Grubbs Cracker Company, Second Avenue.

Corner of Market and Clark Street, 1887. The Comet, Yearbook of Vanderbilt University.

This is H. B. Grubbs Cracker Company in 1887. At the time this etching was made it was Market Street and Clark Street, Second Avenue North and Bank Street. The building was a part of the Morris-Stratton block. It was on a part of lot 10 and lot 11 of the original plan of the town of Nashville. Both lots were owned by Lardner Clark, an early pioneer who came to Nashville in 1784.  He is credited with opening the first dry goods store in Nashville. Clarks store is believed to have been on the same lot where the H. B. Grubbs Company was located.

Corner of Market and Clark Street, (2nd Avenue North and Bank Street) 2018. Loop

The image of the building caught my attention and brought forth all sorts of questions. The building or at least what remains of it is at the corner of 2nd Avenue North and Bank Street. I did some searching and did not find much information online.  Part of a complex of buildings known as Washington Square and as described by the website 511/Washington Square is "owned by an offshore high net worth individual."

A new building was erected on the site in 1870 and 71 by the Morris & Stratton Company. The company had owned the entire block along Market for some time. A four-story building that housed the companies grocery business was on Market Street, just north of and adjoining the newly proposed building. "The building will front 67 feet, 9 inches on Market and run back 85 feet on Clark. It will be four stories high including a mansard roof...The corner piers will be of cut stone and the front embellished with iron columns."

Article mentions new building at Market and Clark. Nashville Union and American, June 25, 1870

I don't know if this is the same building that exists today, but I have not found any information that the building was destroyed between 1870 and 1887. Nor have I found evidence that a newer building was erected there. 1887 was the year an image of the building appears in several publications. There is no mansard roof and there may have never been one. The architecture is Italian, the number of stories is the same and cut stone was used in the piers. A large fire in 1890 apparently caused more damage to equipment and supplies than to the building. The front facade appears much the same as it did in an 1887 image. The building in 1887 is longer than the one standing now.

In 1881 Kindred J. Morris (one-time mayor of Nashville) and his partner, Thomas E Stratton partitioned the property that they owned on Market Street between an alley near the public square and Clark Street into eight lots. Lot one and two were at the corner of Market and Clark Streets and it is on these lots that the building at 214-216 Market Street is located today. As shown on the plat of the two lots

The portion of the plat in book 57, page 18, Morris & Stratton Partition, 1881, showing lots one and two.

Soon after the partition was made Thomas E. Stratton died. Lots one and two went to his children, Carrie Stratton Burnet and her brother Mosely T. Stratton. As shown on the plat above lots one and two fronted on Market Street, running north 68 feet, two and three-quarters inches. On the south side of the lot, the line ran east 210 feet, seven inches, then south along Front Street 69 feet, nine and one-quarter inches. Then back along Clark Street to the beginning. Excluded was the property of John Carper that was located in the middle of the lot and fronted on Clark Street.  In 1885 the two lots were sold to Samuel J. Keith for 15,000 dollars.

Plat book 57, page 18, Morris & Stratton Partition, 1881.

After S. J. Kieth purchased the property he leased the building to Grubbs Cracker Company from about 1885 through 1891. H. B. Grubbs moved to St. Louis and Dr. Heighway, one of the principals of the company retired in 1892.  The company was dissolved. In 1892 American Biscuit Company signed a five-year lease with Kieth for the building. American Biscuit was in business at Clark and Market Street until 1898 when National Biscuit Company bought out American. In 1901 National Biscuit built a new building farther south on Market Street. Mr. Kieth sold the property in the summer of 1903 to Spurlock-Neal Wholesale Drug Company. After some renovations, Spurlock-Neal moved into the building. That company eventually evolved into McKesson-Berry-Martin and later became McKesson & Robbins. More than seventy years later, the successor business Foremost-McKesson sold the lots and building to Comer Realty. Comer Realty had become by First National Company by 1983 when the property was sold to Washington Square Associates.