AVERY STREET

Looking south on Avery from about Third Street during the 1913 flood.
The tall building on the right is the Peerless Milling Company.

Looking southwest toward the Peerless Mills building at Third and Avery in 1951.

Looking northwest toward the Parkersburg power plant on Third and Avery in the 1940s.
It was later torn down and is now a city parking lot. Beyond is the Kaufman Lattimer
Co., which is now a boarded-up building behind the Blennerhassett Hotel.

The Arthur I. Boreman home stood at 405 Avery, on the northwest corner of Fourth & Avery.
Boreman, West Virginia's first governor, died in 1896. The house was later the Union
Mission of Parkersburg Childrens Home, run by James Bolton Moellendick. "I lived in
that house until I was in the fourth grade, and the 'Mission Kids' lived there until the
1960s, when the building was torn down," says his son, J. Milton Moellendick.

Looking northwest from Fourth Street toward Garfield School
and the Auditorium Theater (at Fifth Street) in 1951.

Pure Oil had a gas station at the northwest corner of Fifth and Avery in the 1930s.

Near the corner of Avery and Fifth, looking northwest across the parking lot toward St. Xavier in 1972.
The Parkersburg National Bank would later be built here.
(Photo by Harry Barnett; courtesy of Dan Kemper)

Looking northwest on Avery from Fifth Street in 1958. On the left is the rear of St. X Church.
The gas station on the left was replaced by Union Bank. The large structure in the middle is
the famous white elephant, the Park-A-Loft, which was later torn down. On the right is the
former hotel at Sixth and Avery that in 1958 was an office building and beauty college.


(Courtesy of Tim Archer)

This architectural illustration of the Park-A-Loft presents an idealized structure
with retail stores. The stores never materialized, and the Park-A-Loft
is remembered today as Parkersburg's greatest white elephant.

On a clear day in 1959, a photographer above Parkersburg looks toward Quincy Hill. Avery Street runs diagonally up the
photo. Clearly visible are the large, dark gray Park-A-Loft at Avery and Sixth, the Sixth Street B & O Railroad station
to its right, and Washington Jr. High School on Seventh. The City Building and St. Xavier's are on the lower left.
(Photo courtesy of Dan Kemper.)

Reverse view from above, in 1958: Looking southeast from
the Park-O-Loft toward Sears at Fifth and Avery.

The Van Winkle Hotel stood at the northwest corner of Sixth and Avery. It later became the
home of National Woolen Mills, which removed the corner door and added an extra floor.
(Photo courtesy of Artcraft Studio, 519-521 Market Street, Parkersburg, WV 26101; (304) 485-5771.)

Looking west toward Sixth Street and the B&O bridge.

Looking west on Sixth Street from Avery sixty years later, in 1985, with a telephoto lens, as a
Chessy System engine pulls a line of freight cars into Parkersburg. (Photo by John F. Bjorklund)

Looking west on Seventh Street from Avery in 1957.

Looking northwest from the corner of Seventh & Avery in the early 1940s.
(Courtesy of Artcraft Studio, 519-521 Market Street,
Parkersburg, WV 26101; 304 485-5771)

Looking southwest at the same Sterling Gas Station located
at the corner of Seventh & Avery in the early 1940s.
(Courtesy of Artcraft Studio, 519-521 Market Street,
Parkersburg, WV 26101; 304 485-5771)

Looking west on Eighth Street from Avery in 1957.

Looking west from Eighth and Avery toward the Union
Trust Building and Chancellor Hotel, around 1907.

St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church on the east side of Avery, at Ninth Street.
It was destroyed in 1909. See Quincy Hill Water Tower Disaster.

Looking west on 10th Street from the bottom of the Quincy Hill stairway at Avery in the late 1960s.
For photos of 10th and Avery in 1909, see The Quincy Hill Tank Disaster.
(Photo by Harry Barnett, courtesy of Dan Kemper)

Looking west on 11th Street from Avery in the late 1960s. The building at the end of the street, at 11th and Market, was still
there in 2023, but everything else in this photo is gone. The U.S. Post Office now takes up the left side of the street.
(Photo by Harry Barnett, courtesy of Dan Kemper)

Bud's Grocery was located on the northeast corner of Twelfth and Avery in the 1940s. It later became Jacob's Grocery and then Syock's. The store was torn down in the 1960s. Photo courtesy of Jean Calebaugh. "I spent a nickel at Bud's most every day after school [at Sumner], which I saved out of my 15¢ lunch money. He kept dill pickles in a barrel and we would each buy one...or if money was light we'd break pickles in half. We'd then eat them on the way home [on East Twelfth Street]. If you planned your bites well, it would last all the way home. Later, when I began to smoke, we'd buy a cigarette for a penny. From time to time during the war, the word would go out that Bud's was going to receive X number of 5 lb. bags of sugar....one bag to a customer. Mother would give each of us our ration books and fifty cents. We would then go down early and stand in line to buy the sugar." --Gloria Powell Stanford

The Savage Flats at the northeast corner of Thirteenth and Avery were built in
1903 by Thomas Savage, who lived across the street at 420 Thirteenth.

Cavalry Baptist Church at Thirteenth and Avery. The building on the left (southwest corner) was a grocery
store and upstairs apartments building built by Thomas Savage from the same yellow bricks as the
Savage Apartments on the northeast corner. See the photo below (courtesy of Roger Mackey).

Looking south on the west side of Avery from 13th Street in what might be 1950. The corner store was Chapman's Grocery.
(Photo courtesy of Terri Leon Miller)

Calvary Baptist Church at Thirteenth & Avery Streets, in 1907.

The Thirteenth Street School, seen here circa 1907, sat on the southeast
corner of Thirteenth & Avery. It was turned into a book repository
in the late 1940s and torn down in the 1960s.

The Slayton house (foreground) at 1504 Avery Street, in 1907.

The west side of the street in the 1500 block, near
Sixteenth Street. These houses are still standing.

Looking north in the 1800 block of Avery Street in 1957.

Francis J. Grover pumps gas at his Grover's Esso Service Station
on the corner of Avery and Sixteenth Street, in early 1957.

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