History
The building, consisting of two store fronts, was erected by Ray McKenzie in 1900. The H.C. Pitney Variety Store occupied the property, under various owners, from 1911 until 1920. H.C. Pitney owned the store from 1911 until 1914, when he sold it. During his first period of ownership, Pitney employed Jack Reagan as a clerk, the father of 40th U.S. President Ronald Reagan. While Jack Reagan was employed by Pitney Ronald was born in the apartment over a tavern building across Main Street from the Variety Store. After Pitney sold the store in 1914 the Reagans left Tampico.
In 1919 Pitney returned to ownership of the Variety Store and Jack Reagan returned at the same time to work for him. Beginning on August 25, 1919 the Reagan family occupied the apartment above the commercial portion of the building. After Pitney closed the store the Reagans vacated the premises in December 1920 and moved to Dixon, Illinois.
Read more about this topic: H. C. Pitney Variety Store Building
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the material and the moral nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Literary works cannot be taken over like factories, or literary forms of expression like industrial methods. Realist writing, of which history offers many widely varying examples, is likewise conditioned by the question of how, when and for what class it is made use of.”
—Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)
“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.”
—Thomas Paine (1737–1809)