South Front Street

South Front Street. Ketchikan Grows Up Downtown. [Left side, top to bottom] , (Top photo) Illegible, The young city of Ketchikan (remainder illegible), The Sideboard Saloon was operated by town co-founder Mike Martin from early in the century until 1917, when the city bought him out and tore down the building to widen Dock Street's approach to the wharf, where steamship-borne commerce was growing even faster than the tavern trade. From around 1910, the next-door Grand Theater exhibited silent movies where the Alaska Restaurant had been. By 1913, the Cross Theater was in business at this address. Four different movie houses and a vaudeville stage operated downtown 1905-1925, but only the Coliseum lived to the '50s., Ryus Drug Co. staff pose framed by postcards and the Saturday Evening Post around 1915. The pioneer pharmacy was opened in 1901 by J.R. Beegle. Joseph Emmett Ryus bought the business in 1906 and expanded it into the former Grand Theater building in 1917. Ryus Drug was a mainstay downtown for more than five decades until the arson fire of January 1958 that destroyed the Ferris block., Born from the ashes Once burned, twice shy. Charles Ingersoll built his namesake hotel of concrete in 1925, replacing the Reville Hotel, which burned down after 25 years. The Ingersoll Building over the years housed businesses including the Blue Fox Cafe (closed 1964) Pan-Am Airways and Otto Schallerer's photography studio., [Right side, top to bottom] , Front Street stroll Alice and Julia Kincaid flank the visiting Ann Wilson of Reno, Nevada in August 1913. Lazing dogs and an idled boat belied the bustle of the frontier. Hard-rock mining and salmon canning were dominant industries. The young town's restaurants and saloons did brisk trade, as did hotels such as the turreted Reville., 1914 fire map is a snapshot of a district that tended to change very often., Fire, fast and furious, took out the Ketchikan Wharf Co. block in two hours in June, 1941. Lost: steamship offices, Walker Drug Co., Charles Insurance, Hunt Bookstore, Kubley lounge., Tongass Trading: First of its type and built to last Ketchikan was a rough-hewn outpost when Tongass Trading Co. opened in 1898. But the decade-old town boasted nearly 800 people and was ready for a big general store. In fact, J.R. Heckman and Co. opened just a year behind Tongass Trading and proved the populace could support two big department stores. Tongass Trading Co. put up its sturdy concrete building at Front and Dock in 1913. The company grew into its bigger home, with departments offering hardware, groceries, [obscured] and men's clothing. Profits permitted the owners to [obscured] a new building on the water side of Front Street in 1924. [obscured] tolled the deaths of many enterprises by fire or [obscured] Tongass Trading Co. rolled steadily on through a century and more of commercial success., Portal to the First City's future , A crowd gathers in 1951 for dedication of a new welcome arch over Mission Street at Front Street. It was more than just a neon greeting to steamship-borne tourists. It was a portal into a new era in the First City. The old days were hard-rock mining, fish traps and territorial administration. The 1950s were a timber industry, burgeoning tourism and paved streets; they were a pulp mill, Pan-American Airways and, in 1959, statehood. In 1996 the community put up a new welcome arch that replicated an earlier model , a tip of the hat to earlier generations' portals and passages.