Livery stables rented animal-drawn vehicles and saddle horses and served doctors on calls, people arriving on or meeting trains, lawyers attending court, salesmen on local rounds, land seekers, hunters and fishermen, young men courting, and ladies out visiting. They usually occupied substantial frame or brick buildings with stalls, harness rooms, and offices that might cover a block, with nearby pasture, and they also boarded the teams of businessmen and townspeople and provided hearses and funeral carriages. The stable was also a town's club for men trading, meeting visitors, and getting news. After school, boys made deliveries and rode horses back to the barn, while workers painted and polished carriages and groomed and fed horses; tramps cleaned stables and slept in the hay. The manager often doctored animals and sometimes was an undertaker. Fine saddle horses and rigs stood out front for show, including top buggies with storm curtains, plush-lined hacks, and Studebaker dray wagons, rented for $3 to $5 a day. On this courthouse site until 1912 stood the Blackwell Livery Stable, and to the east from 1880 to 1914 the Nidever Livery Stable kept the city fire engine team at its front and could send the fire wagon out within minutes of an alarm. A centuries-old institution, the livery stable disappeared about 1915 without a true successor.