Column: A sentimental tour of the Methodist Building

Dear readers,

The Methodist Building is five stories of brick and stone with a steel spine.

Born around the same time as New York’s Empire State Building, it was when Charles Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic and Coco Chanel became famous in Paris. Tallulah Bankhead and Zelda Fitzgerald were drinking their way through prohibition.

The Methodist Building echoed that 1920’s style with terrazzo floors, an elevator (complete with operator), and a coffee shop in the lobby. The building pulsed with the rhythm of Shelbyville’s thriving downtown for several decades.

Doctors, lawyers, insurance agents and beauty shops all found a place within its walls. Attorney Bob Sheaffer had an office in the Methodist Building for 47 years.

Into this world I was thrown!

And the doctor who caught me, Roger Witcomb M.D., had his office on the fifth floor. A few years later, after some painful teething, I met my dentist, Dr. Bernerd Randolph, on the fourth floor.

I got my haircut at Bob Hoban’s barbershop located in the basement of the building. Access to the barbershop was by a stairway leading to the basement, just off the Public Square along the side of the building on W. Washington St. That stairway is no longer there.

Bob Sheaffer told me when he began practicing law in 1953, he rented the only vacant office in the building. It was a very small office with only enough room for a No. 2 Ticonderoga pencil and a yellow legal pad.

Soon a larger office became available and Sheaffer’s practice grew along with the office. Bob was Shelby County Prosecutor from 1954 to 1962. He was elected our State Representative in 1963, then moved to the State Senate in 1969 and served until 1977.

Bob had his office in the Methodist Building until his death in 2000.

Over the years, I had the pleasure of working with Bob on several cases. The last few years of his life, the Methodist Building was like a ghost town. I always felt like I was stepping back in time when we met in his office.

When Bob first moved into the building in 1953 it seemed like every lawyer in the county had an address in the Methodist Building including Robert Ellison, Terry Sumner, Herb Jones, George Stubbs, Jim Emmert, Charles Campbell, Wilbur Pell, Bob Good, Jim Matchett, Warren Brown, and Emerson and Donald Brunner. 

Hale Abstract, Stanley Jones Insurance, Wilson Dalton M.D., along with Opel’s Beauty Shop, and Marie’s Beauty Salon also had offices in the building.

Recently the Methodist Building has been back in the news.  Mayor Scott Furgeson is working on revamping the building into a children’s interactive center. 

It will be great to see the Methodist Building once again buzzing with activity. After all, it’s not just an old building. It’s about the lives it has held in our past.

Hopefully, in a couple of years, new memories will be made in the Methodist Building.

See you all next week, same Schwinn time, same Schwinn channel.