The Wedge / Closed Quirky Building At the Heart of the City Hides Layers of Local History

Bargains, Cars, Dance Hall, Donuts, Fine Watches, Ice Cream, Liquor, Pharmacy & Railroad Heritage

By Pauline Masson – 

Anyone who has lived in Pacific in recent decades can remember the now closed model railroad museum – and before that a series of restaurants and donut shops – that once occupied the uniquely shaped parcel of ground at First and St. Louis streets – the geographic heart of the city. From that corner North and South, East and West street names emerge.

The first town planner Wm. Inks thought the wedge shaped parcel, sliced diagonally by the Pacific Railroad right-of-way, would not make a suitable building lot. He did not give it a number in his original 1853 plat of the town of Franklin. And he did not offer it for sale.

But the building stands there now on ground that holds layers of history of the people and businesses that shaped the early years of Pacific.

The first building on the site was erected by a gun toting doctor, armed to defend himself against city officials who outlawed construction on a parcel that wasn’t considered a real lot.

Clearer heads and several court cases prevailed and he was finally awarded a legal deed to the property.

In ‘Pacific Looking Backward 1830-1900,’ an unknown author recounted the original sale of the lot.

“When the town was laid off there was a point that was neither numbered as a lot, nor marked as a street. 

“Doctor Leffingwell bought this point from the Town Board, receiving a quitclaim deed. 

“When he commenced to build the house a new Town Board was in power and they declared the sale of this point to be illegal, and notified the doctor to stop building. He continued as long as he could persuade men to work. But the orders of the marshal to quit work were given whenever an attempt was made to continue. 

“At last he went to work at the cellar wall himself. He took his rifle and kept it near him while he built the wall, and then soon had the frame building placed upon it. A long continued contest in the legal courts of the State then followed, which resulted in his holding possession of the property.”

We don’t know how long, or even if, Dr. Leffingwell occupied the house he built. The anonymous author also reported that the third drug store (in Pacific) was started by J. W. Powers and James Arlo in the building, already identified in local parlance as the Wedge House.

THOMAS BACON’S STORE: At an unknown date a man named Rock Freeman was the registered owner of the building. But from 1880 to 1900 it would be identified as Thomas Bacon’s store.

An editor reporting on the end of Bacon’s reign as a merchant extraordinaire noted that he had actually been in business in Pacific as early as 1856, only three years after the arrival of the first trains. 

But the Thomas Bacon that we can track rented the Wedge House in 1880 and opened a general store that offered a line of bargain goods.

Bacon captivated shoppers with a new style of retailing. He eyed the horde of traveling salesmen that arrived in Pacific on the trains peddling, for resale, every manner of goods manufactured in St. Louis and points east. In the beginning Bacon bought only goods that he could sell cheap. The result was a bargain store that predated Lazy Larry’s and Walmart by more than eighty years – all goods were sold at bargain prices.

Weekly newspaper ads and local news snippets reported what Bacon had bought that week and invited shoppers to the Wedge House, where they would find cheap goods. Cheap was his favorite word.

We don’t know how big the Wedge House was but it had at least two stories. The Pacific Athletic Club was allowed to use the second floor. Bacon also made room for two fellow merchants to have space in the Wedge House: L. Freeman, a well-known silversmith made and repaired clocks and watches in the building and Cheap John operated Robbins Store that offered it’s own bargains. Apparently the pair had a friendly relationship, Bacon occasionally ran a snippet in the newspaper saying that he was underselling Cheap John.

Bacon was a consummate self promoter. Newspaper ads advised customers that they could order wood for the winter and he would deliver it. They could buy candy, toys, knee pants for boys, and shoes for the entire family, all with the promise, “we sell cheap.”

As Pacific grew into its railroad prosperity, Tom Bacon changed his merchandise to lure local shoppers from cheap goods that he bought in bulk, to hand crafted gold watches, finely tailored men’s suits, guaranteed to fit perfectly and women’s dresses, with glamorous hats to match, designed in Mrs. Bacon’s millinery department.. He constructed a new walk-in front door, and added a show window to display his line of men’s tailored suits and ladies dresses.

In January 1899 it all came to an end. Bacon advertised that he was selling his home in Pacific and all the goods in his establishment at the Wedge House. He was moving to Carthage, Missouri.

Bacon’s departure was so disappointing to the local editor that he penned a farewell on the front page of the Pacific Transcript noting that Bacon had been in business in Pacific for nearly fifty years.

“He has held the Wedge House for twenty years, paying probably three or four times its valuation in rents,” the editor said. Adding an emotional farewell, the editor became downright poetic.

“Remember the pathway that leads back to our door, and return to your first love, as you have done before.”

FIRE: After Bacon vacated the building, Mrs. M.S. Beck and her daughter Vallerie operated a milliner’s store there for several months. The building burned to the ground on Jan. 12, 1900. Dave Mayle, night watchman on the Pacific Railroad extra engine, known locally as the Pusher, and father of the man who man would bring more distinction to the site, discovered the fire and was credited with helping to save much of the stock below stairs. Mrs. Beck unfortunately lost all her money in an upstairs room.

No photograph or sketch of the Wedge House surfaced and no address appeared in the hundreds of newspaper ads to illustrate whether the Wedge House faced First Street or St.Louis Street.

