A bittersweet end for 132-year-old building

Jan Lanser said it was bittersweet last week when a crew tore down the former Jackson East hair salon at 306 E. Jackson St. 

After all, the building had been in her family for generations. It was a building she renovated to open her hair salon, Jackson East, in 1984, a business she ran for decades.

She and her family gathered for one last walk up the steps before the demo crew took over March 4.

While the demolition was quick, the building hasn’t been forgotten. Vestiges will remain in the family to remind them of what was there, Lanser said.

  She made sure to keep the distinctive “1888” numerals that graced the front of the building, designating the year in which it was constructed.

“The numbers were a big thing for me,” Lanser said.

And the family kept the Cream City bricks from the building. One of her sons plans to build a walkway with some of the bricks, and various family members have other projects planned for the remainder of them, Lanser said.

The building has been a part of downtown Port since it was constructed as a stable for the Guenther family, which operated the nearby Guenther brickyard until the 1930s.

But as the need for a stable diminished as automobiles took over the roads, there was little use for the facility.

Lanser said her grandfather Matt Greisch bought the building from the Guenther family, using it as a warehouse for the family’s Greisch Plumbing and Heating business, which was headquartered in downtown for decades.

Lanser said that when she was looking for a place to open her salon, the building seemed like the perfect place. She renovated the building, creating a business space on the ground floor and an apartment above. Jackson East Hair Salon opened in 1984, with Lanser initially renting the space from her family and later buying the building.

“When we first renovated the building, we found rings on the ground near the front window,” she said, rings that would likely have been used to tether horses.

Many of her customers became friends, Lanser said, but none was quite as special as Anna, Hilda and Edna Guenther, granddaughters of Guenther Family Brickyard founder Gottlieb Guenther.

“I waited on them when I was a waitress at Harry’s,” she said. “Then they came here. I knew them until they died. They were so special.”

Lanser ran the salon until retiring in about 1990, then rented it to other salons for about 10 years. The building has been vacant for the last two years, she said.

Last year, Lanser and her husband John hired Continuum Architects and Planners to create a townhouse development on the property.

The townhouses will stretch from the Light Station staircase east to the bike trail.

The modern design of the townhouse development is intended to bridge the New England fishing village look of downtown and the more contemporary design of the planned Newport Shores development on the far east end of Jackson Street.

“It was sad. It was bittersweet,” Lanser said of the demolition. “But I’m very excited about what’s happening there. When I say I’m really into this project, I am. It means a lot. It will be beautiful.”

The architects are making tweaks to the design, Lanser said, with an eye toward city approval this month.

“The feedback we’re getting is everyone wants this to happen. They just want it to look right,” she said. “That’s what we want too.”

Soil borings are expected to be done this week, she said, and some trees removed in preparation for a large retaining wall to be built as soon as weather permits. If all goes well, construction of the townhouses will begin by summer, with work beginning on the east end and then moving westward.