Bissman Building

The structure was built in 1886 where Peter Bissman's expanded wholesale grocery still stands today, but not in operation. In the early 1930s the twenty smokestacks on the north and south sides of the Bissman's filled the early morning air with the rich aroma of coffee, as its own brands Red Ban Java Blend, Steel Cut and Acme were prepared fresh each day. Downtown residents would wake to the scent of roasting coffee beans and return home at workday's end to the fragrance of roasting peanuts. The building has an early Romantic Gothic styling and shares a haunting similarity with the Historic Ohio State Reformatory since they were both built in the same year by the same architect. The Haunted Bissman Building aired on the SyFy Channel during a Ghost Hunter's episode in 2010 and My Ghost Story in June and November 2011! The Haunted Bissman Building was the site in the movie, Shawshank Redemption, of the Brewer Hotel where Brooks, actor James Whitmore, went to stay and hung himself soon after being paroled from The Shawshank Prison. The building was also utilized in the film as the front office of the building for the set of the Portland Daily Bugle.