Martinsburg property owner aims to restore sign

MARTINSBURG, W.Va. — A downtown Martinsburg building owner is aiming to eventually repaint a sign for a city clothier that closed more than 50 years ago.

Mark Thompson said the thrust of his application pending before the Martinsburg Historical Preservation Review Commission is to replace windows on the side of 115-117 S. Queen St. near the faded sign for Brenner’s Men’s Shop.

While the sign’s restoration is not at the top of his agenda, Thompson said Monday he believes it would be “a neat thing if it was restored,” and would add to the historical character of downtown.

“I believe that this sign is part of the historic provenance of the building and represents an important part of Martinsburg’s history, time-stamping a snapshot of the retail economy of stores and shops that existed up and down Queen Street in the early decades of the 20th century, and I would like to see it preserved for future generations,” Thompson wrote in an application to the city requesting a certificate of appropriateness from the preservation panel.

The panel is expected to take up Thompson’s requests during its July 1 meeting, which is set to begin at 7 p.m. at Martinsburg City Hall at 232 N. Queen St.

Thompson said the sign-restoration concept was suggested by friends, but he emphasized that the window-replacement request is a higher priority due to water-related damage that has occurred to the approximately century-old building.

The clothing business opened by George P. Brenner dates to the late 1930s and appears to have closed by 1960, according to his obituary and the West Virginia Secretary of State’s office.

Thompson said he and business partner David Carroll have done a lot of work to the street-level floor of the building, and have replaced the roof since buying the property about 18 months ago.

Additional windows also need to be replaced as part of ongoing work to improve the property’s condition, Thompson said.

Berkeley County (W.Va.) Historical Society President Todd Funkhouser said he supports the concept of preserving the decades-old Brenner’s sign — and others that remain downtown — as folk art.

“Martinsburg has all of these pre-existing murals that represent a bygone era,” said Funkhouser, who noted the uniqueness of old downtown signs for Union Sales Co., M. Cohen & Son and Coca-Cola, among others.

While Funkhouser said he believes the existing signs should be conserved before new projects are embarked upon, Main Street Martinsburg Executive Director Randy Lewis confirmed that three property owners are interested in new murals being painted on their buildings.

Efforts are ongoing to develop proposals as part of efforts to install more public art in the downtown area, Lewis said.

Shane Farthing, Martinsburg’s economic and community-development director, said the city needs more public art, as well as green space and other amenities to improve the city’s overall quality.

With the compilation of multiple public-art installations, Farthing said he also hopes that it can be marketed as a package in the same way that the county’s geocaching trails are promoted.

“These are things that will bring people in,” he said.

In the real-world, outdoor-treasure-hunting game that involves the use of devices with location-based technology, Berkeley County is touted as the “gadget cache capital” of the United States.

Launched earlier this month, the county’s fifth GeoTrail is an 18-cache trail that takes participants to multiple locations around the county to complete the game.