I was strolling along on Flickr and came across a cool old postcard looking east along Central between 4th and 5th Street. Downtown was just a completely different beast back in the days, check out all the activity, people and stores - hell, there’s even a hotel down there. I’ve always loved the McCrory’s sign from the building’s heyday as a thriving five and dime, so I figured dusting off the old interweb time machine might be fun.

For bearings you’re looking at the Snell building (aka the Rutland building) peeking over the top of the vertical McCrory’s sign there, which is easier to make out in the full size image. That sign is of course still there and what’s even awesomer is that the neon of the Hotel Alden sign remains as well (although the black paint behind it has since vanished). Below is another view looking the other direction where you can see more of the Snell building on the right.

Another thing you can see in this photo is the Kress building next door, which you may recognize since the ghost of the Kress logo still appears on the backside of the building. The Kress building itself was actually listed on the National Registrar of Historic Places in 2001, which I wish had happened to more of Central.

And last but not least, one more awesome postcard of the same block, this time with the Rutland Department Store sign which sheds some light on where the building got its name. These days it is more often referred to as the Snell building on account of developer C. Perry Snell (yep, Snell Isle) who built it in 1926. Fun fact: not only is the building itself on the National Registrar of Historic Places, the cupola is a National Geodetic Survey benchmark. For you non-geocaching nerds that would be “a point whose position is known to a high degree of accuracy and is normally marked in some way… used by land surveyors, builders and engineers, map makers, and other professionals” and more recently by nerds with GPS.

I think my favorite part of this last one is the Fountain Lunch sign. Can you imagine rolling to Walgreens or CVS to get lunch? Man, it was so much cooler back then.