Aberdeen’s New Retail Palace Opens in a Blaze of Light
Over 1,500 residents crowded into the new Toklas & Kaufman brick block, marking a milestone in the city's Gilded Age expansion.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
We have all seen the fine brick building going up on the corner of Heron and G streets with pride and interest. That this interest was widespread was shown by the crowd that thronged the entrances on the night of the formal opening, Monday of this week. Everything was as gay and bright as new paint, glittering varnish, and a band of music could make it. One of the most attractive features is the way the natural woods have been finished with a good polish and clear varnish. Five hundred and eighty candle-power of incandescent electric lights, besides two arc lamps, poured out a flood of light upon the scene, attracting the eye of every passerby to the show windows behind their large plate-glass panes. Beside the full representation of Aberdeen people, there were present Mr. Nathan Kaufman and Saml. G. Kaufman of Olympia and Mr. Max Toklas, one of the members of the parent firm in New York. It is estimated that over 1,500 people attended the opening in the evening. During the evening, cigars were passed around for the men, and later, a large basket of candy circulated freely to the great delight of the coming land-owners of Aberdeen.
“There was but one opinion, and that freely expressed, that the finest store in Chehalis county was due to the energy and enterprise of the firm of Toklas & Kaufman.”
The transition from local wood-frame structures to modern brick 'blocks' signaled the town's graduation from a frontier mill site to a regional commercial hub. Today’s Aberdeen struggles with the reuse of these same historic brick landmarks, which remain the physical anchors of the city's downtown identity.
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