Anneka Olson’s original idea had been to compile a family history in photos and documents that she would then present to her grandfather, Don Rottle – a timeline of the clothing store Don’s father, Abdo, had founded in 1939 and later sold to him.

And which Don on his retirement handed to his twin sons, Jim and John.

“Grandpa was getting sick at the time, so I initiated a conversation about his role in Auburn and with the store,” Olson said. “I wanted to understand our family’s history a bit better.”

Things didn’t work out the way she had planned. Six months after John and Jim Rottle closed the store for economic reasons in June of 2015, and before Olson could finish her history and give it to her grandpa, on Dec. 19, 2015, Don Rottle died.

“He died sooner than I thought he would,” said Olson.

But driving by the old store on East Main Street one recent day, an idea occurred to her: the City of Auburn had a program to place art works and the like inside vacant stores so they wouldn’t look so empty. In that moment she found a keen incentive to finish her history and the perfect place to display it.

“I thought it could be a really cool thing to put something in the window there,” Olson said. “One of my big interests is site-specific history. How do we connect history with places, and how do we connect the big scenes of history with their implications for real people, for families, even institutions?”

Go for it, said uncles Jim and John.

So Olson, who has a bachelor’s degree in history, got busy. She fetched up old documents and photographs from the depths of the family archives and became an appreciative visitor to the White River Valley Museum with its extensive photo and newspaper archive.

The finished product may be seen today in the window fronting the former store’s men’s section.

In five separate panels of photographs, documents and captions, Olson unfolds different eras of the store’s history, from its founding to its last day.

“What I wanted to do was make it site specific,” Olson said. “I wanted to make it engaging, so even if people walking by stopped only for 30 seconds, it would be sort of a timeline that would become clear.”

In brief:

In 1914, Olson’s great grandfather, Abdo Rottle, emigrated from Lebanon to the United States. He settled in Montesano, Wash., where a brother had a dry goods and fabrics store catering to the then-booming timber industry.

“We found letters between my great grandfather, and his first wife that were very sweet,” Olson said.

Three more brothers arrived, and by the end of the 1920s almost the entire family, including mom and dad, had come over. The brothers opened stores in Hoquiam, Shelton and Montesano. In 1929 they incorporated, but with the collapse of the stock market, the company took a major hit. The family dissolved the partnership, and each brother had to go it alone.

Abdo sold groceries throughout the Depression, but he could see that the timber industry was declining. He moved his family to Auburn and opened a at 136 East Main street in 1939. When his son, Don, returned from the service after World War II, Don became the store’s co-manager. Ultimately, he bought the building and business from his father.

“Don could see, because of the new ready-to-wear clothing trend just then emerging, that he would have to expand to a department store to get the best lines of clothing. So he bought 226 East Main in 1963 and moved there. For the grand opening, he took out a special insert in the newspaper, printing photos of all the store’s employees to emphasize that they lived in Auburn and were committed to the community,” Olson said

“One important thing that I didn’t include because I lacked the room was that the building at 226 East Main was originally Scarff Motors in the 1920s. I didn’t use this photo, but I do have a photo interior shot of Scarff Motors from about 1923,” Olson said.

Jim and John took over the business in the late ’70s when the region’s economy was booming. They made additions and continued to serve customers on weeknights and Sundays. They even had a mobile unit to serve business people.

“I put it up in early November in time for the Veterans Day Parade. It’s a temporary installation, pending the building’s sale. The section that had been the women’s department has the Valley Arts folks in here. That is such a cool temporary use of the space, but the men’s department had nothing in it. That’s why I used it,” Olson said.

Olson has a bachelor of arts in history from Vard College in New York State’s Hudson Valley.

Olson lives in Tacoma. Her mother, Nancy Rottle, is an Auburn native.