Taking The Wrapping Off

WAI T SBURG - This latest column in our series, appearing just before we actually open the Coppei Coffee Co shop for business, is a little bit like taking the wrapping off a Christmas present.

Last week, the crew from Northstar Construction started taking some of the old aggregate siding off the front of what we've been calling the "Mock" building, the one that will function as the coffee shop's main entrance and has the espresso bar.

This is the last phase of the project. Ninety-five percent of the work inside has been done.

By the time you read this, the new framing and windows for the front may already be in place. With the front, as with the rest of the structure, we're trying to bring the look of the building back to its roots.

And that isn't all that easy, because there's not much information about what those roots are.

According to Vance Orchard's "One Of A Kind" history book about Waitsburg, the building was erected in 1902, almost a decade and a half after the construction of the Times building in 1888.

An old photograph that must date from the early part of the 20th century shows members of the Waitsburg Commercial Club gathered in their automobiles on Main Street for an "annual tour." It gives a glimpse of the Mock building's facade and a sign that says "pool" behind the window.

This would be in line with Orchard's designation of the building in its earlier years as "Saltie's Pool Hall" and "Rock St. Jacque" pool hall. The photograph, which reveals only half the original facade has a simple vestibulestyle door recessed from the sidewalk and flanked by two large windows with smaller windows above them.

The top part of the whitepainted pool hall building is just a little bit lower than the Times. Its very top is bookended by cornices crowned with pieces reminiscent of a bishop in a chess set.

That first facade didn't last. Another photograph showing the building as part of Hamilton's Electric reveals a store front that was quite modern for its day: less wood, more metal trim and more glass surrounded by dark tile with blinds behind the windows and a striped awning above them.

Walter and Anne Hamilton, a business couple from Arlington, Ore., bought the building that now consists of three fronts (new coffee shop, gym and liquor store) in 1940, after the rural electric coop wired farmers throughout the Touchet Valley and facilitated their demand for all sorts of electrical appliances.

They had outgrown the mercantile store (then Hamilton's Department Store, now Waitsburg Grocery) across the street. He started in the Mock building, then filled the spaces to its north and put additions on their backs (east).

Jo An Fiala, Hamilton's daughter who lives in Montana but still returns to Waitsburg for alumni activities, remembers what the store was like around the time she graduated from Waitsburg High.

"The place was lined with all sorts of appliances," she said. "And there were things they'd give away with the appliances, like ironing boards and dust pans."

Delbert Mock, who worked for Hamilton as a delivery boy in high school, returned to Waitsburg from California in 1957 and started an electrical repair business in his garage. He was soon looking for a space with more room and in 1960, he bought the three-part building that had been Hamilton's Electric for about $3,200.

Mock took up the building next door to the Times and leased out the other spaces, running an appliance repair outfit for almost two decades. He closed his doors in 1979 and a year later, Times publisher Tom Baker approached him about selling just the Mock building so he could house his growing job printing operation.

" We were jammed up for room," said Baker, who connected the Times and Mock buildings by breaking through the brick walls of both for a 3.5-foot opening. "It looked like a good opportunity to enlarge our space."

He paid $14,000 for the Mock building, a modestsounding amount by today's standards but a handsome sum at the time.

The dark-tinted windows put up around the time Hamilton owned the store front had broken, Baker said, so he replaced them with smaller ones as he didn't really need a public-access store front.

When we bought the Times and Mock buildings as one package in 2009, the mailing operation for the newspaper were set up behind the front door and behind it were two offset presses. In the back, a door led to a small shop and storage area where we found remnants of the printing operation and the electrical repair shop before it.

At first, our plan was to put the coffee shop in the Times building because it has a more attractive front, but we wanted to keep our office in the original building for historical reasons and figured we could restore the front of the Mock building the way it looked when it was a pool hall in the early part of the 1900s.

The front of the Coppei Coffee Co will remain a work in progress for some time after we open because it will take some time to finish the trim and make a permanent sign.

The buildings are still connected but we put the opening further back so you can take your espresso and pastry into the "living room" behind the Times, and eventually into the patio area out back.

the FREEDOM of

ESPRESSO

A Coffee Shop In The Making