Early History

Built in 1891 as an investment property by a farmer-turned-capitalist, the Patton Block has seen a long and unlikely list of tenants, including a bakery, grocery stores, a meat market, a tobacconist, a restaurant, jewelers, fraternal halls, a shoe store, a book bindery, dressmakers, movie theaters, a business school, a cooking school, doctors and lawyers, realtors, insurance agents, an electronics store, a paint store and a video store. It is fitting that in its next incarnation as the Patton Block Center, this tradition of diversity will continue, as the building will be home to a variety of developing businesses, each of which is actively exploring the latest bounds of technology.

Monmouth, Illinois, was a promising young community of 6,000, just 70 years old in May of 1891, when Robert S. Patton watched the first shovelful of dirt turned on his new property-a property that already had a distinguished history. It was on this site in 1836 that General James McCallon, a settler from Xenia, Ohio, had built a two-story dry goods store, the first frame building in Monmouth.

An officer in the Black Hawk War, McCallon was credited with helping to organize Monmouth's first town government, but he was also responsible for a famous Monmouth landmark, the Old Cottonwood Tree, which once stood in front of the Patton Block property. Legend has it that the general was out riding horseback east of town and cut a switch from a cottonwood tree to use as a riding whip. Returning to town, he stuck the switch in the ground in front of his business establishment and it grew into a great tree--50 feet tall by 1851. Billy-goats and effigies of men were sometimes seen dangling from its limbs. The cottonwood blossoms that it cast eventually became such a nuisance that the city council passed a resolution in 1866 allowing the tree to be cut down.

Purchased a month earlier from Warren County, Patton's new lot was located in the northwest corner of the Public Square, next to the historic courthouse that had been home to some celebrated trials, including a murder case involving Mormon founder Joseph Smith, presided over by Judge Stephen A. Douglas. Patton knew that the county board of supervisors had been discussing replacing the tiny and outdated structure with a modern new courthouse that would be sure to enhance commerce in the county seat. Perhaps that knowledge made him more comfortable in laying out nearly $1,800 for the 50 x 80-foot lot on which his business block would be built, at an estimated cost of $18,000. (The lot was originally sold for $44 at public auction in 1831. Patton's total investment, in 21st-century terms, would have been approximately $375,000.)

Back 07.25.2006.