APPLETON - A lot was lost when the building at 201 N. Appleton St. went up in flames early Wednesday morning.

On the first floor is Author's Kitchen + Bar, a locally owned business that had been open less than a year. Co-owner Josh Sickler told USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin it was "like watching your dreams go up in flames."

On the second floor, four apartments that housed eight people the night of the fire. They're now without the place that at the start of the week was home.

Also likely gone is a historic building that dates back more than 130 years.

Jim Richter at the Appleton Historical Society said the building, which city records have listed as built in 1883, is among the oldest class of buildings in the downtown.

For the sake of comparison, the Gabriel Furniture building went up in 1888, the Lawrence Memorial Chapel was built in 1918, the Wichmann building in 1922 and the Zuelke building in 1931.

The first known business in the building now occupied by Author's was the Hauert Seed Store, opened on April 25, 1894 by Henry, Jacob and Frank Hauert. Their father, Jacob, was a German immigrant who came to Appleton from Milwaukee in 1874. That first store sold feed, flour and seeds. Frank later bought out his brother Jacob after Henry's death and the business continued as the F.W. Hauert Seed Store, which ran into the 1940s.

The original address was 645 Appleton St. The city's streets were renumbered in 1925.

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From sometime in the late '40s to 1990, the building was home to Bohl and Maeser Shoe Store, a place many longtime Appleton residents will remember, Richter said. The Bohl and Maeser business began in 1913 and had been set up in two previous locations. The building had an addition built in 1948.

City directories from over the years indicate there was a tailor shop and a barber shop in the building at different points in the 20th century.

In more recent years, it housed restaurants. In the mid-'90s, there was Cali Restaurant. In the early 2000s, it was Polly's Restaurant and Lounge. Il Angolo opened there in 2006, then moved to its new location on College Avenue in spring 2018.

Sickler and Matias Whittingslow opened Author's just last summer.

While the optics aren't promising, the future of the historic building at 201 N. Appleton St. remains up in the air. The Appleton Fire Department said Wednesday there's not yet an estimate on the damage, though the roof collapsed onto the upstairs apartments and, with the structural integrity unknown, the extent of the first-floor damage had not yet been checked out.

If it is a total loss, the northwest corner of Appleton and Washington streets will soon have a different look for the first time in about five generations.

Contact Shane Nyman at 920-996-7223 or snyman@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @shanenyman.