Model Train Journal

Continuing our look at interesting architecture in downtown Steubenville, Ohio...

We are at the corner of 5th and Market Streets. The corner building used to be an S.S. Kresge. My grandfather would take me there as a small boy and buy me roasted nuts and pistachios. The soda fountain / candy shop was located at the rear of the store - off camera to the extreme right.



Further down (east, towards the river) Market Street is the Exchange Realty Building. The bottom left storeroom housed Morley's. On the right was Fisher's. A large vertical sign hung over Fisher's. I need to research these businesses.



The Exchange Realty Building has some ornate and cool-looking cornice detail.


Further east on Market is the building formerly occupied by the Beall and Steele Pharmacy. Note the mural depicting that business around the turn of the century. The alley is S. Commercial Street.


Further east, the next building's previous occupant is easy to identify - it's the W.T.Grant building. Along the south side of Market we find at least 4 Five & Dime stores of some flavor - McCrory's, W.T. Grant, S. S. Kresge, and F.W.Woolworth - in the space of 3 blocks!




The next store is McCrory's at the corner of Market and 4th Streets.



Across 4th Street from McCrory's is Richmond Brothers, a mens clothing store. The curved front is unique.



Across the street from Richmond Brothers is the Sinclair Building. This is the building's appearance as far back as I can remember (1960s). The hideous metallic band around floors 2-3 might be older than I suspect. I attended an NMRA clinic given by the owner of City Classics a few years back. He asserted that these "improvements" or "modernizations" to late 1800's vintage buildings were the result of stimulus money given out by the US government during the Great Depression. So these changes might have come about in the 1930s, not the 1950s. And they were "make work" types of things for businesses.



This poster shows the Sinclair Building as it was originally constructed. Someone has conveniently Photoshopped Dean Martin standing in the entrance.



George

Well, looking at those pics I would say brick-n-mortar retail is dead in Steubenville. Lots of great stuff...too bad it's all empty.

Best thing I remember about the five-n-dime (besides all of those seventy-nine cent Airfix plastic models) was those little turtles they used to sell...the display was a big pond with an island with a plastic palm tree in the middle. My mother would never let me get one. Probably a good thing, lol.

Healey

healey36 wrote:Well, looking at those pics I would say brick-n-mortar retail is dead in Steubenville. Lots of great stuff...too bad it's all empty.

Best thing I remember about the five-n-dime (besides all of those seventy-nine cent Airfix plastic models) was those little turtles they used to sell...the display was a big pond with an island with a plastic palm tree in the middle. My mother would never let me get one. Probably a good thing, lol.

Healey

The town has moved up the hill. There is a mall up there and a lot more business activity. I would say that the US 22 bypass really killed downtown Steubenville.

OMG, I had forgotten about those turtles! And the plastic palm tree.

George

My cousin lives in Steubenville. She says she got to watch Mingo die and now will get to watch Steubenville die.
The mall mentioned above has lost most of the business it had.

rogruth wrote:My cousin lives in Steubenville. She says she got to watch Mingo die and now will get to watch Steubenville die.
The mall mentioned above has lost most of the business it had.

Oh! I'm sorry to hear that. I'm headed that way shortly (to the library on the mall road) and will keep an eye out.

George

Mall health doesn’t appear to be a reliable economic indicator. The mall here on the edge of town is 60% occupied, and we’ve seen malls such as Owings Mills and White Flint get razed after their failure (located in affluent Baltimore and DC suburbs respectively). I suspect Steubenville, while under great economic stress, is prone to the same on-line retail pressure as seen across the country. The kids don’t seem too interested in visiting a physical store, much preferring to shop via their iPhone.

healey36 wrote:Mall health doesn’t appear to be a reliable economic indicator. The mall here on the edge of town is 60% occupied, and we’ve seen malls such as Owings Mills and White Flint get razed after their failure (located in affluent Baltimore and DC suburbs respectively).

Yet at the same time, they build and open that huge outlet mall in Clarksburg on 270 where traffic insanity truly resides daily.

The kids don’t seem too interested in visiting a physical store, much preferring to shop via their iPhone.

Slowly over time, store of the future will effectively be reduced to being warehouses shipping out product bought on-line with little or no actual physical direct customer interaction. In some ways, an improvement given the nature of the "service" that might be received by the staff at various establishments already.

Rufus T. Firefly wrote:

healey36 wrote:Mall health doesn’t appear to be a reliable economic indicator. The mall here on the edge of town is 60% occupied, and we’ve seen malls such as Owings Mills and White Flint get razed after their failure (located in affluent Baltimore and DC suburbs respectively).

Yet at the same time, they build and open that huge outlet mall in Clarksburg on 270 where traffic insanity truly resides daily.

The kids don’t seem too interested in visiting a physical store, much preferring to shop via their iPhone.

Slowly over time, store of the future will effectively be reduced to being warehouses shipping out product bought on-line with little or no actual physical direct customer interaction. In some ways, an improvement given the nature of the "service" that might be received by the staff at various establishments already.

Hadn't heard about the outlet center in Clarksburg. That should return I-270 to being the world's largest parking lot. The county should mandate that they can't open until 10:00AM and must close by 03:00PM.

It's interesting, the big-box stores seem to be going after brick-and-mortar customer service in a big way, almost to the point that I feel hounded at Lowes, Target, Michael's, and a few others. Meanwhile, mom-and-pop establishments, the supposed last bastion of customer service, rarely can give the time of day.

Savannah has two traditional malls. One has 90%+ occupancy and the other @ 50%. Target and Outdoor World keep the smaller one going. The other
is older and had additions made when the newer one opened some years ago. Many of the stores in it have been open for many years. There are a
few that open for just a short time and are gone. A "new" outlet mall opened two years ago and seems to be holding steady.

By the way, few businesses in the malls open before 10 AM.