Building restoration reveals historic details

LISBON — The creation of a doorway is an opening into the past, and the future.

The doorway is on the east side of the Jacob Picking building, the oldest brick building in Ohio.

Workers have been restoring the building for Renee Lewis of New York City and her sister, Stevie Halverstadt of Lisbon, for about a year.

The building that faces what is now Lincoln Way dates to 1803. Halverstadt said the new doorway replaces one that existed about 100 years ago.

That attention to detail is part of restoration, she said.

The building started as a hotel, but in 1867, M.N. Hamilton turned it into a store that sold prescription and patent medicines, glass, brushes, lamps, perfume, soap and paint.

Edwin Stanton, the secretary of war for President Lincoln, had an office in the building.

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