis Train used the second floor as a warehouse. He stored 600 bushels of barley up there as well as had a pork room and a storehouse for his many businesses.

Continuing eastward, next was Mrs. C. E. Bush’s building, which had the Goss Grocery on the first floor and Dentist Goodsell on the 2nd floor. Next, M. C. Barber’s building contained Menno Hunsburger’s Confectionery and W. B. Rickert’s Restaurant. One more building to the east was Fred Snyder’s building containing his Saloon. Continuing east the Post Office was located at the center of town on the bridge. It also had businesses on the second floor: a dentist office, a doctor’s office and Herbert the Tailor.

The J. L. Somerby building, one door to the east of the Post Office, held A. W. Hine, Jeweler, downstairs, and Chapman’s Photographic Gallery upstairs. The bridge and its businesses were a bustling area of town.

Then at 8am Saturday morning, January 19, 1884, a fire broke out in the Somerby building, just east of the Post Office. It was rumored to have started from a box of chemicals used in the photographic studio which had been placed too close to the stovepipe on the second floor, however, the photographer denied it. But whatever the ignition, the fire grew into a conflagration. “The wind coming from the northeast drove the fire through the entire wooden row west to Water Street (Riverside Dr.), burning also the wooden row up Water Street to and including Mrs. Lanes’s restaurant. The fire also reached over the bridge and burned four wooden buildings on the south side, making in all 20 buildings destroyed.”

The Lowell Flouring Mill was saved with its own pump and hose and the Union Block west of the mill was also saved. Damage in the 200 East block on the south side of Bridge St. included the breakage of the windows and plate glass fronts. Some of the merchandise and furniture from buildings were saved by the townspeople who hauled it out of the buildings and set it in the middle of the road ahead of the fire. All of the mail, though jumbled, was saved.

While Lowell firemen were fighting the fire, a melee of confusion surrounded them- horse runaways, injuries from glass and smoke, people stealing alcohol from the burning saloons and getting drunk, some theft of items, building occupants carrying items out, and finally the arrival of Grand Rapids fire-fighting equipment and ladders. After the fire, coals as large as a fist were found 5 miles south of Lowell. And just like that, the first buildings built on the north side of Lowell’s Main Street bridge were gone.

Images:

This postcard, taken about 1918, shows the 2nd set of buildings on Main Street. The size of the opening for the Flat River waters to flow through between buildings was about the same.
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The Post Office, 2nd from right), was rebuilt in the same location so use that as your point of reference. (Los Portales building today) Map drawn by Luanne Kaeb.