An Ancient and Honored Building

The Carpenters have begun work on remodeling the Hand residence into a store [This is believed to be 101 S. Main St.

The building has a history, for the main part, 24X36, was originally built in the fall of 1868 - 51 years ago for a school house.

It stood in the center of what is now a street running north and south past the Hotel Culver, and a few rods north of the hotel corner. [Note this is a crop of the area from the 1906 Sanborn Map.

It succeeded the pioneer school house of the town which stood in about the same spot. The older house was bought by the father [L. D. Wiseman] of Dr. Wiseman [Benjamin W. S. Wiseman], and moved to the corner where Henry Zechiel's house now stands and was remodeled into a dwelling. This building was moved again and is today occupied by the Adams family.

The new school house was built by a man named Lovett who lived on the John Sounders farm, and the first teacher was Miss Phoebe McIlrath who was succeeded by Adrain Foote. For some time the Methodist and Baptist denominations used the building for regular services.

This building was succeeded by the big two story structure which was remodeled 12 years ago into the Osborn hotel.

The substantial manner in which construction was done in those days is seen in the frame work of the Hand residence. The corner posts are 4X8, the sill 8X8 and the girder 4X8

5 Mar 1919 – Culver Citizen

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The news article of Feb 24, 1926 states that: The store building will not be torn down. It will be moved to Mr. Hand's lot on Washington Street where it will be put to other uses at a later date...

March 3 1926 - Two of Culver's Oldest buildings Wrecked for Modern Structures...

One is the building on the corner of Main and Jefferson owned by Walter M Hand...

The Hand store history is rather varied. It was built in the summer of 1868 and stood at that time where the Culver Hotel now stands.

It was bulit for a school house and L. C. Wiseman and is one of the local products of the pedagogical principles expounded therein. To make room for a larger school house on the same location, the building was moved to its present site where it was used as a residence for many years.

According to the best information The Citizen can collect, this building was used for a time as a hotel and eating house.

It was the late W. E. Hand who purchased the place and knocked out the partitions in order to use the bulding for store purposes. He occupied that room with a grocery store for many years.

Now the building will be taken away and in its stead will be erected a filling station... The tearing down of this structure was reaveled, however, that there were good carpenters back in 1868.

While the interior boards are in rather bad condition, the framework is still solid and there is many a year of usage in the old frame.