At The Peake

What Do You Think You're Looking At? #183

This is a typical Main Street building in the town of Appalachia, Virginia, near the Kentucky state line:

But…not quite. Take a look at the other angles:

This is the Peake Building, famous for having street-level doors to all four of its floors! It looks like three, but there are four in there. (It even holds a Guinness World Record—as did a similar, since-demolished building in Oil City, Pennsylvania. However, people think someone claimed the record but there are other buildings with at least as many floors of street access. Someone else says it no longer holds the record. And this cool hotel in a totally different town apparently has five street-level entrances.)

That’s a storefront on the bottom level, but it’s an apartment building—lots of folks on Facebook remember living there or knowing someone who lived there.

It’s under restoration now, along with some other downtown buildings in this small town of about 1,500 (down from its peak of 3,000 in 1940. Wow.) Here’s the website and Facebook page of the group doing the restoration work. There are some really cool interior pictures!

Here’s the person doing the restoration work describing the layout:

I can answer this! We actually have full video tours of the four historic buildings we are working on in Appalachia, including the Peake Building. I grew up there and never understood why it has 4 doors up the side (actually 5 total) but only looks like 3 levels. There are two doors at the bottom, and one exits to Main, and one exits to the corner of Virginia Avenue, the road that was built up around the side of the building. Door #2 from Virginia Avenue actually goes to the mezzanine level of the ground floor. When you enter there on the mezzanine, you can go straight to the mezzanine level, right to some stairs that go to the two front apartments of levels two, or left to steps that lead down to the boiler room. Door #3 on Virginia avenue actually goes to the back suite apartment if level two. And door #4 on Virginia Avenue goes to a hallway with 4 apartments. Follow us to keep up with us as we work to restore this building!

As always, reading threads about these places reveals some really heartwarming stories and quotes. Here’s a great Reddit post about it. I love this: “Put an elevator in it and have all the buttons listed as ‘G.’” And some bits from a Facebook post, like this one: “We just moved to Appalachia a couple years ago and that is one of my favorite buildings!”

Or: “Growing up I walked by that building a lot. Never really thought much about it. Never realized each floor had street access. Funny you can look at something your whole life and not see it.”

Or this one (which must have been typed on a phone): “I live there one time on top, where the 3. windows over the street. was my bedroom and then the next time I lived on the first floor and looked over the street. I love my stay there.”

It’s always really striking to me to read comments like this, describing a rural small town of one, two, three thousand people with no more than a few commercial or mixed-use streets. The idea of living on a top floor and surveying the town below in such a little place that nonetheless has all the stuff of a city, just in a tiny footprint. It’s so cool—so different from anything most of the people my age have ever lived.

Take a look at this building further down the main drag:

What is that doing in a town that barely ever exceeded 3,000 people? What same-but-different people populated this town and this country, that they saw fit to build this out here for so few? I swear, it makes me wonder what happened to us.

Someone also mentions an old department store, Fuller’s, directly across the street. I’ll bet you it’s the portion under the long blue sign banner here:

I’m also struck by the beauty of these old places, these post-industrial little towns and Rust Belt cities. There’s a grandeur and a solidity to them, so much visual interest—buildings nestled into hills, winding little streets, vistas, views, the contrast of the blue sky and the green plants and the rust-red bricks. And we built it everywhere, almost without deliberation, but also with so much deliberation.

Look at this. This is the street which winds around the Peake Building, but looking the other way:

“Funny you can look at something your whole life and not see it.” You sure can. But you can try not to.

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Related Reading:

Walmart On Stilts

Plainfield And Fancy

Wheels Of Time

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