Eighteen thousand five hundred souls in the 2010 census. What’s more, “Laurel is the principal city of a micropolitan statistical area named for it.”

This is promising:

The economic prosperity of Laurel's timber era (1893–1937) and "timber families" created the famed Laurel Central Historic District as a byproduct. The area is considered the largest, finest, and most intact collection of the early 20th century architecture in Mississippi and has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since September 4, 1987, for both its history and wide variety of architectural styles.

I read that after I’d toured downtown, and was surprised. I can only conclude the paragraph above refers to residential architecture, not commercial.

As I like to say, confident you’ll agree: we know what this was, don’t we?

Maybe I’m wrong, but I can sniff a Woolworth’s from the slightest hints. Also, the previous pictures show it was a Woodworth’s.

Kidding! But after a while, you just feel it in your bones.

I try to decipher this, but my head starts to hurt. Was the demolished building two stories high?

If so, does the window on the second floor hail from an era when the neighbor had only one floor? If so, why did they keep the window as a window, instead of a passageway like the other one? Or was there nothing there ever, just an alley? MOVING RIGHT ALONG

Vandals. Just plain VANDALISM.

Lopping off the capital on the right hand side is just nuts.

Also. it's an Oil Company with a display window that has a doll's bedroom set.

What it was and what it isn’t and what it is now.

Fine old sign; they must have painted it with iron.

Nice! Why not hack off part of this one, too

It’s from the early era of classical revival, I think - it has a certain Columbian Exposition ornate exuberance.

Ah, I'm not off by much: 1908.

Now THAT is a lineup. Leontyne Price, My Favorite Martian . . .

AND EB.

Eb died at the age of 81 in 2020. That doesn't seem possible.

The whole building is a mess, visually sundered, a cornice decoration lopped off.

FRANK GARDNER

The classic downtown store, renovated post-war, classic script name:

The sign is down now, and new stores are filling the space. Which is good, because this . . .

Is what it was.

Oh my. A Yamasaki building?

Don’t think so, but it’s in his style. Note: I do not like his style, for the most part. But that’s a personal thing, based on growing up in the flared-column era.

A bygone sign stubbornly asserts its existence:

Classic post-war modernist civic building.

Every city should have one. Really: it has a certain brainy serenity.

We all know what this is, don’t we?

If this helps:

The aliens came, built a structure from which they would communicate with the earthlings by extending messages on scrolls out fo the windows.

Then they left without notice, and have not returned. But you can.