Could you tell me about the building on South Barstow where the Midwest Mercantile is?
    Thanks for asking! Love that building. 1924. Designed by local boy Edward “E.J.” Hancock, also the architect for the old Central High (now the Board of Ed building), the Masonic Temple, Boyd School (now Mogensen apartments), the Dr. Nels Werner House on Roosevelt Ave. ...

The Mercantile building is one of two downtown faced with hand-tinted terra cotta tile: the other is the “Kline building” a few blocks north at 8-10 South Barstow. Some folks think Hancock designed that one as well, and I think it’s a good guess. They have much more in common than the tile. Construction date, for instance (the Kline Building was built in ‘26), and the Art Deco detailing. What detailing? Well...

Trefoils, those clover shapes decorating the stonework, an element of the late Gothic Revival, which Deco adopted as its own. Projecting facade elements confusingly called pavilions (yep, just like where you eat at the park) that form graceful, symmetrical parapets. And long, narrow, multi-paned windows (Kline’s have been updated since construction).

The Mercantile building has been good luck for its inhabitants. Hobbs Realty (a holding company of Hobbs Supply) built it. Soon enough, Hobbs had grown so large they needed an entire block where the public library now sits. Local pillars Phoenix Steel and Bartingale Mechanical grew directly out of Hobbs Supply.

Leath Furniture followed Hobbs and stayed for more than 40 years. Of course, Leath just closed its Clairemont Ave. site, but the retailer had a heck of a run in Eau Claire. In the late Seventies, early Eighties, Schmitt Music – part of a Minnesota chain – filled the building with the screeches of our blessed children learning trumpet and violin. Schmitt is still in business locally. And for the past 24 years, Midwest Mercantile has offered coins, guns, expert appraisals, and that weird suit of armor. If you haven’t ventured through the door, you should. Once you get inside, you can’t tell what decade you’re in, or even what country really.

I called Hancock a local boy, and we should be proud to claim him. But truth be told, he was an immigrant (came from England as a youth) and lived here all too briefly. He died suddenly at 41 from pneumonia on a business trip to Fargo, which reinforces one of my long-held beliefs. Fargo is bad news.

Is it “town” or “township”?
    It’s “town” in Wisconsin, as in “Town of Seymour.” This makes us more like New England than much of the rest of the Midwest, where “township” rules. The terms are used interchangeably in Minnesota, almost as if the state took a vote and it was too close to call.

In your last column, you didn’t answer part of the question, WHY do squirrels gnaw on stuff?
    Darn it all! You’re right. Although squirrels do seem pretty tweaked, gnawing’s not just a nervous habit. Like all rodents, their incisors never stop growing. Squirrels have to gnaw to keep those teeth worn down. (Rodent actually comes from rodere, Latin for gnaw. That’s how bad it is.) Still there must be a psychological component: pregnant and otherwise stressed squirrels gnaw the most. What stresses squirrels besides pregnancy? Threat of predators, noise, holidays, paying for college. No different from you and me.