Fundraiser supports Sexual Assault Center
Chris Jackson, president of the Historic DeSoto Theatre Foundation, organized the event for his team that will be
competing against others at the Rome Celebrity Dance Challenge later this year.
Jackson himself will be
the one doing the dancing but on Saturday he was standing in what is now Pullen’s Ordinary Bicycle’s basement educating
Romans on the history of Broad Street’s water engine.
Mark Cochran kicked things off with a presentation of why and how Broad Street was raised in 1898.
The city fell victim to two big floods in the late 1800s because of how low downtown sat. There was one documented occasion where a young boy and his mother boarded a steamboat that took them up Broad Street and docked at the Forrest Building at the 400 Block.
“There was hardly anything on Broad that didn’t get touched” Cochran said.
At the time, the city could not afford to build levees, so the city raised the second floors of most Broad street buildings to meet the new street level. It cost the City of Rome $3,000 to raise Broad Street, Cochran said. After the work was completed there were large empty basements — now known as underground Rome.
Some store owners filled in the downstairs areas, tour guide Frank Jones said, while others have just been sealed up and abandoned.
The tour took the groups to five different locations. Each group spent around 15 minutes exploring the lower levels before returning to the surface and continuing the tour.
The downstairs levels of the DeSoto Theatre, Vogue, and Top Hat Formal Wear and Bridal Shop had never been toured by the public, Jackson said.
The DeSoto Theatre was the first theater in the Southeast to provide picture and sound as well as
chilled water air-conditioning. The pumps for the old system can still be viewed in the basement of the theater along with the old coal shoot, furnace and emergency fire door.
Underneath the Vogue is what is believed to
have once been the site of the Rome morgue, the first floor features a water elevator that predates the use of electricity. The pump system, which was believed to have been built in the 1850s, can still be found
down rickety stairs along with the elevator and elevator shaft.
Inside the Vogue’s basement, tour guide Bob Brinson pointed out the sealed brick walls that used to be doors and windows that looked out onto Broad Street. He said the building is currently being restored and he hopes that they will make use of the downstairs.
Formerly the Yancey Building, the first level of what is now Johnny’s New York Style Pizza, was the largest of the rooms visited. It featured a giant walk-in freezer that required large blocks of ice to keep goods frozen when it was used in the 1800s.
After the tours were over, participants were encouraged to eat at Johnny’s pizza, who donated 20 percent of tour participant’s bill to support the Sexual Assault Center.