The Cramer Building

912 Court Avenue

The single-front Cramer Building with its distinctive upper-story bay was built during the summer of 1930 for Harry and Jeanette Cramer. It stands on the site of an earlier building owned by the Cramers that was destroyed by the same fire that during late February, 1930, destroyed the Cramer-owned Ritz Theatre to the east and the massive Temple Building to the west.

When it burned, the earlier building housed C. D. Gove, jeweler, on the first floor, and the offices of Dr. L. H. Oatman, an optometrist, and apartments upstairs. The earlier building had been before the fire a remnant of the three-front Branner Block, dating from ca. 1903, the east two-thirds of which had been demolished to create an opening for the theater.

Construction of the new building began immediately after rebuilding of the Ritz Theatre was complete during May of 1930. Drug stores traditionally occupied the first floor of the new building. Upstairs living quarters, along with those over the Ritz, were known as the Cramer Apartments.

Legally, the building occupies the east quarter of Lot 2, Block 14, original city of Chariton. William L. Perkins is the probable architect, although nothing to document that has been located --- yet.