Welcome to this week’s edition of White Pine: Then & Now!
In this edition, we are once again in downtown Ely, but this view is looking west along Aultman Street from in front of the Northern Hotel.
I don’t have an exact date, but I can confidently guess the date to approximately 1907-1909. Clues to this time frame include the Northern Hotel (the first building on the left hand side of the photo), which had opened for business January 1907 and the apparent lack of automobiles or concrete sidewalks. A previous edition of Then & Now dated approximately 1910 of this same location looking east show the concrete sidewalks. On the next block beyond the northern is the R. A. Riepe Building. I don’t remember what that building was for, but if memory serves, there was a dentist upstairs. Beyond that are a few unidentified storefronts before arriving at the three story Graham Mercantile building. Along the right side of the photo are many businesses that I am unable to identify. Of all the buildings in this scene, the Graham Mercantile is the only one still standing, albeit very modernized, operating today as Wilson-Bates Furniture.
The current day photo, taken July 22, 2024, shows how drastically the scene has changed over 100 plus years. The Northern is gone, replaced by a parking lot, the Riepe Building became a bank and then an art gallery after the bank moved out. The businesses between the Riepe Building and the Graham Mercantile (Wilson-Bates) were all replaced by a single storefront, originally J. C. Penney but today operating as Garnet Mercantile. As mentioned, the building now occupied by Wilson-Bates was modernized with a pressed steel facade, though I am not clear on when that occurred. On the right hand side of the street, not much remains at all of the businesses that existed originally, or of the business that replaced them. KDSS Radio operates out of the storefront on the right front of the photo and a barber shop opened up in the next shop. Beyond that, the large dirt lot was once home to a number of small shops, but I am guessing they all burned down. The next block is a large paved parking lot that was once a garage or possibly a car dealership, though I am not clear why the building is not standing today. That parking lot is now owned by one of the local gold mines for their employees to park before boarding a bus to the mine.
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