Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1878-04-20
WHAT We HAVE LEFT.

w nile we nave lnc0ntoStaDly SUI
fered a very heavy calamity in
GAINESVILLE, gravely affecting us
both as community and as indi-
viduals, it is of great importance
that we should refrain from sensa-
tiOnal exaggerations, and especially
that we should give our thoughts
not so much to what we have lost
as to the resources we have still in
hand for reinstating the interrupted
business of the city, and we think
that upon examination these will be
found considerable. Allowing for
two or three cases of hopeless ruin,
which will receive not only the
sympathy but the material help of
the community, we are now salts
fed that business will be resumed
by the whole body of those whose
places of business were burned on
Saturday night.
The progress of GAINESVILLE since
the war has been slower than that
of many other places, but it has been
more solid. Our business men have
held their resources well in hand,
and not many of them have been in
such a position that any ordinary
disaster can PROSTATE them. AS an
evidence of this we hear already of
contracts for rebuilding in every
direction, and meantime many of
those who have lost their stores are
resuming business in other parts of
town.
There is a point in the history of
GAINESVILLE which has given consid-
cradle facilities for this resumption
of business. A very few years be-
fore the war it was a river town,
depending for commercial inter-
course upon the Cumberland river
and its various turnpikes and dirt
roads. Under these circumstances
it was natural that, for business
purposes, the buildings put up were
located with reference to the con-
venience of access to the river land
ings; so that the first places occupied
were the public square, and, when
that was full, so much of Franklin
street as was in immediate contig-
uity with it. Shortly before the
war, however, railroad facilities
were obtained and our business be-
came less dependent upon the river;
consequently the new business
houses were farther from the river,
mainly between First and Second
cross streets, and they have in the
last year or two been encroaching
rapidly on the portion between
Second and Third. This portion
then became the fashionable part of
town for business, and as trade al
ways follows the fashion, the old
stores on the square were abandoned
by men who hoped for better bust
ness on upper Franklin street. Now,
it was this newer portion of the
business district of the city which
was destroyed last Saturday night ;
consequently the old downtown
stores, which had either been aban-
doned or were rented low for tenn
porary purposes, are again in active
demand, and business is now carried
on in the part of town which it Oc-
cupied fifteen years ago. Meantime,
bricks and bricklayers and carpen-
tiers will be in active demand in a
very short time on upper Franklin
street, and the insurance money to
the amount of 100000, which will
shortly be paid, will go into opera
ton as n building fund, and the
stunned expression which was on
everybody's face on Sunday morn
ing is giving way to a brisk, active
air of occupation, and next week
things will be quite active in Clarks-
vile.