I saw these ads while in Wabash working on the Charley Creek Inn project. I thought they would be something for Culver to consider and suggested them at the Culver Redevelopment Commission Meeting on Monday. We’ll see if they found them as intriguing as I did. I was told that they were sponsored by Wabash Marketplace.
In another of his “Throw-back Thursdays”, Jeff Kenney mentioned the Culver Branch of the First National Bank of Monterey in an “If These Walls Could Talk” article. This is yet another project in Easterday Construction Co., Inc.’s historic links to Culver. Easterday Construction built this branch in 1992. It was modeled after the branch in Winamac (To which we later remodeled and added to as well). It’s always fun to see the legacy Easterday Construction has left through the buildings we constructed and sometimes the institutions those buildings represent.
Our long relationship with clients like this lead us to be the go to source when problems crop up. Those of you who use the drive through probably have noticed that someone backed into one of the columns. We’re currently working on obtaining a replacement. Unfortunately matching the column that was installed there 18 years ago won’t be as easy as just pulling something right off the shelf!
One of the cool details we did for the bank when we worked on the Monterey Annex a few years back was to recreate their new logo as a 3-D metal sculpture on the front of the building. We’re still quite proud of that and the way it sets off the building.
If you happen to see my Great Aunt Melba Easterday tomorrow, March 21st, wish her a Happy Birthday! It will be her 95th!
She’s become the family historian and contributed significantly to the article that Jeff Kenny wrote about Easterday Construction which I reprinted here. I also wrote a bit about her previously on her 90th Birthday here. Just for fun and history, the picture to the right came from one of the old Easterday Construction Scrap Books and shows Red and Melba at the Cove for one of the Easterday Construction Retirement Parties. Melba is the last of that generation of the Easterday Construction family.
Aunt Melba still brings me and all of us at Easterday Construction homemade candy every Christmas. her laugh can still be heard across a crowded room, her good spirits are infectious and she’s always someone with a positive attitude and a smile to share.
I still try and keep an eye on her. She still lives on her own in the house just north of Easterday Construction. Just last month when we had a wind storm blow through, I snuck over and picked up a bunch of down branches in her yard. I had to do it quickly though! If I had waited too long, she’d have been out there doing it herself!
Jeff Kenney did a history article on Easterday Construction for the Culver Citizen a few years ago. I ran across it on the Plymouth Pilot site here when I was looking for something else. I thought it would be good to reprint it here for posterity. Jeff did a nice job, but I did go back and make a couple of edits where he must have misheard things. Ha!
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*In nearly 90 years’ total existence, company has helped build major structures of Culver, beyond*
Sixty years ago this month, Culver’s longest lived construction company — and one which not only built some of the most prominent structures in this and surrounding communities, but had been connected to prestigious and notable buildings around the country — officially came into its own.
The Easterday Construction Company on Slate Street had already existed for some 30 years under the auspices of the James I. Barnes Construction Company, which was started by former Logansport mayor James Barnes in 1924.