The intersection of W. Duffy and Jefferson streets is perhaps the most vibrant neighborhood corner in this area. The presence of stores originally on all four corners of an intersection reflects the integration of commercial culture into residential neighborhoods that was essential prior to such technological developments as refrigerators and automobiles, which fostered the spread of supermarkets and the preservation of substantive amounts of food at home. The corner stores inherently housed small and specialized businesses such as groceries, confectionaries, restaurants, or barbershops, and were often operated by a family who lived in the apartment above. This wood-frame building on the northeast corner was initially used as a drugstore, and after 1928 a barbershop opened inside a two-story residential addition (1888–1898) on the Duffy Street side. The West Duffy Café occupies the corner today, the last remaining business on the intersection.
At the southeast corner of the intersection (221½ W. Duffy) is a two-story building (1885) with a grocery store, where two triple windows flank the chamfered corner entrance. Notable features include clapboard siding, a decorative cornice between the first and second story, and bracketed eaves. A recessed porch on Duffy Street serves as a covered entrance to the apartments above. The building at 1201 Jefferson on the southwest corner was constructed in 1913 as a two-story wooden-frame house and bakeshop for Jacob Kraft, who added another bake oven by 1916. The bakery lasted until 1961, after which Joe’s Grocery operated until 1972. In 1979 the business became Thompson’s Garage and the bake ovens along the rear lane were demolished. The pedestrian energy of the neighborhood lasted into the 1950s when seventeen stores occupied the immediate area. Seventy-five percent of the houses on Duffy between Montgomery and Barnard streets featured front porches. By 1950, however, twenty-seven garages appeared in the lanes. The arrival of supermarkets in the 1940s, which offered lower prices and a wider selection, siphoned business away from such neighborhood stores.