A.L. Bushey
October 15, 2006

McAllister captured this image on June 25, 1943.  Note the absence of streetcar rails.  The rails were removed in 1943, indeed, on the same day this photo was taken, McAllister took several images of the Rail Removal Project on lower Church Street, in front of City Hall.

Also missing from this photo at #35 is the New Sherwood Hotel.  The reconstructed site, at the corner of Church and Cherry Street, housed the competing department stores of J.C. Penny and Sears & Roebuck.(1)

The building in the right-hand corner is the Masonic Temple Building, a Romanesque structure erected in 1898 by the Free Masons.  According to the 1942 Sanborn Map Company insurance map for the city of Burlington, the building was constructed of steel posts and beams and equipped with an automatic sprinkler system.(2)

(1) Manning’s Burlington City Directory 1941/1942 (Springfield: H.A. Manning Company), 196.

(2) Insurance Map (1942).

It is curious to see cars on Church Street in McAllister’s 1943 viewpoint.  Motorized transportation has not been permitted on Church Street since the creation of the Church Street Marketplace, designed as a pedestrian mall, in 1981.  The move was part of Burlington’s effort to revitalize its downtown district, one that has pumped new life into the area.  Most of the buildings from this McAllister image still line the street corridor.