Old McCaskey Register building at Alliance demolished

ALLIANCE – A 96-year-old vacant building on Union Avenue begins to collapse this week.

Marshall Land Co. began demolishing the old McCaskey Register Co. plant. The company purchased the property about a year ago.

“We actually own an architectural salvage store in Canton called Marshall’s Antique Warehouse, and we sell a lot of architectural items that we take out of buildings. So a lot of the artefacts, stone items, and building items are gone. to our architectural recovery. boutique, ”said Marshall.

The company is wondering if it will demolish the back building as well, he said, and no decision has been made on the future of the property.

“Originally, when we bought the property, some people came to us and wanted to put urban housing there, but things just didn’t work out with that,” Marshall said.

City Planning and Development Director Joe Mazzola said the rear building was in “much better condition” than the front building.

McCaskey Register previously produced systems that helped store owners track cash and credit accounts.

Founded in 1903, the company operated from a building on Rush Street. McCaskey Register built a second facility on South Union in 1925 as the company continued to grow, according to the Alliance Historical Society.

The Victor Adding Machine Co. purchased McCaskey Register in 1953. A handful of other tenants have occupied the building for short periods over the years, but it has remained vacant for decades.

Marshall said her company tries to preserve objects from buildings when she dismantles them. The masonry that makes up the facade of the McCaskey Register building has been individually removed in order to preserve it, he said.

“We took it for the purpose of passing the story on,” Marshall said. “We always love to do this.”

Contact Paige at 330-580-8577 or [email protected], or on Twitter at @paigembenn.