You've got to see these photos of Chambersburg's North Main Street: 1972 vs. 2019

The building at 56 N. Main St., which was the home of Wogan's Uniform Center for three decades, is being torn down this week to make room for Franklin County's new judicial center. 

M.L. "Mike" Marotte, a local historian, provided Public Opinion with a photo of the building taken on Dec. 21, 1972, when it was the site of the Rainbow Restaurant. The restaurant closed the next year, he said. 

Wogan's operated in the space for about 30 years before it closed in 2012 following the owner's death, according to a Public Opinion story published that July. Laura Wogan and husband, Hayward, began the Uniform Center as an extension of their other business, Wogan's Pharmacy. Wogan's offered special orders of uniforms and related medical items to pharmacy customers; as that business grew, the couple decided to open a store focused on uniforms.

In recent years, the building has stood alone with parking lots on either side. The landscape was very different for most of the building's life, as it was one of multiple structures lined up on the east side of the first block of North Main Street. 

In the photo provided by Marotte, a Montgomery Ward's department store can be seen to the right of the building that would eventually house Wogan's. That structure would go on to become the Madden Hotel before it was sold in 1995 to the Chambersburg Area Development Corp., which tore it down and turned the property into a parking lot. 

The county began buying properties in the first block of North Main Street in 2010. At the time, a plan for a new court and county facility outside the downtown core had just been abandoned due to the Recession, and instead the county moved ahead with buying properties around the courthouse to create more space. The county began discussing the court facility project again in 2016, and by early 2018 it was off the ground. 

Demolition for the $67.8 million Court Facility Improvement Project began in December with the former Lighten Up Chambersburg building. 

What's left of the Wogan's building and the Courtside Professional Building are the only structures that remain on the east side of North Main. The former is to be gone by the end of the week, and the latter won't be far behind. Having opened in the early 1900s as the Chambersburg Trust bank and most recently the home of the Franklin County Commissioners' offices, demolition of the Courtside Professional Building began in February but became delayed following the discovery of certain materials that must first be removed. 

 A judicial center will be built in the first block of North Main Street. The project also includes the creation of an archives center and the construction of a new administrative office building at different sites on North Second Street, and renovations to the Old Courthouse and the Courthouse Annex on Lincoln Way East. 

Check out demolition photos: