MUSEUM CORNER August 2021

What Happened to Foote’s Corner

By Becky Buher

Let’s take an historical look at a place we pass every time we are in downtown Bedford—the northwest corner of 15th and I streets.  

That location was once known as Foote’s corner. Dr. Winthrop A. Foote was Bedford’s first physician, first lawyer and in 1828-29, he built the first frame house on the highest point of the then new town of Bedford. Born in Connecticut in 1787, he moved to Lawrence County in 1818, first to Palestine and then to Bedford when it became the county seat. The family moved into the two and a half-story Connecticut style colonial house in June 1830. Next door to the house would be the Foote and Parker store run by Dr. Foote and D. W. Parker. 

Dr. Foote is reported to have delivered the first baby born in Bedford. The baby, named John Hendricks, was born at the Hendricks’ log home east of the corner.

Dr. Foote gave his daughter, Minerva, the first piano that graced a home in Bedford. A hutch from Dr. Foote’s fine house is on display in the museum’s Reading Room. 

Dr. Foote envisioned the commercial value of Bedford limestone. In 1832, he brought a Louisville, Kentucky man, a stone carver named John Toburn to Bedford to experiment with using limestone as a building and carving stone. Dr. Foote successfully opened Blue Hole Quarry in the1830s. 

He lived in his frame house until his death in 1856.  He is buried in Foote’s Tomb near the site of the Blue Hole Quarry on Bedford’s old east side. Stone carver, Toburn, cut and prepared his tomb from solid limestone. Dr. Foote had become a wealthy man. His estate was valued at $100,000.

His house* survived almost 100 years until 1917 when it caught fire, most likely by arson, and was then torn down. Foote’s store building was already gone. 

Development soon came to the corner. M. B. Goldman’s Bedford Furniture Galleries opened there. An employee at the store was Abraham Jacobs, who had been born in czarist Russia in 1883. His son, David, said, “By the Grace of God, they arrived in the United States.” Abraham was a salesman when he brought his family to Bedford from Champaign, Ill. in 1909, and he would become the manager of Goldman’s store. 

The large store building had to be moved from the corner to its present location (911 15th Street) in 1921 in order to build the Greystone Hotel. The power behind the move was mules. It took months of back-breaking work, with no modern machinery to move the building about 75 feet. When the foundation was secured at the new site, steps were added and a contractor was hired to face the building with brick and stone. However, the most amazing thing is that the store never closed to customers during the move.

During the depression in the 1930s, Goldman borrowed money from Abraham Jacobs to pay the property taxes and made him a partner. By 1949, Jacobs bought him out and owned the store outright. His son David bought the store in 1969 and operated it until his death in December 2020.

The building located on the corner that many of us remember is the Greystone Hotel. It was built on that site in 1922-23 and opened in 1923. When the six-story, 100-room structure was built, it was referred to as one of the finest hotels in Indiana. The downtown hotel faced difficulties in the 1970s, and after years of decline, it was demolished in 1994. 

A limestone balustrade from the hotel can be seen at the museum. Also on display is a five-piece place setting of Trenton china that was used in the Greystone** Hotel. 

The corner then remained an empty lot for some time. Several years ago, a one-story brick and limestone building was erected. It housed a small restaurant called the Greystone Coffee House giving homage to the fine hotel that had served the community for some 70 years. Later the building served as an office building. Currently it is closed. 

Two of the buildings remain, the Foote property can be seen in photos, and the Greystone remains both in photos and in our visual memory. Change is one of the constants in our lives, and it is fun to look around and think of all that has come before.

*Details of the Foote house and the fire can be read in the museum publication, “The Seedling Patch” edited by Joyce Shepherd, Winter 2011-12, Vol. III, No 33.

** For Greystone images of the 2010 exhibit, go to the museum website http://lawrencecountyhistory.org and search “Greystone” or click here for the 2010 Greystone exhibit.

Source: WBIW story on Abraham and David Jacobs, “Seedling Patch” and museum records.