Then & Now: The first 'old' Woolworth building in Berlin

Many of the buildings on the downtown section of Berlin’s Main Street stand on what was, at the beginning of the Civil War, an island in a pond at the outlet of the Dead River. Two bridges linked that island to the rest of the city — one located a few yards north of today’s Mechanic Street, which enters Main Street from the left in both images here. The other near where the pedestrian walkway from Pleasant Street meets the crosswalk on Main Street, just as Main disappears around the bend in these images. The pond, or lake, remained largely undisturbed at least as late as 1887, at which time Mechanic Street was still called Lake Street.

Within two more decades, most of the pond had been filled in, and the river had been wrangled into two canals, over which numerous commercial structures had been built. The 1887 map shows a mix of detached commercial and residential buildings standing on the lower end of Main Street, with three different drug stores within a few yards of each other, but by 1909 Main Street was lined with wall-to-wall businesses on both sides. Ten businesses had been squeezed into seven buildings on the left side of Main, between Post Office Square and Mechanic, including a barber shop tucked into an alley.