captured by Angelica Engel, Website Coordinator, on September 20, 2018
The building depicted in each of these photos is the old Church’s Drug Store.
From September 18th’s Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune: “The Church’s Drug Store building is another staple on the [Theater] block. It ran as Key City Hotel from 1884 to the early 1900s. Sam Church then ran it as a drug store from 1904 until it closed in 1993. The building became a video archery business called Boone’s Archery in 2000 and then Bowe’s Archery in 2001.”
The pile of rubble used to be the Book World building, and possibly also the Palace Theater building (which in more recent years housed the Central Wisconsin Cultural Center).
Why?
What will be there now?
The razing of the Church’s block is part of an ongoing program by private interests who haven’t divulged plans for further development.
Dave Engel
Wisconsin Rapids City Historian