The C. E. Williams building (1909)| East Benton County Historical Society |
The C. E. Williams building (1909)
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The C. E. Williams building was built in 1909 by
Charles E. Williams1 for H.M. Ashbaugh and Co.,
a dry goods retailer. Ashbaugh’s previous place of
business was the Reed Block (built 1906), where Ashbaugh’s
had resided since Dec. 1, 1906.2 The primary
reason for the move was a lack of space at the Reed Block
location. H. M. Ashbaugh arrived in Kennewick from the city of Garfield in about 1904 and opened “a moderate sized furnishing store.” By the time of the purchase of the lot for the C. E. Williams building, Ashbaugh’s business had become “one the most progressive in the Columbia River basin.” 3 On June 23, 1909, the deal for the construction of the new building was closed and coincided with the incorporation of H. M. Ashbaugh and Company with a capital stock at the time of $50,000.4 Construction of the new building by C. E. Williams and his son J. R. Williams began shortly thereafter with an anticipated completion date of January 1910.5 The building itself was built out of what was termed “pressed brick,” which the present owners have found to be somewhat softer than traditional fired brick. There is a possibility that the bricks came from the Columbia River Clay Company, which created a new process of producing bricks that the Kennewick Reporter (on May 22, 1908) referred to as “[revolutionary in] the brick business.” On December 23, 1909, the Commercial Club governing board decided to use the upstairs of the Williams Building for their operations. The floor space was to be divided into three rooms, two in the front for “commodious club rooms,” and a third for a banquet hall or dancing room.6 The club took possession of the new quarters on March 15, 19107 and officially opened on the 28th of April, 1910.8 The Commercial Club would remain in the Williams building until October 1, 1912, when it was moved to the Hover Building (built 1906) due to a recalcitrant landlord.10 An ad in the February 23, 1910 issue of the Twin City Reporter announced that the new Ashbaugh’s would be moving from the Reed Block to the new Williams building on Monday, February 28th. A subsequent ad in the Twin City Reporter on March 2, 1910, announced that the grand opening of the new store would be Friday morning, March 4th, with a “grand formal opening” to happen the evening before. The Twin City Reporter described the formal opening on Thursday night as “the best advertisement the town has ever had” and detailed the “elegant furnishings” and music performed by the Kennewick Orchestra.7 Ashbaugh’s did not last long at their new location. An article in the July 19, 1911 issue of the Kennewick Reporter described the sale of H. M. Ashbaugh and Company to C. B. Stewart of Lewiston, Idaho, whose name the business would now be called by. According to the article, Ashbaugh’s was in very good financial shape at the time of the sale. On November of the same year, B. F. Reeser and C.B.Stewart purchased Ashbaugh’s.9 However, Stewart and Reser’s store would only last about a year and a half, as it was sold to the Cobb brothers (T. C. Cobb and J. A. Cobb) and S. C. Miller (from Portland and Roseburg, Oregon), in May of 1913.11 The Cobb brothers would go on to sell the business only a few months later in July of 1913 to George W. Sherk of Portland, Or.12 The tumultuous change of business owners ended when Mr. Sherk moved his family from Portland and remained in business in Kennewick until March 1925, when his sons, E. H. and Barton, sold the business to Britt and Nagel of Portland. The reason for the sale was described as a direct result of the death of Mr. Sherk the previous year in an automobile accident.13 Brit and Nagel disposed of the remaining stock, liquidated the inventory, and closed the store. On February 11, 1926, the Kennewick Courier-Reporter announced that J. C. Penney’s was opening shop in Kennewick. Although most people are unaware of this, J. C. Penney’s actually began as the “Golden Rule.” Starting in 1913, the Golden Rule stores were phased out in favor of the new name, “JC Penney Company.”19 In 1926, Kennewick had a Golden Rule store, but it was in a different building, the Brown Building (1909--demolished in the early 1970s). The plan was to open a new store, under the name J. C. Penney, in the C. E. Williams building (with a lease for ten years) and close the Golden Rule store in the Brown Building. J. C. Penney’s new store in the Williams building opened for business on Saturday, May 29, 1926.13 In 1948, the Kennewick Courier-Reporter wrote on April 8th that J. C. Penney’s has been issued a building permit to build a new store. The