The Ghost Door: Wrapping up the Foundation Revelation

If you feel you need to, you may review Foundation Revelation Part I by clicking  HERE.

The important thing in that post is my statement that the Boot Room stairs are in an addition,

not in the original old store structure.

This was a revelation to me becuase long ago I noticed this:

which is waaaaaay up in the air on the north wall thus:

See the air conditioners? One of those is the one that broke and flooded the wine cellar last summer. See the structure on the front? That is where the old original porch used to be and it is now the front of the store.

OK... so every time I noticed this door thing up the side of the building I wondered why it was there. It didn't make any sense to me. As soon as I realized that the Boot Room stairs were in an addition, I realized what this ghost door was for.

IT WAS THE ENTRANCE TO THE OLD TOWN HALL!!!!!

THERE WERE STAIRS ON THE OUTSIDE OF THE BUILDING!!!!

I think.

Maybe.

I have been wrong before... but what else could it be?

To wrap things up I must explain what all my blather regarding the ceiling over the office area at the back of the store was about.

One of the things I find amazing is how thoroughly the old original structure is disguised inside. The old oak floor is uniform throughout the front part of the store. That is what we tend to look at -- the floor -- and the floor makes it seem like the whole front part of the store is one big old structure. BUT, if you look at the ceiling it tells the structural story.

I didn't start to notice the ceilings until I found those old basement steps and started to wonder where they used to come up inside the store.

 The ceiling in the original part of the store is tongue and groove, everything added later is just smooth.

Below you can see the old and new parts of the ceiling over the office. (The addition where the porch used to be, on the front of the store, and the addition on the south side, also have a smooth ceilings.)

Blue beams outline the original structure (more or less, there are exceptions to this statement that I don't quite understand, like in the above photo where the blue beam makes a sharp left.) They make a rectangle which defines the original structure inside and then there are cross beams running from old front to old back of the original store.

This is looking back into the rear addition, into the toy department, from the right of the office. See how the smaller of the blue beams ends at the support post?

  I feel very satisfied.

I hope it all makes sense.

The End.
But I really don't get why the north wall is brick.You can't tell by looking at the old photo.