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NP8 form 10-000 OMB AwaW NO. 102I-0018 United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Section number 8 Page 11 attempt on the part of town builders to establish a sophisticated-looking streetscape in the new communities, reminiscent of the Eastern or European towns they had occupied previously. Yet contemporary observers still found the result unattractive. One 1866 writer provides the classic description of the district's physical appearance in its first decade, Commencing at Black Hawk--where the sole pleasant object is the Presbyterian Church, white, tasteful, and charmingly placed on the last step of Bates Hill, above the chimneys and mills in the uniting ravines --we mount Gregory Gulch by a rough, winding, dusty road, lined with crowded wooden buildings: hotels, with pompous names and limited accommodations; drinking saloons, -- 'lager beer' being a frequent sign; bakeries, log and frame dwelling-houses, idle mills, piles of rusty and useless machinery tumbled by the wayside, and now and then a cottage in the calico style, with all sorts of brackets and carved drop-cornices.17 Speaking specifically of Central City the writer continued, "It consists mainly of one street, on the right-hand side of the gulch; the houses on your left as you ascend, resting on high posts or scaffolding, over the deep bed of the stream. " At the intersection of Lawrence and Main Streets, which formed the center of the commercial district "the principal stores are jammed together in an incredibly small space. " He found that, "the whole string" of towns with their buildings appeared "standing as if on one leg, their big signs and little accommodations, the irregular, wandering, uneven streets, and the bald, scarred, and pitted mountains on either side. " He concluded that it was a place where "everything is odd, grotesque, unusual; but no feature can be called attractive. i18 As the populace denuded the surrounding mountainsides of timber for mining and construction, the area became increasingly desolate and inhospitable to any but those who hoped to reap a fortune from the mineral lodes. The economic motive for settlement of the mining district was most visible in the rapid building of the commercial areas of its towns. By 1864, the business community had stabilized. That year Central City merchants did over $15 million in business. Main Street was the "grocery and provision center, " and doctors' offices also were located there; Eureka Street was the "dry goods center; " hardware stores and legal office extended along Lawrence Street; Nevada Street was "the way out of town past boarding houses and homes of washerwomen. "19 The only masonry commercial structure that remains from the 1860s is one of the Roworth Buildings (C1-8, C1-9) on Main Street, which housed a bakery and then hardware and furniture businesses.