Lou’s View 9/16

By Lou Bernard

You’d think a column about a restaurant would begin with a dinner, and you’d be right about that. My friend Taylor and her husband Steve had family visit recently, and they took them to Fox’s Restaurant. Like everyone else does. I’ve often taken guests there myself, and when visitors from out of town ask where a good place to eat is, it’s usually one of the first places I think of.

The history helps, too. I have a tendency to think of historic buildings first, and Fox’s is in that category—It began as a market house well over a hundred years ago. So when Steve mentioned to me that this would make a pretty cool column, I had to agree.

The Lock Haven Hall and Market Company came together in 1868, run by William Simpson, Robert Bridgens, and W.W. Rankin. Out of these three, Rankin is the only one I’m not familiar with—Simpson built the Simpson House on Water Street, which appears on a lot of my tours, and Bridgens was a Lock Haven mayor who built the library. The idea of the company was that they’d run a farmers’ market, and they needed a place for that.

The southwest corner on East Church and Grove Streets was available, with a couple of abandoned buildings.

They began demolishing them in October of 1870 to make room for the newer building. (“Newer” by their standards; this building is a century and a half old.) It was April of 1871 when they began to build the new building, with Patrick Keefe as the architect and local man Charles Scheid doing the brick work. Also, it cost twenty thousand dollars, which is all the money in existence by today’s standards.

The building was completed in October of 1871, making next month its anniversary. It opened as a famers’ market, selling all sorts of feed and grain, supplies, and other items. There are tunnels underneath the building, still in existence to this day, where they used to store a lot of the supplies. They’re pretty neat, these tunnels, with one long central tunnel and several rooms off of that. I’ve discovered it’s fairly easy to lose track of where you were, so you have trouble finding your way back out. There’s a photo of the tunnels on the wall in Fox’s, so if you go for dinner, take a look.

The farmer’s market turned out to be fairly popular, with huge crowds coming in every week. It drew such big crowds that city council, under the direction of Lock Haven’s first mayor, Levi Mackey, established a curb market.

This took up much more space than just one actual curb; it stretched from Main to Bald Eagle Streets, running two blocks along the west side of Grove, and another block along the south side of Church Street, from Grove to Vesper. It was a huge, very popular big deal, is what I’m trying to say here with all this geography.

The Historic Resource Survey Form for this property describes the building, and I always defer to the Historic Resource Survey Form when I need to fill in another hundred words or so. It says the Market House is a “Romanesque structure featuring three corner towers, semi-circular arched and keystoned windows with four-over-four paired lights below an oculus, corbelled brick friezes and architrave molding, pointed arch tower dormers.” Whew. Let me take a breath after all that.

It’s one of Lock Haven’s more notable historic buildings, and it’s one that you can go and view yourself if you’re in the mood for a nice dinner. I’ve been in there many times myself, and I always enjoy the history. And the food.

And now I’m all hungry.