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A fire on Jan. 22, 1952, caused nearly $1 million in damage to the William H. Block department store at Market and Illinois streets and injured eight firefighters. Herman Wilhelm Bloch, a Hungarian immigrant, anglicized his name and opened a dry goods store in Kokomo with a partner in the 1870s, but later sold his interest. He opened an Indianapolis store at 7-9 E. Washington St. in 1896, then built the eight-story structure at Market and Illinois. The department store operated as Block’s until 1987, when the chain (bought by Allied Stores in 1962) was sold to Cincinnati-based Federated Department Stores, which folded it into its Lazarus stores. Lazarus closed downtown in 1993.
Sources: Indiana Historical Society, historicindianapolis.com, indyencyclopedia.org
Credit: This photo is courtesy of the Indiana Historical Society and is part of the Larry Foster Collection. More images are available at images.indianahistory.org.
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