Mercantile Building

The mercantile building is constructed of native limestone blocks covered with plaster or stucco. The two floors are stacked simply atop one another and topped with a hipped roof. The roof, originally wood shingled, was replaced by galvanized iron in the 1930s. The building’s most distinct architectural details are the large, rough limestone quoins at the corners of the building. During the 1960s restoration, Brooks Martin discovered that the majority of the limestone walls were practically “hollow.” By that time, the corner quoins and the exterior stucco were all that was holding the building together. A Historic American Buildings Survey from 1936 documented the state of the mercantile building. At that time, a concrete slab had replaced the original floor, which likely had been wood. The first-floor fireplace on the north wall had been walled up. The second-floor fireplace featured a beautifully carved wood mantelpiece. The ceiling of the first-floor room had canvas tacked directly to the joists. In the 1960s, Brooks Martin noted that a fire had destroyed the joists and the canvas ceiling of the mercantile building sometime after the 1936 survey.