What we know
Two-story stone building with 18-inch walls, a general store below, a hall on the second floor and an iron awning over the sidewalk, with an agricultural supply warehouse beside it at 302 Second; it is the only stone building on either Sanborn sheet (1895, 1900; S-0147). W. B. Walker, Monument's second mayor, built 'a large stone store on the corner of Front and Second Streets in 1880', with a hall upstairs 'where meetings and dances were held' and a large potato cellar, and owned the whole block between Front and Washington; it was the Monument State Bank from 1917 to 1924 (Lavelett, S-0011, pp. 15-16). Her photo of about 1900, looking east on Second from Front, has 'the stone Walker Bldg.' on the left, the north side (p. 12), as the Sanborn maps show.
Where it was
126 Front Street and 301 Second, the northeast corner of Front and Second, on the Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of Monument, sheet 1, Nov. 1895 and Oct. 1900 (Library of Congress, S-0147); placed by fitting the sheet to today's Front, Washington and Jefferson street crossings at 1st and 3rd streets (six points, each within about 15 feet of the fit). Good to about a hundred feet.
Sources
- S-0011: Lucille Lavelett, Through the Years at Monument, Colorado: The Story of Monument, Colorado, 5th printing (Palmer Lake: Palmer Lake Historical Society, 2004); first published Colorado Springs: Valliant Press, 1975
- S-0147: Sanborn-Perris Map Co., Monument, El Paso County, Col., fire-insurance maps, sheet 1, November 1895 and October 1900 (Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division, Sanborn Maps collection)
Sources are named in the text above. Numbers such as S-0080 refer to our source list. Most newspaper quotations were read in the Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection. Long quotations from recent books are shortened here.