Then & Now: 000 Block of South Main Street

Then – A Day in the life in 1911

The photographer who took this is standing in the intersection of South Main Street and Railroad Avenue, looking at the west side of Main and south. The building on the immediate right is where the Flame Restaurant is. The Flame is probably in this same building, but it’s been extensively remolded since it burned in the 1960s (from which it derived its Flame name). Aside from the Flame building (Heller & Burnett was known as a saloon), everything up to the 6 story Citizen Building at the extreme left, is completely gone. Or changed. The original Ward Hotel can be seen, but it too burned. This image is from a postcard from my collection and includes postal cancelation stamp from 1912. The photographer is Nicholas A. Brothers and he was sort of the official photographer in 1911 for Aberdeen. Through the congested street you can see the newly installed trolley tracks and electric service lines that powered the trolleys. Many will recall the iconic J.B. Moore Furniture building. Further down is the Hatz block building. That became Gambles and eventually, both J.B. Moore and Gambles became Hay Furniture.

Now – A Completely different life in 2024

As you probably know, and as you can see, there is nearly nothing recognizable from the previous picture, and there are no people on sunny Friday morning. The large building that replaced everything is called the Blackstone Office Building. It was built in 2003 as part of a bold investment into Downtown to help spark revitalization. Blackstone Developers (Tom Aman and Norg Sanderson) created a development package that included tax increment financing and historic tax credits that included the Ward Hotel, the Milwaukee Depot, several parking lots, and a new, modern building on this block. But, all the buildings in the previous picture had to go. Preservation architects were hired to help with the restoration work, as well as to design a new building that was an appropriate fit for a downtown corner that was already flanked by two gigantic buildings, the Ward and the Dacotah Prairie Museum. The point was to maintain a rhythm of alternating heights and textures like you see on a typical downtown. //