West Water Street Businesses from Behind in 1926

Sandusky photographer Ernst Niebergall took this picture of the rear side of the buildings along West Water Street between Columbus Avenue and Jackson Street about 1926. Today we know this area as the newly renovated Shoreline Drive. The first building on the eastern part of this block is known as Hubbard’s Block, at what is now 101 West Water Street. The building was originally owned by Sandusky businessman Lester Hubbard, and designed by Sheldon Smith, was built in the Romanesque Revival style of architecture. Hubbard’s Block was home to the Cosmopolitan Art and Literary Association in the 1850s. Moving down the street, next is the Stiles E. Hubbard building at 115 West Water Street, which had as its first tenants a grocery and dry goods store, and Austin Ferry’s hat shop. In 1926 George M. Rinkleff had a hardware store at 121 West Water Street. This advertisement shows us some of the items that were carried by the Rinkleff Hardware store in the 1910s, a few years before Mr. Niebergall took the picture of the block.

Known as the Lawrence Cable building, the structure at 121 West Water Street was built in 1868. Samuel Love had a men’s clothing store at 201 West Water Street in the mid-1920s. Charles R. Carroll ran a transfer business and a second hand store at 211 West Water Street. Many of the vintage trucks parked on the street were probably used to transport goods to local residents by employees of Mr. Carroll’s transfer business.

Chicken dinners were served at a restaurant to the west of Mr. Carroll’s business. At the corner of West Water Street and Jackson Street is the Freeland T. Barney building, which was built about 1870 and renovated in 1892. Most of the buildings that are pictured had businesses on the street level and apartments on the upper floors. You can read more historical details about the commercial property on West Water Street in Ellie Damm’s book, Treasure by the Bay. Pages 53 to 58 are devoted to the architectural background of these historic buildings.