Rescue, restore, reconsider: Our historic buildings

Earlier this month I was pleased to see Holden's Hotwheels open for business in a new location at 1st Street and 5th Avenue. What pleased me wasn't that it was a new building, but that it was very old.

The building at 422 1st St., was built around 1914 by J. K. Bramble, a lawyer and the founder of the weekly newspaper, the Hill County Democrat. Over the the last 98 years the Bramble building has housed a dry goods store, an auto parts store, two different newspapers, and surprisingly, a bordello in the 1960s and '70s. Check out http://www.havrehillpreservation.org for more history. It's a buil...