Jennings Building
through the years
1867: Levi
Allen Jennings, an Ashland, Ohio, resident believed to have participated in the Civil War battle with Morgan’s Raiders in Indiana, comes to New Castle.
1877:
Jennings begins to build “the large, elegant and commodious” block on what was then referred to as East Broad Street, one the local newspaper described as “by far the finest building ever erected in New Castle.”
Late 1800s: The
building features “an assortment of goods the like of which has never been seen in this city before,” said one story. On the first floor are hardware, silverware, tinware, stoves, and glassware. The second floor and third floors are devoted to furniture, bedroom sets, parlor sets, chairs of every variety and sofas. The basement is used as a tin shop for manufacture of tin ware.
1907:: On
Jan. 10, 1907, a place called the Theatorium opened in the basement of the Jennings Building, New Castle’s first motion picture venue. In the next day’s issue of the newspaper, Walter S. Chambers Jr. called the event “auspicious.”
1914:: Levi Jennings dies.
CHAMBER MAGAZINE, Fall 2014 | 11