McKune Block

The McKune Block, a late Commercial Italianate brick building on the northeast corner of Main and Middle, was built by owner Timothy McKune in the late 1870s after a 1876 fire destroyed his earlier wood frame hotel on the same site. McKune, a dry goods merchant, Civil War veteran, and Sylvan Township supervisor, began construction a year after the fire, and the new building took three years to complete, with five chimneys at the rear. Although it may have been intended as a replacement hotel, plans changed when businesses began leasing space in early 1880, including Tuomey Brothers Dry Goods, Gilbert and Croswell's Dry Goods, the Post Office, and U. L. Townsend's Boot and Shoe shop. The Main St. side originally featured two pilastered bay storefronts with a central stair entry. Through the rest of the 19th century, the building housed many businesses, notably the meat markets of Drunser & Eisele, the drug store of Rolla Armstrong, and an upstairs millinery shop run by Phoebe Hooker and her daughter. In the early 20th century, the second story was used by the Knights of Pythias, while William Schatz's tobacco and barber shop occupied the corner unit on Main St. from 1897 until the mid-1960s, and J. E. Weber's Saloon occupied the north end on Main St. After prohibition began in Michigan in 1918, John Coin's Sugar Bowl confectionary moved in and served lunches, followed later by Greek immigrant John Panaritis's Chelsea Candy Works, which made confections until the late 1950s. Later businesses included Louie's Dairy Bar and then F&M restaurant, which opened in 1964. By the late 1970s the building had fallen into neglect and needed extensive repairs, and by 1986 the village council threatened condemnation, prompting its sale to Joyce Johnson. She immediately began restoring the first floor to an earlier historic appearance and attracted new tenants; by the end of the 1990s, The Village Shoppe occupied most of the building through the next decade. A public telephone booth stood on the Middle St. side for many years beginning in the 1950s.

Chelsea, Michigan · United States