Tierney building

From 1855 until 1896, this address (135-137 Main Avenue) was the site of the Tierney House, an A frame hotel with 15 or so rooms and also a saloon, owned by Irish immigrant Patrick Tierney. The building was destroyed in the fire of March 29, 1896. (Also lost was the saloon’s substantial inventory of whiskey. As the fire spread up Main Avenue, the liquor was hurriedly carried back to Water Avenue and stuffed in every nook and cranny of the hotel’s two-holer privy, which hung out over the riverbank on a rickety foundation. The weight was too much for the support poles, however. They buckled, the outhouse crashed onto the malodorous ground below, and every bottle was broken.)

For the next 14 years, the former hotel site remained vacant ground. In 1910-11, Mr. Tierney’s daughter, Sally, erected this three-story retail store and office building. (Weston’s electric power system, already 20 years old, was so unreliable that, as a precaution, Miss Tierney had her building plumbed for gas as well as electric lights. (See #79.)) The first tenant of the Tierney Building was the B. Kaplan Department Store. When Mr. Kaplan built his own store farther up Main in 1916, Adler’s Store moved into the Tierney Building and remained until 1986, when it ceased business.

Today the building’s owner is optometrist Daniel D. T. Farnsworth, great-grandson of West Virginia Governor D. D. T. Farnsworth.

Gilchrist-Stalnaker, Joy . Oldaker, Bradley R.. Images of America Lewis County. Arcadia Publishing, 2010.

https://wvrhc.lib.wvu.edu