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Letter: Downtown WB left me ‘more than amazed’
Op-Ed · June 02, 2016
It was 1985 when I first set eyes on West Branch’s Main Street.
At least half the store fronts were vacant, with more than a few of the buildings housing them deteriorating. Nonetheless, the streetscape along Main and Downey streets was amazing: three blocks of contiguous commercial buildings dating from the 1870s to the early 20th Century. While almost every small town in Iowa has buildings from this era, almost none has downtown buildings side-by-side, uninterrupted by demolition and later construction.
I spent almost two years researching the histories of each of the 14 buildings that I nominated and were subsequently designated by the National Register of Historic Places as a National Historic District, a monument to the “Golden Age of Agriculture” that saw West Branch grow and prosper.
I now live on the Downeast Maine coastline, overlooking the Atlantic ocean, 80 miles south of Canada, but I still have roots (translates: grandkids) in West Branch. Those roots brought me back to West Branch a few weeks ago, and I was more than amazed by what I saw downtown. Every commercial storefront is occupied and apparently thriving. Store owners were out on an early Saturday morning, sweeping the sidewalks and curbs. Kids were romping, laughing and playing on the Heritage Square green space.
It was great, too, to see the symbioses of commitment to the downtown on the part of the National Park Service, the Hoover Library-Museum, the Main Street director, the mayor and others who appreciate what a diamond in the rough downtown West Branch represents.
Bottom line: The hundreds of hours I invested in putting downtown West Branch on the historic preservation map – with the help and encouragement of Vid Johnson, Lou Picek and the late John Kofoed – have paid off, well beyond my expectations 30 years ago.
Tom Walsh
Gouldsboro, Maine
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