Garbose Building

N/A The Garbose Building stands at the southwest corner of Parker and Pleasant Streets at the center of Gardner's commercial district. With the exception of its angled northeast corner, the Building is basically rectangular in plan, covering virtually all of its lot. The structure is of wood-frame construction, three stories high. North ard east elevations are treated as facades and are faced with red brick trimmed with marble; south and west elevations are concealed by neighboring buildings and are covered with sheet asphalt. The structure is enclosed by a complex roof consisting of an earlier, slate-covered mansard (south & west) and a sloping, nearly flat roof (north &east).

The east elevation is symmetrical, except for the placement of the entry to the upper The first storey contains a recessed center bay flanked by two wider bays, each of which is framed by square brick columns that rise from a plinth of dressed granite to marble capitals. Resting on the capitals is a pressed metal frieze, decorated by a single rosette above each column; the cornice above this frieze has been removed. Each of these first-storey bays was designed to contain plate glass windows with transoms; all original storefront fittings have been removed with the exception of the storefront entry in the southernmost bay. At the second storey there are five identical windows.

Each consists of a wide 1/1 sash flanked by two narrow 1/1 sash; the stiles which flank the center sash rise to single brackets decorated as triglyphs. Window openings rest on a continuous marble course which forms their sills; window heads consist of flat arches of tapered bricks with marble keystones and springers. of paired 6/6 sash set beneath a flat-arched head of tapered bricks with a keystone.

(in one paragraph) Builder/Architect unknown The Garbose Building possesses integrity of its 1913-1915 design, materials, setting and Iocation at the center of Gardner's main commercial district, formerly known as West Gardner. The building also possesses associations with the area's initial commercial development during the 1870s-1880s and retains portions of one of the area's oldest re- maining commercial blocks. As a good local example of the Classical Revival style, the Garbose Building meets criteria A and C of the National Register of Historic Places. As originally built between 1883 and 1885, the Garbose Building (then known as Garland's Building) was a three-storey, wood-frame block of Second Empire style design.

The building was trimmed with quoins, a bracketed cornice, a mansard roof with gabled dormers and a verand¿ along its Parker Street elevation (north). The east elevation contained a projecting central pavilion from which a tower rose five stories to a belfry and high hip roof. Occupying a prominent comer lot at the area's busiest intersection, the original Garbose (Carland) Building was one of several large wood-frame commercial blocks built in West Gardner during the late 1870s and 1880s when the nearby expansion of furniture factories began to make West Gardner a desirable conmercial location; of the other commercial blocks built during this period, only one other severely altered example remains.

Characteristic of commercial architecture of its period, the building's interior originally contained four storefronts at the first storey, offices arranged around a wide central hall at the second storey and a meeting hall with anterooms at the third storey. Upon completion, the corner storefront was occupied by Dr. Guy W. Garland, a local pharmacist for whom the block had been con- structed.