The Dougherty drug store operated here from 1845 to 1910, and the town’s first system-connected telephone was installed there on June 1, 1881. From 1910 to 1999, the building housed a hardware store operated successively by Dethoff, then Coder, then Silberhorn, and it sold the first Westinghouse refrigerator west of the Mississippi River. After a flash flood destroyed the original 1840 building, it was rebuilt in 1859 and later restored in 2001 by Historic Muscatine Inc.