Looking Backward: Broadway & Spruce, circa 1980
The building at 306 Broadway, northwest corner of Spruce Street, was standard for its time. Built sturdily of brick with a slate Mansard roof sometime before 1888, it was originally home to a sausage market with a slaughter house in the rear. The ground story was occupied by the R&R Surplus variety store as late as 1979. In the 1950s and 60s it was occupied by J&M Goldberg Furniture Company, and in the 1930s and 40s by the John G. Kaderabeck Company, wholesale confectioners. The building was demolished in about 1980, presumably not long after this photograph was taken. In 1960, not one vacant lot existed on the north side of Broadway between Michigan and Jefferson avenues, a section that after dozens of piecemeal demolitions is now largely a grassy field. The house at 12 Spruce Street, visible on the left, still stands. Rapid Ray’s Printing & Services occupies the site of 306 Broadway.