Then & Now: Dowd's Storage

Since June 18, 1984, when a $1 million fire destroyed it and an adjacent building, 157 Throckmorton has been an empty lot. But for more than 80 years prior, the space was a family-run business that changed with the times.

Charles Dowd founded Dowd's in 1892 as a horse stable, housing more than 100 horses at one time. It was also a garage for carriages and road grading equipment. Dowd died at a young age in 1912, but the business remained in his family until 1973. His wife Emma Kratzenstein-Dowd ran the business and eventually passed it to her children.

As the horse and buggy gave way to the automobile, instead of closing its doors, Dowd’s reinvented itself and its purpose. By the 1930s, it had become a storage, hauling and moving company.

This week's Then photo shows what Dowd's looked like in the late 1930s. Dowd's is on the far left of three buildings. In 1984 a suspicious fire destroyed the Dowd's building, and the building to it’s right - in the middle of the Then photo. The building on the far right was built by Louis Mauer in 1925 and it still stands today, housing and . The Mauer building is the last commercial building on the west side of Throckmorton.  

The middle building remained as an empty lot after the fire of 1984 until 1993, when construction began on the Mill Valley Inn, which was completed in 1994 and stands today as one of Mill Valley’s few downtown hotels. 

The old Dowd's lot remains vacant.