529 E. Market Logansport, Indiana

It is big... and right now it is blue. It was built for "Moore & Carter Fireproof Garage" in 1913. This building stands at the southwest corner of 6th and E. Market Streets in Logansport. Erie Avenue runs, east and west, behind it.

March 12, 1913, Logansport Pharos Tribune, page 12

RUSH WORK ON GARAGE
"Work on the new fireproof garage being erected on Sixth Street by Dr. J. V. Ireland is rapidly progressing and will be completed in a short time. The work of laying the cement, floor has already been started and is about half completed. When finished the garage will be one of the finest and largest in the city."

Moore & Carter Fireproof Garage

ABOUT THE OLD PHOTO
There was a large double door in the center of the front, wide enough to admit a truck. That, of course, was the garage entrance.

Notice the frame residence at the right of the garage. It stood there in the days of the Wabash and Erie Canal which flowed down what is now Erie Ave. The house was occupied at the time the photo was taken by a family named Sauers. Shortly after this photo was taken George C. Norris, a newcomer to Logansport, moved in. (Wabash & Erie Canal reached Logansport in 1838. What had been a waterway, then more of a muddy ditch and even later a dusty problem - was filled in with soil and made into a street by 1875.)

On the corner was yet another house, occupied during canal days by Dr. John Shultz. It was a two-story home. The front door-step was about level with the sidewalk, while at the back entrance, the kitchen door, was a full story lower. The house was empty, and greatly deteriorated, when it was finally removed.

MOORE & CARTER
In the early days of the automobile two machinists, Orpha Carter and Harry Moore who worked in the Pennsylvania RR shops (then called Panhandle) decided that the average owner would need a lot of skilled help lo keep the new toy operating, and that a good living could be made by supplying that skilled help.

So they quit their jobs with the railroad, formed a partnership under the firm name of Moore and Carter, and rented the abandoned Broadway Skating Rink. (The rink stood where the Logansport City Building is now.) Business was so good that in no time at all the hardwood floor, laid to provide a good surface for roller skating - and for dancing - became thoroughly oil-soaked…a fire hazard.

CARL FISHER AND THE NEW BUILDING
Among the new firm's regular customers was an Indianapolis man, his wife and a friend or two. That man, Carl Fisher, also made his living, and an exceedingly good one, out of the automobile business.

One of the many new problems brought to the front by the automobile was the matter of lighting for night driving.

An inventor devised a way to compress acetylene gas, which burns with a white smokeless flame in a cylinder, so that it could be transported safely, and it immediately became the universally adopted method of lighting for automobiles. Every car had its "Prest-o-Lite" tank mounted on the side of the car, with a line of small copper tubing lo carry the gas from the tank lo the two head-lights, and, frequently, to the smaller taillight, also, although oil lamps were still used for lighting the rear end.

Carl Fisher had acquired control of the patents covering this development and, with his Midas touch, had become a millionaire.

Fisher had acquired a summer home on Lake Michigan, at St. Joseph, Michigan, and made frequent trips between Indianapolis, home, of his Prest-o-lite plant, and that place of relaxation.

He usually stopped on the way at the Moore & Carter garage for gas and oil, for the big “Stoddard-Dayton” he drove. He and the local partners sometimes discussed the fire hazard and one day Fisher said “I’ll build you a fire proof garage.”

 

A Stoddard Dayton Auto

 

 

Above; An ad that ran in a Logansport newspaper.