Reger Building 1900

The Reger Building was constructed about 1900 by Dr. Robert A. Reger and Margaret Maggie Tilloston Janney Reger. The land had originally been owned by A.R. Ireland, who in his will had it sold to Maggie's father, Tillitson Janney, because the property adjoined the Janney home. Maggie had grown up on Main Street, but during the Civil War her family, Confederate sympathizers, was forced to flee Buckhannon and returned only at the end of the war. In 1878, Maggie married Dr. Robert A. Reger, who after years of medical practice was appointed a trustee and then treasurer of the West Virginia Conference Seminary, now West Virginia Wesleyan College. The building's first occupant was a dry goods store at street level and boardinghouse rooms on the second and third floors. In 1908, the millinery store The Leader moved into the first floor and operated there through 1923. In 1925, the Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company took over the first floor and ran a grocery store there until the start of World War Two. The Reger family sold the building to Spiros Lulos in 1943. Spiros and his son George later opened the popular restaurant Liberty Lunch across the street from the site. In the 1940's Humphrey's Quality Pastry was located there, and in the 1950's Hornbeck Children's Clothing and the City Restaurant operated there. Joseph Oldaker acquired the building from Hack Humphrey in 1954, and he and his family ran the Acme Bookstore there for the next 50 years. In 2003, Aesop's restaurant opened in the rear of the building, and in 2013 Main Street Antiques took over the entire first floor for its retail business.

Buckhannon, West Virginia · United States