168 W Center St

This building represents a break-off from one of the most successful real estate and brokerage firms in Provo, the Wm. H. Ray & Co. About 1910 Benjamin F. Rea, who had been a solicitor with the William H. Ray & Co., formed a company, the Real Estate Exchange, of which he was the president. Thomas E. Rea, the vice-president, and N. E. Seamountain the secretary. They moved into this building, moving with them the agencies for most of the insurance companies represented in Provo which had previously been handled by Wm. H. Ray & Co.

By the early 1920s the building was taken over by Fred Olson as the manager of the Buster Brown shoe Repair. (The insurance companies were then handled by Provo Consolidated Real Estate Co., #182 West Center.)

In 1931 Marvin W. Gease bought out the Buster Brown Shoe Store (#168). In 1934 he moved the business to 124 West Center where he remained until 1946. He then bought the stock and remodeled a store at 154 West Center and renamed the new business “The Booterie.”

This two-story brick building with two one-story additions at the rear – the most recently added in 1954 – was built with flat roof, bracketed cornice, a row of five windows 1-3-1 on the upper story and a transom on the lower, has been highly altered so as to disguise all of the above elements.