Bluffton, Indiana - The Sunny Side of the Street

April 16, 2007

Photos © 2007 by Robert E Pence

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Bluffton's most visible landmark is the Wells County Courthouse, designed in the Romanesque style by Indianapolis architect George W. Bunting and built using Indiana Sandstone. The most visible landmark used to be the city electric utility's smokestack, which could be seen from near Kingsland, about six miles north on Indiana 1. The smokestack was taken down after the steam turbines were replaced with diesel-powered generators in the 1950s.

This isn't a comprehensive coverage of the downtown; the sunlight was very strong and direct, and I only photographed buildings that I thought would show up well without their facades being hidden in deep, dark, backlighted shadows. I've identified what businesses occupied these buildings when I was a teenager attending high school in Bluffton (1953 - 1957). In some cases, I can't remember what was in them.

Wells County Courthouse

The white cladded building on the left was J.L. Goodin's Buick dealership. I think there's a drive-up ramp on the right side that goes to the second floor. Mr. Goodin was a friend of Dad's, and Dad admired him greatly and often sought his business advice.
The center building, with the green canopy, was a Kroger store.
I think the building on the right was the Western Auto Store.

I don't remember much about this building, but I've heard of Wiecking as a funeral parlor. Funeral parlors and furniture stores often went hand-in-hand, dating to the pioneer era when the local cabinetmaker also made caskets. I suspect the building was built as a furniture store.

The Stag Bar has been there as long as I can remember, but I've never had a reason to go in there. I never used to hear much about it, but the the patrons and operators of Joe's Cafe, one of the most notorious dives in Northeast Indiana, crossed too far over the line too many times and the joint got shut down. Maybe the displaced clientele took up residence at the Stag Bar; the police reports in the Bluffton News-Banner carry frequent accounts of fights and brawls there or thereabouts, and I've read of some particularly violent domestic incidents that apparently followed afternoons or evenings spent there. If you're in Bluffton and looking for a place to vent some pent-up anger or burn off some testosterone, this may be your kind o' place. There's an alley entrance, too.

I've seen a 1908 photo showing this building with a nineteenth-century facade. The present look appears to be an 1930s or 1940s remodeling.

The only downtown retail establishment that remains from my youth, so far as I can remember, this men's wear store has been there as long as I can remember. Then, it was Masterson-Tyndall. It's still a good store, with a respectable merchandise line and good service.

This was the Morris 5c 10c & $1 store. Long aisles ran from front to back, flanked by tables divided into bins and stocked with toys, knick-knacks and housewares. It didn't have the sidewalk canopy then, and the signboard above the storefront was red with gold lettering.

Linn & Saurer was a long-time famiy business and a top-quality furniture store.

This was Old First National Bank. Before that, it was Studabaker Bank, a locally-owned bank that fell victim to the Great Depression that started with the stock market crash of 1929.

The left side of this building was Young's Rexall Drugs and the right side was the Boston Store, later superseded by Gambles. The Boston Store was the last place my grandmother was able to buy her black lace-up high-top dress shoes. I think this one still has the potential to be quite a handsome building, with some masonry repair and a respectful restoration of the storefronts.

This is one of the remaining intact blocks of turn-of-the-century buildings. The building on the right was an appliance store, and for the past several years an antique mall. The owner has restored the upper floors as his personal residence, one of a few downtown buildings where this has been done in the past several years.

The 1960s cladding was stripped from this building a year or two ago, but not much has been happening, at least on the exterior, since then.

One of these buildings, I can't remember which one, was the Roxy, a small movie theater. Later it was a photo studio and camera shop.

Still a pretty nice facade. It just needs to be de-kitsched.

This building used to house the offices of Doctors Bill & Max Gitlin.

This was Jack Gerber's Hudson automobile dealership.

The City Hall, popularly known as the Community Building, once housed all city administrative offices plus the police and fire departments. The gym/auditorium was the venue for high school basketball and class plays and many other community events. The police and fire departments now have their own building across Scott Street to the east, and the gym is available for use by residents who purchase a key for an annual fee.

The original stained glass window above the entrance was found in a storage room during renovations a few years ago.

This was a handsome block, and several years ago Wells Fargo overran objections by local preservationists by telling the city administration that in order to continue to operate downtown, they had to have a parking lot where it stood. The last I read, they were trying to get the city to take over the lot because it wasn't useful to them, and they wanted to get rid of the property tax burden.

Please excuse the not-so-great Photoshop job. I tried to piece together a rough idea what the building looked like as I remember it. Try to imagine traditional storefronts at street level; I think there were five.
S C R O L L ------>

The building on the left was Rhodes' Market. I can't remember what was in the other building.

Garrett's filling station was where Welches auto repair is now. Before that, the New Bliss Hotel stood on that site. It had a massive, wide staircase that ascended from the center of the lobby, and ancient oversized wood-framed leather-upholstered furniture facing the front windows. After the interurban shut down and was replaced by buses in 1941, the ticket office was located in the hotel. The original interurban ticket window was located at the far end of the front desk, and the clerk was William Tallmadge "Tom" White, who had been an interurban motorman back in the day. Sometime during my youth, the bus line changed from Indiana Railroad to Trailways. I think that in the early fifties, I used to pay $1.10 for a round-trip ticket to Fort Wayne.

The two-story building with the two-toned metal cladding over the original brick was the firehouse before the city hall was built in the 1920s. The bell tower stood where the corner is beveled off. When I was in high school, a Fryback's restaurant and ice cream parlor occupied the first floor. Fryback's was a local maker of premium-quality ice cream with all fresh, top-quality ingredients; their factory was in the building on the south edge of town now occupied by Janet's Garden Center, next to the bowling alley.
Later the old firehouse held a NAPA store before becoming the Republican headquarters.

I think the building next to the Republican Headquarters housed a printing company.

The former Carnegie Library is now the courthouse annex.

The current library, across the street, is undergoing a major expansion.

The brick building withe nice cornice housed Venis Office Supply.

Alley entrance to the Hideaway. It used to be a somewhat respectable place, but I haven't been in it in about 40 years. From the looks of it, I don't think I'll be returning any time soon.

In the 1950s this was the machine-shop entrance to Motor Parts and Equipment Co., a Fort Wayne-based auto parts wholesaler. It was my frequent hangout when I was a grease-under-the-fingernails shade-tree mechanic. The window decals still attest to its former use.

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