Gadsden Postcard: Hotel Reich

Gadsden's Hotel Reich, built by Adolphe "Popo" Reich, opened on February 12, 1930. The ten-story structure had 150 rooms and interiors designed by Marshall Field's of Chicago. David O. Whilldin, a Birmingham architect active from 1902 until 1961, designed the hotel.  

The Reich was meant to be first-class. Chefs were hired from New Orleans. After World War II big bands such as those of Guy Lombardo and Tommy Dorsey played the ballroom. 

Popo's son Robert took over operations eventually, and the hotel was modernized in the 1960's. Sold in 1970, the new owner renamed it the Downtown Motor Hotel. In 1978 the facility was converted to the Daughette Towers subsidized housing for senior citizens.

This postcard, from my own collection, originated with E.C. Kopp, a printing and publishing company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, that operated from 1898 until 1956. Another Reich postcard can be seen here. Mike Goodson's article about the hotel's opening day is here. More information is available here. 

Some Family Photos Winter 1954

I've done a few posts on this blog exploring old family photographs. One included some photos taken at the Chandler Street house years after my toddler pictures below. I've also written one about a family vacation at the beach in 1956 and a group of family photos from the 1960s. 

Now we come to some examples from the winter of 1954. I turned two that March 3. Most of these photos were taken at my paternal grandparents' house at 1313 Chandler Street in Gadsden. We lived in Huntsville but visited Rosa Mae and Amos Wright numerous times over the years. 

My family is blessed--or cursed--with hundreds of photographs old and new. I'm sure I'll be exploring more subjects in the future. 

Happy, happy, joy, joy!

I was always looking at rocks or sticks. 

I don't seem quite as happy here as in the first photograph.

Here I am with dad, Amos J. Wright, Jr. He probably took most of these photos, but presumably my grandfather took this one.

I presume that photographer's shadow is dad's. Someone else standing to the right? 

Look, dad, a shadow!

Prepare to get wet, dad!

My grandmother Rosa Mae Wright died in January 1997, shortly before her 97th birthday. My grandfather Amos J. Wright, Sr., had died in 1975. These color photos were taken the day in 1997 when my brother Richard and I came to get the final items out of the house. 

Here's the back yard where we all spent so much time over the years.

Richard is standing in the driveway close to where I was standing--or sitting--in some of those photos above 43 years earlier. 

Here I am as a young sprout between my paternal grandparents, Amos Jasper Wright, Sr., and Rosa Mae Wright. I'm not sure where this photo was taken but I'm looking pretty young here; I was born in March 1952. You can see my grandparents in 1918 in this post about my grandfather's World War I training in Auburn. 

Last Streetcar Run in Gadsden in 1934

Once upon a time many cities of any size ran a form of transportation called street cars, also known as trolleys or as trams in Europe. You may have heard of them. Once ubiquitous, street cars have largely disappeared from North America. Toronto still operates its extensive line, and a few other cities operate smaller ones or lines meant largely for tourists. The only one I've ever ridden is the St. Charles Streetcar Line in New Orleans, which opened in 1835 and is the oldest continuously operating streetcar line in the world. 

I was roaming through Samford University's digital collections recently and came across the photograph below documenting the last streetcar run in Gadsden. A little more research turned up two newspaper articles giving some details here and here and written by local historians Danny Crownover and Mike Goodson. 

Crownover's piece notes that electric streetcars had begun in the Gadsden area in the 1890s; in an earlier article he traced the history of horse-drawn and steam locomotive lines. The photograph below was taken on the final run along the Cansler Avenue line from the Republic Steel plant, stopping at Fourth and Broad Streets. The date was January 23, 1934; the article includes the names of the last crew and passengers.

That same car had made the final streetcar runs earlier on lines in Tuscumbia, Florence and Sheffield. The next morning, Crescent Motors, Inc., began operating five buses in the Gadsden and Atalla area. 

Source: Samford University Library, Special Collection

Beulah Vee's Cedar Chest: A List

 In July 2016 I wrote a series of five blog posts about a cedar chest full of personal items belonging to my paternal aunt Beulah Vee Wright. She died in 1939 at the age of eighteen, so the items date from the 1920's and 1930's. She and my dad and their parents lived in Gadsden, Alabama. In 2021 I wrote a follow-up post describing our donation of much of the material in the cedar chest to the Alabama Department of Archives and History. The actual cedar chest and a small group of items remain in the family.

Below I've gathered links to all the blog posts and two images from each one. Part One gives a lengthy introduction.

Beulah Vee's Cedar Chest, part 1

Beulah Vee's Cedar Chest, part 2

Beulah Vee's Cedar Chest, part 3

Beulah Vee's Cedar Chest, part 4

Beulah Vee's Cedar Chest, part 5 

The archives did not keep the dolls or the cradle [made by Beulah Vee's father, Amos Jasper Wright, Sr.]. They already have an extensive collection of dolls. 

