187 N Main St

From the National Register nomination

Two-story brick building erected ca. 1889 as a church and remodeled in 1950 as a store. The 1950 front façade is constructed of stretcher-bond smooth brick and has a stepped parapet. The second-story windows are 6/6, and an aluminum shed awning shelters a reworked storefront with a recessed entry. Two half-round concrete platforms for the display of merchandise project from the base of the storefront. An Art Deco neon sign reads "Glen's Fair Price Store/Camera Shop/Kodak." The north side is painted stretcher-bond brick with a molded brick cornice. Four windows have been bricked up; these correspond to four window or vent openings in the limestone foundation. To the rear is a bricked-up lancet window and evidence for a former stove flue. Muhlenberg Lutheran Church organized in 1849 under Pastor J. J. Suman and in 1857 it built its first church, a frame building, on this site. About 1889 the present brick building was constructed. Local contractor William M. Bucher was church secretary at the time and a member of the building committee. He had the lumber sawed for the ca. 1889 building and was presumably involved in other aspects of its construction. There is a tradition that the basement was used as a hospital during the Civil War (if so, the basement would pre-date the brick superstructure). Glen and Evelyn Suteler opened Glen's Fair Price Store in 1941 and in April 1950 reopened in the former Lutheran church. According to a 1973 article, the store boasted "a complete camera shop, lunch fountain, tobacco department and unusual novelties of every description on the first floor and Harrisonburg's largest year-round toy and hobby department on the second floor." (Melinda Bare; Open House, 7; Daily News-Record, May 8, 1973)