Kemmeters

John Kemmeter and Anne Nussbaum Kemmeter, owners of a grocery store at 318 Ahnaip Street (1900 Menasha City Directory).  In later years, their son, Peter, ran a similar grocery at 303 Ahnaip (1924 Street Guide).

photo courtesy, Menasha Public Library

Mill and Main Streets

 

Spring 1940; this is after the Tuchscherer shoe store fire and before it was rebuilt.  Here we get a view of the seldom seen north face of the library building and the John Marx tailor shop which was wedged in between the shoe store and library.  Now, with the demolition of the hotel, nothing architectural remains from this vantage point.

photo courtesy Menasha Public Library

316 Racine Street

 

This concrete block electric and water utilities building for the city used to grace the west side of Racine Street, just before the railroad tracks between Third and Fourth Streets.

Hiatus

I'm taking a break from the blog.  Look for me to return next week, July 29th.

Fire Coverage

The Oshkosh Northwestern of July 18, 1964 provided the above press coverage of the fire.  Days later, estimates of damage were revised downward to $1 million by the Menasha fire chief.

Fifty Years Ago Today...The Wooden Ware Fire

The Menasha Wooden Ware fire of July 17,1964 brought an era to a close. A railroad employee, using an acetylene torch to repair a track on a wooden trestle next to the box plant, set fire to the trestle. Although the fire was quickly controlled, burning embers were still carried by a swift breeze and engulfed the building, destroying it and three boxcars. Two weeks after the fire, the company’s board of directors announced that a new 185,000 square foot corrugated box plant would be constructed in an industrial park three miles south of Neenah. New corporate offices, to be adjacent to the new plant, were planned as well and the office staff left Menasha the next year.

309 DePere Street

Still serving the industrial, institutional, health care, food service, manufacturing, professional, municipality and school markets, United Paper is a wholesale distributor and has been locally owned and operated since 1921 in Menasha.  The photo above is their old location; I grew up in the shadow of this building, which is just north of the old Coonen's gas station at Third and DePere Streets and just before the railroad tracks.