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J. Radder 5 & 10 Cent Store

I need to get the rest of my town up to 1:20 so it's time to create a new building. I decided that a 5 and 10 cent store would be a neat addition. I found a bunch of great plans of old buildings over at Build Your Own Illinois Main Street. One that caught my eye was the E. Stein Building, pictured on the right, originally build in 1893.

The plans are in HO, but I really wanted to find some pictures of what the building looked like to help in my modeling efforts. The pictures on the site just don't provide enough details.

Google didn't help at first, until I somehow discovered that this is now called Island's Cafe and is located in Blue Island - a suburb of Chicago.  

I decided that this could be the inspriration for my building.   I don't know anyone called Edward Stein, so I decided to use Jon Radder - a fellow modeler in Connecticut for the building name.   I already have a hardware store, so I thought I would make a 5 and dime store instead.

This building was started in December 2011 and put out on my layout in March 2012.