Then and Now #13 - The Clark Building

📍The Clark building, located at 601-603 Locust Street, originally constructed around 1924 after the previous building on the site was destroyed by fire. 🔥 That earlier building had been constructed after an even earlier building had burned down. 🔥 In the 1840s and 50s a small wood frame hotel occupied the site. 🏨 In the 1860s a brick building, the Browning House, was constructed on the site. 🧱 The Browning House is most well known for being the place where Nelson Kneass, composer of Ben Bolt died. 🎼 When the Browning House burned down in 1889 the Henrietta Hotel was constructed. 🏨 The Henrietta Hotel was a three-story building with a hotel on the second and third floors and storefronts on the first, similar to the Browning House before it. 🛏️🏬 One business on the first floor was the Clark Pharmacy which opened in 1901, run by O. P. Clark, who owned the entire property by 1911. 💊👤 When the Henrietta Hotel burned, the new building took the name of its owner and the primary business in it, becoming the Clark Building. 🏢

Historic Photo from Livingston County Library archives. Current picture courtesy of J.T. Baysinger June 18, 2025.