When you look north down the hill at the east side of Main Street below Third Street, the view has a beautiful building on the corner and a very large open space behind it.
Had you stood in the same spot 100 years ago, the very large open space would have been filled with quite a few of buildings — some of which were quite striking.
The structure that lived there the longest was the VonHof Hotel — one of the largest and grandest hotels in a town known for hotels. It was built in 1860 and enjoyed 70 years of prominence on Main Street.
The hotel was torn down in the early 30s, shortly after this photo was taken. Sometime during the late 1970s-early 80s, the entire block north to Fourth Street was cleared of buildings, in the preliminary stages of revisioning what was to become the Carrousel District.
