From Industry to Parks

From Industry to Parks. . Alber and Co., one of the city’s earliest blacksmith and wagon shops, once stood in front of you where State Street ended at Broadway after crossing the railroad. Factories, mills, slaughterhouses, and tanneries operated nearby as well as three spring-fed breweries. The Northern Brewery on Jones Street advertised “bottled beer in cases of 2 dozen or 1 dozen bottles, quart or pint, delivered to any part of the city.” The spring was later tapped by the Arbor Springs Water Company. After the brewery closed in 1908, the building was used as a foundry for fifty years. It was renovated for offices in 1976., In 1902 Mayor Royal Copeland complained that the area where Alber and Co., the tannery, and the slaughterhouses had been was a serious problem. Visitors arriving at the railroad depot were confronted by “foul-smelling dump heaps” across the tracks. Copeland appointed a committee to purchase the property between the river and the railroad tracks that later became Broadway Park. By 1907 the city had acquired the land, but it remained overgrown and was long known as “Hobo Park” for the homeless people who camped there. It was often used as a shortcut from Lower Town to State Street. The park was transformed when the bridges were rebuilt in 2005., It took the Parks Commission, led by its Superintendent Eli Gallup, from 1925 to 1934 to buy up a maze of small workshops and garbage dumps that had replaced the slaughterhouses on the opposite bank of the river (above). Gallup built Riverside park there using workers from the federal WPA jobs program.