Talk:Red Brick Store

Historic district

Do you know if this building is part of the Nauvoo Historic District? IvoShandor 19:37, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Why I don't think any photo in this article on this date is from 1845

I placed both photos beside each other. Below them placed a copy of the second, with the identical features numbered. Here they are:

1. Missing brick in chimney
2. Tree branch height and slant
3. Leaf pattern in tree branch and in background
4. Missing or worn roof shingles at edge
5. Patches of wear in paint on door
6. Condition of lean-to in the rear
7. Height and lean of fence posts
8. Fence rails, though gate to the left is not identical.
9. Foreground vegetation, down to the individual plant.

The vegetation in the lower right of the photos looks different because the photographer positioned the camera closer to the store in one of them.

I think these photos were taken a few days, not decades, apart. The first is the upper left, and the photographer, perhaps not practiced at outdoor photography here, overexposed it. I think the windowpanes were broken and the flooring was rotting. This photo was taken to document the beginning of the work of securing the building before winter weather. The other photo was taken a few days later after removing the rotting timbers, installing whatever storm shutters still existed, boarding up the remaining upper window and installing one set of storm doors. The horizontal board there is the original bar to keep hungry critters from working the doors open at night to try to get at the food kept inside when it was still a store. At the time the photo was taken only one set of storm doors had been found and installed. The stack of wood is the rotten timber removed from the structure, and I think all this was done to keep kids, tramps and whoever from falling through the rotten floor and getting hurt. I think the foreground vegetation (9) is willow leaved american asters that are native to Illinois. Looking very carefully at them, the light-colored blooms in one photo are mostly identical to the blooms in the other. The asters bloom from August to October, so the photo was taken in late summer. I’m absolutely certain, by the lack of advancement in decay of the building, that these photos were not taken forty years apart, and by the plants at the edge of the road, not even five weeks apart. Oona Wikiwalker (talk) 07:26, 31 October 2025 (UTC)

Really excellent detective work, I agree completely with all your reasoning. According to Dean Jessee, the second picture was taken in 1885, attributed to B. H. Roberts. (Dean C. Jessee "The Papers of Joseph Smith" Volume 2 Journal, 1832-1842. page 337.) Epachamo (talk) 20:41, 1 November 2025 (UTC)