Business Stands

Marietta Intelligencer, December 22, 1852

Probably most of the merchants on Front, Greene, and Ohio streets are of opinion that "the point," is always to be the principal goods-selling part of the town. They know that now and then a new grocery is started "above the run," but have no idea that any Dry Goods houses will ever be established off from the three or four squares now mainly occupied by stores.

It may be so: but we think that in ten years from this time there will not be as many Retail Dry Goods stores on the point as there now are. We believe that the best locations for fine and fashionable sale stores will be in the Second Ward.

The manufacturing business will much of it be at "the point." The business necessarily connected with the river and the railroad will be in the lower ward. The warehouses will be there, and the heavy grocery and hardware stores - wholesale and retail. But fancy and domestic dry goods business will not be done where the manufacturing and wholesale grocery business is, where drays are constantly moving, and where there is so much "noise and confusion" as we hope there will be at the point in the course of two or three years.

Not all the world, not even all of this Marietta world, lives "down town." A large majority of the population of the place is even now in the second ward; and the custom from the Muskingum and from Duck Creek must all come through there.

The general idea is that, as time past, all business must center at the point; but let a good store-room (and a really good sales-room is a rare thing in Marietta) be built on a good site in the Second Ward, and a good assortment of fancy and domestic goods to be opened there, & - "we shall see what we shall see."