Reynoldses taking on preservation, restoration of Polo’s Barber building

POLO — Constructed in the early 1900s, the “new” Barber building housed one bank or another for most of its existence. But for some time, the structure at the southwest corner of Mason Street and Franklin Avenue in Polo has sat empty.

It shouldn’t, said James and Cynthia Reynolds. The historic building with “gorgeous architecture” offers too many possibilities, according to the Polo couple who recently bought it.

“There’s a lot of potential ideas and thoughts for this building, but most of it’s all about bringing back to the downtown something other than an empty shell of a building,” James said.

Prospective outcomes range from city hall to a coffee shop to retail space — or any combination, Cynthia said.

“It’s a cool building, period, regardless of what we’re doing with it,” she said.

The Reynoldses purchased the Barber building from First State Bank Shannon-Polo-Lake Carroll — one of the banks previously housed there — with plans to preserve and restore the structure.

They’re doing the same with the old Polo Theater, which they purchased in February 2021.

Selling wasn’t something the bank’s previous owners planned, Cynthia said.

“They’re like, ‘No, we’ve never considered selling it,’ because the president of the bank, her dad loved this building. He bought it and he never wanted it [sold],” Cynthia said. “But we spoke a few times and she’s like, ‘Well, you know, if we’re going to sell it to anybody, we want to sell it to you guys.’

“We would go through it and be like, ‘This could be done and this could be done and look at this’ and we would just talk about the history and the features and the details in here,” she continued. “I think we would feed on each other’s excitement, so that helped.”

There were some stipulations to the sale, including that the Reynoldses not allow the building to be used as a bank, Cynthia said. They hadn’t planned to do so, so promising that was no problem.

Preservation is made easier by the fact that they have not only old photographs, but original blueprints, renderings and sketches to examine, she said. Those things give them “an idea of what we’re doing or where we can go,” Cynthia said.

“You have to be in the building for a little while before you know the direction you want to take,” she added. “You have to get familiar with it. You can’t just come in and start ripping things up.”

A project the Reynoldses know they’re going to go through with is making a dropbox on Franklin Avenue into a flag drop.

Both Cynthia and James are U.S. Army veterans and current members of the American Legion Post No. 83. James also belongs to the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

“During our meetings, we’ve been talking about where in the town can we do a flag drop for flags that need to be retired,” James said. “So the plan is to get an a-frame out here that says, ‘Flag Drop,’ they can put their flags in here [the old post office mail deposit box]. We’ll just collect them periodically, work with the Boy Scouts and do the proper ceremony.

“A lot of people don’t realize the proper ceremony is to actually burn the flag, but there’s a ceremony,” he said.

They also know that one of the first projects will be to make the building compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, Cynthia said.

Currently, accessing the upper floor of the building requires going outside and entering a separate door. The opening that used to connect the main lobby to the vestibule with the stairs and elevator was walled up.

That wall needs to be removed so the upstairs is ADA accessible, Cynthia said.

The other potential starting point is knocking out an exterior wall along Franklin Avenue, which took the place of large window that went all the way to the floor, she said. Because the sidewalk outside is even with the bottom of the window, that would be their ADA entrance.

“There is a lot to do, but you can envision certain things. This would be an amazing restaurant or bar area,” Cynthia said of the lobby.

The vault with safety deposit boxes even could be turned into a wine cellar, she said. The alcohol and liquor could be displayed in the windows.

“There’s so much potential, whatever you decide to do,” she said.