The corner of Fourth and Washington streets, Marquette, circa 1950. (Photo courtesy of Marquette Regional History Center)

The picture is, perhaps, the starkest example of how much Marquette has changed in the past 75 years.

The photograph, taken in 1950 from the roof of the current Mining Journal building, evokes old New York City more than it does the Marquette of anyone’s memory. On a corner that’s now nothing more than a parking lot-the northwest portion of the intersection of Washington and Fourth Streets-sat the Green Block, a three-story structure that housed businesses on its ground floor and apartments on the floors above.

As downtown Marquette began its expansion west of Fourth Street in the 1880s, the 300 block of West Washington Street found itself becoming increasingly crowded with new livery stables, grocers, funeral homes, and a Catholic church. One of the largest buildings constructed during that boom was the Green Block, originally built as a hotel by William Green in the first years of the 1890s. Along with the attached Van Iderstine Building (more commonly known as the “Ida Block”), built at the same time and eventually to become part of the Green Block, the complex grew into one of the centerpieces of the growing neighborhood.

The building was home to many businesses over the 70 years it stood on the corner, including medical offices, beauty salons, clothing stores, and restaurants such as the Dixie Barbeque. This particular picture, in fact, shows Erickson’s Radio Repair on the Fourth Street side and Fritz’ Upholstery on Washington. But no business was more identified with the Green Block than Kreig’s News.

Earl and Gerry Kreig opened the newsstand in the mid-1930s, where it quickly became a community institution. Adults who were kids in the 1940s and 50s particularly remember the scent of the store, a combination of newsprint and tobacco. And kids were some of the store’s biggest customers, as it sold comic boys, small toys, and wooden & model airplanes.

One older gentleman, in fact, recalled going into the store many times to lovingly gaze at a model airplane he could not afford. After what were probably too many visits (as he joked) one the Kreig brothers gave him the model plane, with instructions that when finished the young man bring the airplane back to the store so they could see what kind of job he did on it.

He says he brought it back, completed, the very next day.

(As an aside, when the Kreigs retired in the early 1960s, they sold the newsstand to another mid-century Marquette business leader, Joe Fine, who found himself bored in retirement after selling his legendary tavern a few years prior.)

The apartments on the upper floors of the Green Block held a mix of young, small families and older individuals. It was not uncommon for residents to hang on to those apartments; in fact, several individuals made the building their home for 20 to 30 years.

By the mid-1960s, however, the Green Block was starting to show its age. “Urban Renewal” was then in vogue, and when the building began to have problems with safety inspections, its days were numbered. It was torn down in October 1967 so the land could be used as parking for its next-door neighbor, St. John’s Catholic Church. Two decades later the church itself was demolished, and what was once a thriving street corner became nothing more than a parking lot extending for almost half a city block.

Stories of this particular section of downtown Marquette will be the focus of a walking tour entitled Wild, Wild West: The Forgotten History of West Washington Street, led by Jim Koski and put on by the Marquette Regional History Center on Wednesday, June 18. The tour begins at 6:30 pm at the History Center with a suggested $5 donation. More information is available by calling the History Center at 226-3571 or visiting marquettehistory.org.