What are they for?
I’ve made many trips from Davenport, Iowa, down River Street, or Highway 67, to cross the bridge over into Moline, Illinois. This is a stretch of riverfront in which the Mississippi runs east and west, with Rock Island in the middle of the river, more or less.
It is confusing. I never can get my internal compass to sort out north and south, and east seems like west.
There are scores of large beautiful homes on River Street facing the river. I was told many were owned by families that made a fortune in the riverboat business when that was the main mode of transportation in the 1800s. They are certainly vast, most sitting on a rise with an immense lawn.
Most have, or had, a long walkway leading from the sidewalk, up concrete steps, directly to the front door. Today they are unusable.
Those steps remind me of a day when people walked to the front door of a house. This is no longer so.
I believe few people use their front door. I know a family that lived in the same house for forty years but rarely used the front door. Everybody uses the “back door,” which is actually a side door. They eventually closed it.
I think today people avoid steps when possible. That was not always the case and much business was conducted on the second floor, or above, of most stores.
It makes sense that stores would use the ground floor because customers carried away merchandise. That would not be handy on the second floor.
The second and above floors were used by professional people.
It was assumed, in that era, that people were healthy enough to climb a flight of stairs to see their physician, dentist, lawyer, accountant.
Many churches used the first floor for educational purposes with an auditorium above. Many, if not most civic auditoriums were on the second floor.
That is no longer so. Today, ramps must be provided at commercial buildings to accommodate people with disabilities.
Lately, back in Moline, I watched the boarding of a small regional jet. A boarding bridge was not used and passengers had to mount the eight steps to enter the airplane. Many did so with difficulty. Eight steps.
The doctor who delivered me, Dr. John L. Garrard, had an office on the second floor of a bank building. A sign at the bottom of the stairway read; “Dr. John Garrard. Office upstairs.”
A few years ago I found his grave in the New Prospect Cemetery near Rome, Georgia. Under his vital information, his birth in 1881 and his death in 1956, were the words “office upstairs.”
Joe Phillips writes his “Dear me” columns for several small newspapers. He has many connections to Walker County, including his grandfather, former superintendent Waymond Morgan. He can be reached at joenphillips@hotmail.com.