This is an Emporia Main Street cache.
Include are selections from notes form V.A. Basgall Emporia City Planner, the Lyon County Historical Archives and Emporia Main Street Historical District Property Information.
The location is a high muggel area, be cautious.
The cache is located outside.
-Tweezers may be requited-
Cache is located with property owner’s permission.
Some of the information contained herein is from the Emporia City Directory in Lyon County Archives/Research Center and with the help of Emporia Main Street. Please respect the businesses and the downtown area. The cache has been placed with the permission of the owner. The cache is located outside however please step inside and check it out the businesses.
The idea for the DK bike race was spawned 8 years ago, 2005, by Jim, Joel & Kristi and is now “Hosted” out of this location.
The store front was originally a butcher shop and a mortuary, 1875-1933(see below) (this was before the DK). In 1933 it as renovated into Crawford Furniture and in 2009 when Crawford Furniture closed the storefront was again renovated. The developers have four (4) businesses located here now, and one is on the second floor. And all four are prospering. They are successful partly due to the location on Main Street, partly due to shared rent, and partly due to their creativity. Credit must be given to the developers (Jamie & Kristi) who had enough creativity to try something different in Emporia, combine use of space and creative remodeling.
The following information is from Yvonne Poole:
The oldest hard copy of the Emporia City Directory in Lyon County Archives/Research Center dated 1926 shows 610 Commercial as Frisco Packing House meat and 608 as a grocery. There was still a grocery and Frisco side-by-side in 1936, but occupants changed by 1938. In 1932 Frisco was listed as a Frisco Market grocery.
You must understand that our definitions of businesses have changed over time.
Old Groceries often contained butchers. Also, old furniture stores often produced coffins and served as mortuaries/taxidermists. We think of some of those combinations as weird now, but the materials used back then often created some strange hybrids (old barbers were once often surgeons because of their access to blades, for example).
There was a two-story building on this parcel by 1884, when there was a grocery store on both the north and south halves. By 1888, there was a second-hand shop in the south half. This space housed a confectionary in 1893 and a furniture store in 1899, 1905, 1911. The north half continued to house a grocery until at least 1911. The ca. 1900 construction date derives from this building’s design, which falls in the evolution between the Italianate, Richardsonian Romanesque and Queen Anne styles of the late nineteenth century and the Commercial Style that predominated from 1910 to 1930.
Please do not forget to look up; the old store front is still nice architecturally.