A.R. Merritt Building

The Merritt Building, although not constructed until 1900, had its remote origins in 1886, when the pharmacist Anderson Ralph Merritt brought his drug store to the town of Antelope in a horse-drawn freight wagon, bought a lot, and opened his tent for business. Shortly after, it was announced that the new town of Douglas would be established on a bank of the North Platte River, about 1.5 miles to the south. Mortgaging his Antelope property virtually on the spur of the moment, Merritt pulled his stakes and relocated to Douglas. Across the following decade, he accumulated enough capital to construct his own two-story brick building, the A. R. Merritt General Merchandise and Drug Store, on the southeast corner of Center and 2nd Street. Starkly utilitarian, the building was almost totally devoid of ornament or other stylistic niceties, and the architecture, such as it was, was conceived for a singleminded dual purpose: to stock goods, and to sell goods. Within a space 121 feet long by 25 feet wide, pharmacist Merritt proceeded to stock and sell: shoes, boots, caps, hats, hay, grain, flour, groceries, paints, wallpaper, carpets, furniture, wagons, buggies, and—pharmaceuticals. In a 1906 photograph, each of these items, and more, are spelt out in stark white letters ranging from one to two feet tall, painted against a dark background, all along the north and west façades of his building. Sometime after Merritt’s retirement in 1930, whatever remained of that advertising, and the original brick as well, was concealed beneath a layer of painted stucco. The building has since undergone many additional changes, including the removal of two ornamental, wood-frame entryways that once faced Center Street; these have been replaced by a modern glass storefront, above which is installed a decorative panel displaying, at each end, the silhouette of a bucking bronco.