The Emporium is the single most photographed building on Main Street — a tall, two-storey commercial block built in 1897 with iron shutters, a deep cornice and the original signage still painted on the brick. It was built as a general store serving the mining trade and has been adapted continuously since, but the facade has never been altered.
It is on the National Register of Historic Places as one of the few intact late-Victorian commercial buildings in the Mother Lode. There is no museum inside — the ground floor is usually a shop — but the building itself is the point. Look up at the second-storey window arches: those are the original wood, kept in working order for more than 125 years.