new store was to go in next to Washington Hardware (the Emigh-Howe building [built c. 1910]). The new J. C. Penney’s store opened for the business on February 3, 1949 at 9:45 am.14 After J. C. Penney’s announced their intention to leave the Williams building, Mr. Ed Carlson and Don Solberg started Carlberg’s, an appliance, sporting goods and home furnishings store by leasing Sigman’s grocery store,1(directly to the east of the Williams building, where it was built as the “Red & White” grocery in 1937, where Evolution is today) and the Williams building. Carlberg’s opened to the public on May 21, 1948 (and when J. C. Penney’s vacated the Williams building, Carlberg’s expanded their business into it).16 From the 1950s on, many businesses occupied the Williams building: in 1951, Selden’s, a floor covering store opened;17 in 1961, Swan/Storm floor coverings opened; in 1967, BJ’s Magnavox opened; in 1973, the Modern Business College opened its doors; and in 1985, Mother’s World, the current business in the Williams building, opened. It is harder to track the residents that used the upstairs of the Williams building. According to Mark L. Brown (whose father, A. F. Brown, bought the building in June, 192018) and Margarite Serier (widow of Kenneth Serier), the second floor was occupied by the following businesses and proprietors from about 1920 to 1945: A. F. Brown’s Kennewick Valley Telephone Company; Harold Riggins, insurance agent; Dr. Lundy, chiropractor; Dr. Hatcher, dentist; Dr. Boyd, dentist; Kenneth Serier, Benton County Deputy Prosecutor; and Ed Petrask, accountant.1 Mr. Brown also mentioned that the one story building to the south of the Williams building was built by his father in 1941 to move the Kennewick Valley Telephone Company into. The August 19, 1951, issue of the Tri-City Herald published an article on the Kennewick Valley Telephone Exchange that was founded by A. F. Brown (Mark Brown’s father). A. F. Brown purchased the Twin-Cities Telephone Company in 1906 (at the time, barely a year old) and renamed it the Kennewick Valley Telephone Company. The original location was on Canal drive, close to the Farmer’s Exchange building (built 1912). In 1909, the business was moved to a new office on S. Benton St. In 1915, the telephone company was moved to the second floor of the Williams building, where it lasted until 1941, when the Kennewick Valley Telephone Company was moved to the new building behind the Williams building. In 1948, Kennewick Valley Telephone Company was bought by the Interstate Telephone Company (which later changed its name to the “General Telephone Company”). Paul and Joyce Scharold, the current owners, are in the process of restoring the C. E. Williams building. Since purchasing the building in January of 2000, they have removed the stucco surrounding the mid-section of the structure (exposing the original J. C. Penny’s sign painted on the side) and begun demolition and drywall work upstairs. The largest problem they have run into so far is trying to remove the paint from the brick exterior. Because of its porosity, brick is notoriously hard to remove paint from. Unfortunately, it appears that the bricks the Williams building were constructed from are softer than normal, making the paint removal process even more difficult. The front of the Williams building has been remodeled twice since its construction.1 The front of the building originally had 6-panels of transom windows, consisting of small panes of ribbed prism glass set into lead or zinc cames. They were probably removed in the remodeling job that was done when Carlberg’s moved into the building in 1949.1 The Scharolds would like to restore the transom windows and have already located nearly half of the prism glass needed to begin the job. They would also welcome any additional information pertaining to the original transom windows that would assist in their restoration. Also in the works are a new front entrance, which will have stairs leading to the second floor and a new main door entrance that is more appropriate for a 1909 building. The second floor offers great potential, as it is fairly well preserved with much of the original woodwork in good condition. Restoring and preserving a building this old is hard and expensive work. It takes passion and skill—both of which appear in abundance through the labors of Paul and Joyce Scharold. Through the careful stewardship of its new owners, the C. E. Williams building may, one day, eventually see its former glory restored. The Scharolds can be reached at scharold@3-cities.com. Ownership history:1
-Article written by Jeremy Wells, July 2000 1 Information provided by
Joyce Scharold (current owner) |
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