This column is Part 3 and concludes this brief history of the building that now houses the Dilly Bean.

The upstairs of this building was also a very busy place. According to an interview with Nic Durst in 1951, at one time there was a complete tailor shop there. He remembered that in about 1921, there were a cutter, five coat makers and at least six girls employed to make pants and vests. They had to work hard to make two coats a week and they got $5 a coat. The pants and vest makers got $1.25 a garment. Nic also mentioned that they had to carry coal upstairs twice a day to keep the tailor shop warm.

By 1927 Dr. A. J. Schindler had his dentist office upstairs. George A. Raymer had an apartment and ran G. A. Raymer Construction Co. from there. The Chamber of Commerce office was also upstairs.

Dr. Schindler still had his office upstairs in 1933. Fred Strauss was living in the apartment by then. C. D. Proudfoot had his Fidelity Investment office there; Herbert M. Ainsworth had his insurance office. By 1940 Dr. Schindler remained and Mrs. Eva Galusha had taken over the apartment. No other offices were listed.

The windows on east side (back) of the building were totally covered with steel plates. It is unknown when this was done, but it was fortunate as that minimized the damage to the building when the Fitzgibbons building across the alley caught fire in August 1948. Be-cause of the brick and steel, there was nothing that caught fire on this building.

Several years after Willard Schuetze purchased the building, he, his brother Edwin, Kenneth Stuart, and Doran Zwygart started the WEKZ radio station. A two-year renovation of the building started upstairs in 1951 with an office for Joe Viney being built across the entire front of the building. It had many windows including one on the north side of the building. About the same time, Joe Ganshert had his office built along the north side of the building. There were two operatories with a lab between them, all facing the Commercial Bank. In addition, the east part of the upstairs was used as an office for Green County Broadcasting. There was also storage for the clothing store. As with so many of the buildings on the square. Joe Ganshert remembers well that there were 24 steps to get to the upper level.

Dr. Ganshert remembered that his patient, Wendell Simmons, purchased the former Chalet Theater building in 1958 and offered to make offices upstairs in that building for him. It was when he moved into this building that Ganshert started working with Dr. Bob Brauchle. The city directories after that listed only WEKZ Radio Station offices or Green County Broadcasting offices in the upstairs of the Schuetze building. 

Dilly Bean used the upstairs for storage until Joe Hughes built two 950-square foot apartments upstairs that were available to rent in October 2019. Both apartments have 12-foot ceilings and hardwood floors. The front apartment has two bedrooms and exposed brick; the back apartment has one bedroom. While working up there, Joe found a business card for a dentist and a door with a window in it that declared that the offices of WEKZ and Schuetze’s were located there.

One final rhetorical question! This building was built long before there was indoor plumbing. Did each building have its own outhouse or did they share an outhouse in the alley? Or did they all go across the street to an outhouse on the courthouse park? We will probably never know the answer to this, but it should make us extremely thankful that we aren’t living like that today.

— Matt Figi is a Monroe resident and a local historian. His column will appear periodically on Saturdays in the Times. He can be reached at mfigi@tds.net or at 608-325-6503.