Street Scenes and Businesses

Early residents were also inordinately fond of publishing postcards of street scenes and businesses. They were especially fond of taking pictures at the corner of John Street and Newberry Avenue, looking north.

Newberry’s bank building standing on northwest corner of Truman and Newberry Avenue, built in 1890. This postcard is from 1909. The upper floor housed the “opera house” where traveling shows, singers, and lecturers performed. The bottom left hand side was the bank, and the bottom right hand side housed C.B. Beaulieu’s undertaking parlors and furniture shop.
This postcard shows Newberry’s most important employer from 1880s until the 1940s. Originally called the Vulcan Furnace Company, between 1908 and 1915 it was part of the Lake Superior Iron & Chemical Company.
This postcard was mailed in 1906 and was taken at the intersection of Truman and Newberry Avenue, looking north. Just “off-screen” to the left is the Bank Building. The vacant lot on the right is where the old Newberry Hotel once stood (before it burned) and where the new Newberry Hotel will soon be. Click here to learn more about this particular postcard.
And here it is, the new Newberry Hotel, built over the ashes of the old Newberry Hotel. This postcard was mailed in 1916, not long after the building was completed.
This postcard (probably from around 1912) shows the northwest corner of the intersection of west Helen Street and Newberry Avenue (looking north). The first building on the left was one of Newberry’s most prominent stores, J.A. Shattuck’s New York Cash Store. Next door is H.E. Smith’s Flour and Feed, followed by a cobbler shop, a saloon, and the Johnson House hotel. Today Rahilly’s stands on the site of the first four buildings. The last, the former Johnson House, is today a restaurant called Timber Charlies.
This postcard, mailed in 1912, shows the northwest corner of the intersection of West John Street and Newberry Avenue, looking north. Leighton’s store is the one with the striped awnings (and an advertisement for the Comedy “Remember Sweetheart”). Ross Leighton produced many of Newberry’s early postcards.
The same view, only cutting off Leighton’s store and showing the other side of the street. Some of the signs on the right hand of the street say “lunch” and “restaurant and bakery.”