Beulah Vee's Cedar Chest, Coda

John Vachon Photographs Gadsden in 1940

I seldom revisit older posts on this blog, but I'm doing that here. In December 2014 I posted "Christmas Shopping in Gadsden in December 1940". In that piece I wrote, 

"These nine photographs were taken by John Vachon in Gadsden, Alabama, apparently on a Saturday in December 1940. Vachon was one of a number of photographers who traveled America from 1935 until 1945 documenting conditions and activities during the Depression and WWII for the U.S. Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information. He worked for the OWI in 1942 and 1943. Almost 8300 of his photographs can be seen here. Vachon was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1914 and died in 1975."

Those nine photos and some further comments are below. In this post I add two more of Vachon's Gadsden photographs that have nothing to do with Christmas but were taken at the same time. I included in the previous post  some background on my connection with Gadsden and discussion of details in some of the photos. I repeat that information below and expand on those details.  

I've also done a post on Vachon's photo shoot with Marilyn Monroe in Canada as a lame attempt to connect MM with Alabama. A not-so-lame attempt--Marilyn Monroe and Truman Capote--is coming soon. 

FURTHER READING 

John Vachon’s America: Photographs and Letters from the Depression to World War II. Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2003

John Vachon [1914-1975]

Source: Wikipedia

In the upper left you can see a bit of the Christmas decorations hanging everywhere along Broad Street, Gadsden's main street at the time and the location of Vachon's photographs. 

As you can see below as well, he seems to have taken many of these shots from the second story of some building. 

On the right a temporary "Grant's Toy Land" sign hangs above the store's permanent one. Grant's was a variety store chain that operated in the United States from 1906 to 1976.

That sign on the left says Lane Drugs. In the photo below with the Texaco sign, you can see Lane's storefront and this sign from another angle. Oddly, I did not find a Lane Drugs in the February 1940 Gadsden telephone directory. 

Behind the Lane sign is the Guarantee Shoe store sign seen again below. In the background on the right are the Texaco sign as well as signs for Hagedorn's, Hoffmans Jewelers [listed in the June 1933 city phone book], Belk-Hudson, Economy Auto Stores, Sterch, and Coca Cola. 

Even in a much larger version of this photo there are a number of signs on both sides of the street I can't make out. 

The Etowah County courthouse is prominent in two photographs; the other one is below.

Are these gentlemen carrying just-purchased Christmas presents?

A Texaco sign is visible here. The ad below is the only one for a Texaco station I could find in the February 1940 Gadsden telephone directory.

Across the street is the storefront and sign for Lane Drugs. Across the street from that business, diagonal from the Texaco sign, is the Grant store on the corner. 

Chestnut Street runs parallel to Broad and is one block over, so I presume this station is the Texaco one being advertised on the sign above. 

Here we can see signs for Guarantee Shoe Company, Allen Finance Plan Loans,  and the Raines and Raines law firm. The shoe store was listed at this same 412 Broad Street address in the June 1933 phone book. In that year, W.G. Raines practiced law solo with a courthouse address; perhaps by 1940 a son had joined him at this office. 

On the right can be seen the signs for Hoffman Jewelers and Belk-Hudson. 

The time appears to have been high noon when this photo was taken. 

A Grapico from Gadsden

On our annual pilgrimages to St. George Island, Florida, we usually spend at least part of one day in Apalachicola. The small town is a working seaport with lots of history and charm. Most of the commercial and residential buildings date from the 19th or early 20th centuries. Naturally, the place is also full of shops and galleries, a bookstore, a brewery and such. 

On our most recent visit the week of Thanksgiving, we made our trip into town on Black Friday so our grandson Ezra could see Santa arrive by shrimp boat. Before that we did some shopping at various places including the Apalachicola Sponge Company. There I found the Grapico bottle. 

The drink was first developed and sold by J. Grossman's Sons in New Orleans in 1914. In 1917 a businessman in Birmingham, Raymond R. Rochell, purchased the soft drink's syrup from Grossman's Sons and began distribution in Alabama. By 1929 Rochell had expanded the business beyond Alabama to Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and Louisiana. He also began distributing Orange Crush in 1926 and 7-Up in 1933. Birmingham's independent Pepsi bottler Buffalo Rock purchased the company in 1981 and continues to distribute Grapico in the southeastern U.S. A Diet Grapico was added to the product line in 2005. 

More comments are below. You can read about some of Birmingham's other early soft drinks here. 

I bought this bottle for $8. Too bad it wasn't a little less; I'd have bought the one from Birmingham also.

