Transcript

Location: Corner of St. Andrew St. and Copeland Ave. (517 Copeland Ave.)

Roger Wendling: I’m standing on the corner of Andrew Street and Copeland Avenue facing South, on my right is the building, Monsoor’s Sport Shop. I worked part time, back in the ‘70’s. I was in charge of the archery department and making all the arrows. When the Darn New Road Sale came in, that had to do with the city putting in a new bridge or a viaduct over the railroad tracks. What the state wanted to do was just put right down the middle of the road, and that would’ve cut off the parking in front of both sides of the street, you couldn’t get there, you would have had to go through the alleys to get to these businesses. Bill Monsoor and the other owners of businesses along the street got together and got lawyers and fought the state to take one side of road or the other. So that there’d still be a road going by in front, and at least half the businesses could still survive. They left the east side of the street intact, and took 60 feet of the west side. And so those buildings were all taken down. Monsoor’s building was cut in half. They took 30 feet off of that building and we rebuilt the building on that end. Then in 1982, we essentially took over the business from him, when they went through that road and everything was settled with the state, and we started over again. And we kept the name of the business because the name was good. He had a good reputation in the business, with all his suppliers and everything. My name is Roger Wendling. I bought the business in uh, 1982, during the construction of the viaduct. Once it went to a one way street, the businesses were kind of underneath the viaduct. They just disappeared.