Woodmen of the World Lodge + Post Office, 1910, Shiloh

The two-story building at right originally served as the Woodmen of the World Lodge, identified by a marble cartouche above the middle window on the second floor, but it is best known as the old post office. Typically, fraternal lodges in commercial settings served a dual purpose, housing a lodge upstairs and various retail tenants downstairs. Woodmen of the World as an organization has always been focused on insurance and financial assistance for its members and in its early years maintained thousands of local chapters.

The altered building adjacent to the Woodmen of the World Lodge was a grocery store at one time, indicated by the fading words “Gro. Dry Goods Hardware” at the top.

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