Rochell's company became the Orange Crush-Grapico Bottling Company by 1953. The name was shortened to the Orange Grapico Company in July 1957, so this bottle appeared before then at a bottling operation in Gadsden.

The town has special meaning for me since I was born there. My dad was also born there, and we used to visit often until my grandmother died in 1997. 

The Orange Crush, 7-Up and Grapico bottling company in Birmingham in the 1940's. 

Photo by O.V. Hunt

Source: Birmingham Public Library Digital Collections 

"Older than dirt but a whole lot sweeter" says the company's web site. 

A Dictionary for Two Generations

English language dictionaries labelled "Webster's" have been around since Noah Webster published A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language in 1806. In 1828 he issued a massive two-volume American Dictionary of the English Language that included 70,000 words. By the third printing of the second edition in 1845, after Webster's death, brother publishers George and Charles Merriam  purchased rights to publish the reference work. The company eventually became known as Merriam-Webster. Since then endless editions and permutations of the dictionary have appeared. 

One of the collections of family memorabilia at mom's house in Huntsville consists of some of dad's secondary and college textbooks. I've written before about one of those books, his high school Health Studies book. Also among the volumes is the item below, Webster's Elementary School Dictionary. This book actually has three family connections. 

My paternal aunt Beulah Vee Wright was the first person to use the dictionary. I've written about her extensively here. She died of what was probably leukemia in December 1939 just after her eighteenth birthday. Then apparently my dad also used the book several years after his older sister. My name is also in the dictionary; I'm not sure what that was all about. I don't think I used it much. 

More notes are below some of the photographs.

These dictionaries were purchased by the state for use in Alabama schools at a contracted cost of $1.14 each. I would expect they were supposed to be returned by students at the end of the school year, so who knows how it remained in the family. Perhaps the state allowed families to purchase it if desired. 

See a photo below for more about that mysterious reference to "page 54" under my dad's name. 

That's my name in the upper left, along with our address in Huntsville in the 1960's and early 1970's. I've done a blog post about some photos taken in that house here. A visit my younger brother Richard and I made to that old neighborhood is included in a blog post here.

On the back of this title page copyright dates of 1914 and 1925 are given, so I presume this edition appeared in 1925. The American Book Company was a textbook publisher formed in 1890 from the consolidation of several publishers. Beginning in the 1960's it passed through various owners until it was absorbed by D.C. Heath in the 1980's. Perhaps the company licensed rights to this particular dictionary from Merriam-Webster. 

OK, here's the secret about "page 54" noted above. That reference appears under dad's name, so I presume he circled these words. Hmm, I wonder why...

These sample pages show the neat little illustrations sprinkled throughout.

John S. Jones Elementary School still exists in Rainbow City, Alabama, although I would guess the building is not the same as the one Aunt Beluah Vee attended in the 1920's. My grandparents, aunt and dad lived on Rainbow Drive--what they always called "The Drive"--at that time. 

A Show of Fans

After my paternal grandmother died in 1997, we cleaned out her house in Gadsden and found many things of interest, some family-related and some not. The latter group included several hand fans that I've photographed and put together for this post.

Hand fans both folding and rigid have been around for many centuries in Asian and Western cultures. Although having practical uses, many examples also feature elaborate decorations. They originated in ancient Egypt, India and China more than 5000 years ago, and were brought to Europe in the 12th century as a result of the Crusades.

The ones below are strictly utilitarian, and I presume predate wide-spread air conditioning in the southern U.S. Those featuring an address include no Zip Code, which was introduced in 1964 and did not become widespread until later in the 1960's. One of the fans includes 800 phone numbers, so it must be a more recent date.

There are two hand fan museums, one in California and the other in the United Kingdom. 

More comments are below the photographs. Businesses represented include Crestwood Funeral Home and J.P. King Auction Company both in Gadsden and an insurance company in Decatur. 

Crestwood Funeral Home, which opened in 1940, continues to operate today.

This auction company in Gadsden opened in 1915 and is still operating.

UPDATE: Since I posted this item, one of my informants--my cousin Charlotte Shores Ryder--suggested about this fan " the one from King Auction may have actually been used to notify auctioneer of a bid since it has a bidders number on it.." Makes sense to me!

This business in Decatur no longer seems to be operating, at least under that name. A listing turns up on Google, but the Romanian-American Mission seems to be at that address now. I wonder if they give out hand fans.

This funeral home opened in 1910 and is still in business. The fan seems to be the oldest in the group based on the cars in the photo and the phone number. I'm not sure why my grandparents had this one; I don't know of any relatives in Kentucky whose funeral they might have attended. 

My grandparents Amos J. & Rosa Mae Wright lived for many years in this house at 1313 Chandler Street in Gadsden. My grandmother died in January 1997, and soon after that we began cleaning out the house. Among much other memorabilia, we found the fans shown in this post.