247. Guess Where Wednesday: It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane…

With this week’s mystery photo, we want to see how many of you really know the Barringtons because it’s pretty hard to miss this giant orange smiley face if you’re driving past one place that’s pretty popular this time of year. I cropped the photo to try to fake you out, but this one might be obvious. Can you guess what it’s a picture of?

If you correctly guess this week’s mystery photo, you have a chance to win a prize linked to the place where we took the picture.  So good luck with your guessing and we’ll let you know the answer when we reveal our new mystery photo on Wednesday of next week.

Now for last week’s mystery photo. This one was a stumper! For the first time in the history of our Wednesday mystery photo contests here at 365Barrington.com, no one submitted a guess. So it’s my fault for being difficult.  I just couldn’t help but share this image I recently took while on Park Avenue after I recently spotted the same building in an historic photo of downtown Barrington.  The initials, E.C. Groff, and the year, 1907 are rusty reminders of years gone by.

Several different businesses used to be housed in this building.  Does anyone remember when it was the old Ben Franklin store?  I love how the facade of today’s McGonigal’s Pub building (off in the distance in the photo below) currently looks as it did so many years ago when it was the First State Bank of Barrington…

This stretch of road, known today as Park Avenue, used to be called South Railroad Street.  And before the Ben Franklin, the space was occupied at different times by the E.B. King Five-and-Dime store, real estate offices and J.C. Cadwallader Jeweler.  That’s according to  the Barrington Postcard History Series, a book published last year by Ken Munson of the Barrington Area Historical Society.  According to Ken’s book, this block was also once a destination for shoppers purchasing groceries at the National Tea Company Food Store and treats at McLeister’s Soda shop in the building where The Bread Basket and James Gavrilos Dentistry are today.

On the first floor of this building at 133 Park Avenue today, you’ll find the Barrington Running Company, which just opened for business this past July.  Over the past few months, Barrington Running Company  has become a hot spot for people who meet for group fun runs and yoga classes or just to get properly fitted for a great pair of running shoes.  For more information about their products and services, visit BarringtonRunCo.com.

I’m going to work on tracking Ken Munson down to see if he’d be willing to teach us more about who E.C. Groff was and Barrington history in general.  Ken’s book of Barrington postcards is really beautiful and includes many cool historic photos and details about the history of places we frequent today right here in Barrington.

In the meantime, let’s get back to our new photo contest for this week.  Entering is easy.

Here’s how the contest works…

* Submit guesses about where today’s mystery photo was taken in the comments area below for this post
* You have until the end of the day next Tuesday to submit your guess
* Next Wednesday, we’ll draw a name and reveal the winner at 365Barrington.com
* We will contact the winner with instructions about receiving the prize of the week
* Only one guess per person
* Only guesses posted here on this website (not on Facebook or Twitter) will be entered into the drawing
* Your email address must be valid, so we can contact you if you win

There you go! All you have to do is SUBMIT YOUR GUESS IN THE “COMMENTS” BOX BELOW. If you’ve guessed in our previous contests, please feel free to participate again this week! We’d love to see as many guesses as possible. We’re also working on finding more great prizes to give away for future “Guess Where Wednesday” mystery photo contests. If you would like to offer one of our upcoming prizes, please drop me a note at Liz@365Barrington.com.

So here’s one last look at our latest mystery photo. Good luck with your guessing! We’ll share the answer and announce the winner one week from today.