Centennial Hotel ghost - National Parks Gallery

Two storefronts on the southeast corner of National Avenue and Elm Street in Rockland provided key goods and services during the early 1900s when the Michigan Mine was active. The two-story frame building on the left provided space for the James & Jones meat market, while the smaller building next door housed a barber shop. A few years later, businessman Frank C. Smith combined the two buildings into one, where his confectionery offered "fruits, confectionery, ice cream, cigars, tobacco, painted china, notions, and billiards and pool room," as advertised in the 1907 Michigan Business Gazetteer. By 1917 the buildings were once again independent, and while the smaller one was vacant, the larger served again as a meat market.
The larger of the two buildings stood until about 1950, and survived its next-door neighbor by at least a decade. Nothing remains to tell us of these busy corner stores.