Downtown Lawrence merchants have a unique offering for customers and window shoppers — a glimpse of the past.

Downtown Lawrence Inc., a nonprofit group, has started a new project to highlight the area’s history. The association last week began delivering small, framed posters to businesses that list every business that has been housed in their buildings from the late 1800s to the present.

The group expects to produce posters for about 130 buildings, and businesses have agreed to display them in their front windows.

Maria Martin, executive director of Downtown Lawrence Inc., said she and her husband, Don, have had a similar poster in their downtown shop, Southwest & More, 727 Mass., since 1998.

“It is still drawing interest from customers,” Martin said. “They’re always reading it and asking questions about it. We thought it would be a neat idea for other businesses.”

Martin said she thought the posters would help educate downtown visitors.

“It is a pretty colorful history,” Martin said. “Lots of billiard halls and saloons. Plus, there are a lot of people who don’t think of downtown as ever being a place that had auto dealerships. This reminds people that we used to have lots of them. It also reminds them that we had places to outfit your horse and carriage.”

Katie Fabac, a 2004 Free State High School graduate and an employee at Southwest & More, has done most of the research for the project.

Fabac used files at Watkins Community Museum of History, past phone directories and discussions with current building owners to piece together the history.

“It has been interesting to see how much downtown has changed,” said Fabac, who plans on studying English philosophy and history at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. “I found a lot of places called millineries (women’s hat stores). I didn’t even know there was such a thing.”

Downtown business owners are excited about the project.

Hayden Fowler, manager at The Buckle, 805 Mass., said customers frequently asked him about the history of the store’s building.

Fowler said he thought the project could spur regular walking tours of the downtown area.

“I think ultimately anything that has to do with history in downtown will build business in downtown,” Fowler said.

Dave Seal, owner of Framewoods Gallery, 819 Mass., said the project played in well with the city’s sesquicentennial celebration. He said he expected it to boost sales of history-related prints that his store sells.

“I think it could help produce some impulse buying that people didn’t plan on doing,” Seal said.

Downtown Lawrence Inc. officials expect to have the posters completed and delivered to all businesses by the end of this month.