Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 39, Number 95, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 August 1907 — Looking for a Location. [ARTICLE]

Looking for a Location.

F. B. Meyers is still looking for a drug store location. He was in Hammond Tuesday and investigated the big suburb where the steel car works are being built* There are some 2,000 people there now and no drug store. About 20 saloons have been started there already, and the population as almost totally foreign, and beer drinkers all. The steel corporation has erected about 40 frame flat houses, each containing ten fonr room apartments. They are roughly built but rent for sls each apart ment, and are crowded with Polauders, Russians, Greeks, Scandinavians, Norwegians, and other nationalities. It is a little doubtful if a drug store would pay there until the better class of mechanics begin comiug in and better habitation conditions are provided, but there seems no doubt it will be a big city within a few years, as the plant is expected to employ from 5,000 to 7,000 workmen, many of them skilled mechanics. Only one brick building has been started there and it is a two story, tworoomed one, with a corner frontage well suited for a drug store, but sls a mouth rent is wanted from the start and Frank questions the advisability of tackling it until there are more prospects of business.