The mine museum, one of Jerome's oldest commercial buildings, was purchased by J.S. Hoover and A.C. Cordiner from G.A. Stoney in 1896. The building was destroyed in a fire in 1898. An architect from Los Angles built the present building with steel fire shutters which were somehow left open during another fire in 1899 which gutted the interior and damaged the roof. The restored Fashion Saloon was called "the leading sporting house in all Northern Arizona" the motto was "we never sleep". In 1920, Jim Brown and H.L. Fulton dramatically altered the building, and it housed the Yavapai Drug Store, a dry good store, and the Sprouse Reitz Company. Whitten Printers was downstairs with C.E.C. Whitten as proprietor. In 1953, volunteers, in an effort to save the town, formed the Jerome Historical Society, the second oldest in the state, and officially opened the building as a museum. Various businesses have operated from the basement, but the museum has remained open upstairs since 1953 and was entirely refurbished in 2007.
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