The Laundry & Quarters, an enchanting Jacksonville cottage, has been an ice cream shop, a doll museum, a perfumery, and an antique store among other uses.
However, this building at 215 North 5th Street was constructed around 1915 for the Rogue River Valley Abstract Company, what we would today call a real estate title business. It is believed to have been the first reinforced concrete building constructed in Jacksonville, Oregon.
The building immediately to the north, now the Magnolia Hotel, was built around the same time for the Rogue River Sanitarium. When the County seat was moved to Medford in 1927, the Abstract Company appears to have moved as well and the building was converted into the Sanitarium’s laundry. It apparently remained so for quite a few years since the laundry plumbing still existed well into the 1970s. In fact, the building’s current owner reports that when they wash the floors they don’t have to use soap because the floors create their own suds!