By Hannah Swale ~ Kankakee County Museum
While buildings were demolished on one end of the 100 block of East Court Street to make way for another parking lot, the west end of the block came to be known as “The Court Street Bookends,” where more exciting things were planned.
Norman and Janice Strasma acquired the building in 1974 and remodeled it in 1979. The exterior style was preserved, and the two top floors and cornice were sandblasted, repainted, and tuckpointed. Before the Strasmas owned the building, The Book Fair was on the ground floor and the Santos Hotel occupied the second and third floors, just one chapter in what had been a long book of the many lives this set of three buildings would live.
In 2010, Marty McNabb purchased the “The Bookends” from the Strasmas, (all three of the buildings), in hopes to restore some life into that area of downtown Kankakee. Strasma’s Key Printing business remained as a tenant. McNabb is somebody who believes that the downtown area offers something unique.
The use of historic structures, rather than the demolition of them to pave way for newer construction, provides character and charm and, as I like to think, a much more layered story and life. Buildings become primary storytellers for towns and cities and states. The new and exciting things going on in present-day can enter into stories of days gone by that our city longs to tell.
And do we have a story to tell! West Side Story, July 20, 21 22, 2018
