Progress of Improvements

The Marietta Leader (Semi-Weekly), April 19, 1890

We never noticed before that people took any remarkable interest in shovelers, gravel-trains, dumps, fills, trestles, etc., but since the terminal company began the construction of the union depot and the approaches through the low ground, we find a great deal of interest manifested in all these things. Mr. Dale has at times had an efficient corps of citizens hovering around this improvement, watching with great interest the progress of the work.

It is safe to say that every stone in the depot foundation has gone to its place by unanimous consent. Mrs. Gross has also had a good audience at her hotel site where she is putting up the new St. Cloud. These are not mere idlers. They are as a rule, business men and others passing to and from places of business. It may safely be said that every man in Marietta capable of doing anything can find work. Numerous buildings are projected with plans more or less perfected. Never before in the history of this city was there anything like the impetus to business, building and improvement as there is now. Not even in oil times and the inflated period subsequent to the war was there anything like it.

In those days the price of real estate ran up to fabulous figures. All kinds of building material was high, labor was high, it cost more to live, but what came of it all. The collapse that followed left us worse off than before the boom struck us. The present forward movement is very different. It seems like the reserve strength of accumulated energy moving forward, steadily but surely. There is an active demand for good building sites and good dwelling houses, also a great demand for good tenements at good rentals.

The College also partakes of the general advance of the community, as is natural, and during the coming summer a fine new building [Andrews Hall] for the Marietta Academy will be built at a cost of about $25,000. Natural gas being an assured fact and the supply practically unlimited, we can offer inducements to manufacturers unequaled in any other city.

Efforts should be made at once to secure the location here of new manufacturing establishments. These we must have if we hope for growth with any expectation of realization.

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It is rumored that the space above the new depot, formerly used by the Sheriff for a garden, will be thrown open for public use. The old barn will be moved back next to the Armory [on Putnam Street]. The Terminal Company will fill the lot to grade and lay it out in walks and flower beds. What will become of the "penitentiary" now on this lot, where the prisoners have been accustomed to pound stone, we have not learned.