Thirty-thousand souls. Odd origin: "Galesburg was founded by George Washington Gale, a Presbyterian minister from New York state who dreamed of establishing a manual labor college." Learnin' facts and breakin' rocks. Fun fact: George Washington Gale's son made the Ferris Wheel for the Columbian Exposition.

There doesn't seem to be a Ferris Wheel downtown. But there is a robot face on a rehabbed facade:

The sign makes a nice nose. But it’s all wrong. Howcan the second floor be so high up? Where are the windows for the third floor? If they had a big hall on the second floor, wouldn’t the windows be bigger?

Because everyone had stiff, sore necks, they only rehabbed the bottom floor. The white spots are daubs of glue, meant to keep the ceramic or Vitrolite panels in place.

Apparently there’s a limit to how long they work, or someone did a crude job of prying off the name.

The rest of the building looks stripped, but it’s hard to imagine how ornate it really was.

Answer: not very.

Handsome building; guess the purpose.

The baroque period of modernism has begun - the columns flare, and serve no function other than ornamental. I always love these. Most of them.

The side view, with a nice view of the pointless stone shields and the peculiar slabs coming out of the side. Usually that means “Door,” but there are so many.

We'll meet this one again in a bit.

The era that produced those proud new modern banks looked with weary scorn on overdone stone-heaps like this one:

City Hall. It’s as if the original plans called for a wider building. When they couldn’t afford it, they just scrunched up the original design like accordion bellows.

MISSING: ONE CUPOLA. REWARD

It’s missing a lot up top, and looks rather denuded. But you can still see the appeal of the style: muscular, solid, heavy - with lots of light inside.

It’s like a prototype for a new 1966-style gas station:

Then came another era. You might say: “Eighties. Early eighties?”

And I might agree. Late 70s. But the stone . . . I don’t know. There’s something about this that says “50s building overhauled in 1989.”

Googling . . . Huh. This 2013 story says they were moving out of this building to the 60s bank building described above. So I’m going off an old picture, then. Reset the Google Street View . . . looks like they went back in 2016.

Newspaper cutline for the move:

First Galesburg National Bank was at the 200 E. Main St. location for many years before becoming First Illini Bank, then Norwest and finally a Wells Fargo in 2000.

Bottom line: I don’t know. No newspaper story ever seems to think about what buildings used to be.

Really doesn't look like what it is.

Cinema Treasures:

Having lived in Galesburg most of my life and being an avid movie-goer, I heard many times that the West Cinema 1 & 2 was haunted by a woman in a white dress who would walk through the second part of the theater (the Colonial?) at 11:30. It was corraborated by the manager at one point, who told me that he and several employees had seen her. Take it for what you you will. A fun story, if nothing else.

Or, as we’d call it today: a shopping mall.

Really. Here’s the building’s website, starting with some interior photos.

We can’t end here, can we?

We won't. More next week.