A January 12, 1900 article in the Transcript noted that Al Fickel had purchased the lot for $125 and  promised to construct a new building suitable for business on on the site.

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MAYLE’S GROCERY AND ICE CREAM PARLOR: Soon after Fickel’s promise, a one-story building that faced First Street was constructed. Fred Mayle, son of the man who had discovered the 1999 fire, opened Mayle’s Grocery store and Ice Cream Parlor.

Like Bacon, Fred Mayle became a versatile merchant, whose business acumen and generous nature cemented his family name in the annals of community life.  In addition to groceries, Mayle offered candles, chocolate candy and chewing tobacco. A packet of six postal cards with pictures of Pacific could be purchased for five cents. He offered a supply of hunting ammunition. And he began serving lunches in the ice cream parlor.

Flush with business success,Mayle purchased and completely restored the old Civil War mansion, known locally as the Blue Goose, which stood where the soon-to-open new Pacific Post Office now stands on St. Louis Street. 

Mayle endeared himself to the citizens by offering free ice cream to children on special occasions and welcoming Santa Claus to visit on the first Saturday in December. But his greatest claim to benefitting the town may his agreement to allow his son Clarence to sell cars from the family store. 

Clarence was allowed to paint a full sized roadster on the St. Louis Street side of the grocery store building. We were unable to track down a copy of the photo depicting the town’s first car dealer but will continue to search with the hope of posting its as a singular time in Pacific history.

The younger Mayle was an honor student, the librarian at the Pacific Presbyterian Church, an avid bicycle racer and an early radio buff. But his most compelling characteristic was his love of the automobile. At age 20, he took the train into St. Louis each weekday for a month where he studied and was granted a license as a full fledged chauffeur. 

Clarence’s father Fred owned a Model T Ford, which should have told him something about what a shopkeeper in Pacific could afford. But Clarence had bigger ideas. He started selling the big Oakland touring cars, the newfangled gear-less Metz roadster and the elegant Saxon. He advertised his cars as the latest in comfort and tried to sell would-be buyers on the dream of the open road. 

Clarence bedazzled the town when he drove into St. Louis and picked up his own new 1914 Oakland Touring Car, which the local newspaper editor dubbed, “One of the best cars ever brought to Pacific.”

No record tells us how many of those expensive vehicles Clarence sold, but within a few years those names became a diminishing memory as he educated himself on the buying prospects of the railroad workers and shopkeepers in Pacific. He began running newspapers that said “Clarence Mayle the Ford man,” and was soon offering the new Ford roadster at $355, telling prospective buyers to go at their pleasure, wherever they chose. By 1918 he was a Ford Agent. A year later he was an Authorized Ford Dealer. 

In 1915, car sale success enabled Clarence to buy the business and home of  B. A. Henderson, a cemetery monument supplier, one block north of the family store at North First and Unions streets.

In 1927 Clarence constructed a new building – right over the old shop, which was then demolished when the new one was finished. The building, which included a showroom and garage, is now the home of ProTech Collision Center, an auto body shop that specializes in fine cars.

SMITH’S CONFECTIONARY: In August 1920, Fred Mayle found himself in poor health. He sold his grocery business to Verne and Ralph Smith. In 1921 they built the second floor for booths and a dance floor. A coin fed electric piano provided the music. Ice cream sodas and sundaes were served by a dumb waiter from the ice cream parlor on the first floor.

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By some stroke of marketing genius Smith’s Confectionary became the destination point for the St. Louis Bicycle Club, which made weekend group excursions of up to fifty cyclists to Pacific. And, the Confectionary became the regular stop for the Opera Bus that picked up theater goers for excursions to the theater in St. Louis.

Verne Smith passed away in 1944 and Ralph operated the business until his retirement in 1961. His son Wayne took over the business and expanded it to Smith’s Confectionary and Package Liquor. 

Former mayor and local history guru Jeff Titter said he recalled Smith’s as a liquor/convenience store.

“It had a drive-up window and I can remember my grandma going to the drive-up window and getting a soda and a candy bar. I remember the candy bars were always cold because they kept them in the cooler,” Titter said.

After the Smith’s Confectionary closed their business, the building would house a popular restaurant operated by Myrna Cooksey, and later the Whistle Stop Donut Shop.

MODEL TRAIL MUSEUM: In 2013 the building entered another short lived venue that enlivened the downtown. Ron Sansone opened the Model Railroad Museum in the structure bringing a lively reminder of the community’s rail heritage. The museum display included an HO gauge train layout that resembled an old railroad downtown like Pacific, where Railfan club members could run their trains.

Volunteers Robert McCaskill and Carol Kay, a retired airline hostess, could be found in the museum four days a week. Kay considered her number-one job was to greet the passing trains. The museum’s electronic rail-monitoring screen told her which trains would soon pass through Pacific. She went out to stand near the tracks and wave to the engineer. McCaskill and Kay said they were certain the engineers in the slower moving freight trains took notice of their greetings. Some of them would roll down their windows, lean out and mimic the two-handed wave that Kay developed.

.The model train museum collection was later moved to the Iron Spike Model Train Museum in Washington, Missouri and the Wedge building is now closed.