MARTINSVILLE — For many years, the “Martinsville City of Mineral Water” sign has sat dormant in downtown Martinsville, atop the Union Block Building at the intersection of Morgan and Main streets. That will soon change.
The sign will once again be aglow this week. A downtown lighting ceremony is set for 5:30-7:30 p.m. Wednesday to celebrate the historic sign and kick off the holiday season.
LED lighting in the refurbished sign will not only increase efficiency and illumination, but will allow for the sign to be lit around the clock, 24 hours a day.
According to research by Joanne Stuttgen, the sign has been unlit for about 14 years.
A lighting ceremony for the sign took place on Oct. 4, 2003, but within about six months, the sign went dark and stayed dark.
Prior to the 2003 ceremony, the sign had been dark since the 1980s, when it was damaged by vandals.
According to Stuttgen, the exact date the sign was installed on top of the building is unclear.
The sign was not in a photo from a parade that took place in June 1929, and the tinsmith who made the letters for the sign died in 1938.
“So, we have a roughly nine-year window of time in which the sign appeared,” Stuttgen said, based on her research.
Stuttgen plans to scroll through microfilm of daily newspapers from that nine-year period this winter to find a more specific date for the sign’s arrival in downtown Martinsville.
Longtime resident Margaret Sedwick told Stuttgen in 2003 that she believed the sign was connected to a state basketball championship Martinsville High School won in the 1920s or ’30s.
The high school’s boys’ basketball team won state titles in 1924, 1927 and 1933.
Sedwick also told Stuttgen that the building was owned by Charles Buskirk, who operated an appliance store from 1953 to 1979. The owner of the building shut the sign off in the 1960s because it interfered with the televisions in the store, according to a 2003 Reporter-Times article about the sign.
During Wednesday’s celebration, there will be tours of the first floor of the Union Block building, giving people a chance to see some of the renovation work that has taken place in the building.
The Union Block building was purchased this summer by Craig and Mary Fenneman, with plans to renovate it and attract new businesses. The plans are part of a larger partnership with Doug and Paula Molin to form the Artesian Group LLC, which shares the mission to revitalize and renovate the downtown Martinsville area.