In the early '70's, a group of youth from 1st Presbyterian Church were looking for a place to have group meetings. Chester Clark, a local businessman, owned the building and allowed them to use it. They called it The
Upper Room. Although it was begun by First Presbyterian Church, young people from many Christian denominations came. They obviously enjoyed meeting there for several years. Since the
time of the last youth meetings, until 2007, the upstairs of the building had been terribly neglected. A little history of the building: It was built in about 1880 as Perkins Hardware. The Perkins family had hardware and furniture. Chester Clark bought the building many years ago, and it remained a hardware store until about the mid-'70's. Lofton bought the building from him in the early '70's, actually after a small fire upstairs. What now appears as one building was actually three buildings. There were two, then between 1910 and 1918, the narrow middle building was added as a connector for the two. For years, Bill (Lofton) had wanted to put apartments there, but it didn't really begin to become reality til about 2007. The biggest job of all was getting the place cleaned up enough to get started. We literally could not see the floor in most places. It had become a dumping ground for old merchandise, fixtures, and you name it. When we began unearthing and uncovering floors and walls, we found some of the wildest, hippiest stuff you've ever seen. Paintings of Bible characters, Bible verses painted on the walls. Fascinating, really. We were sorry to have to cover a lot of it. We'd love to hear from some of you who went to those meetings and maybe even did some of that cool painting on the walls!
