Raleigh Banking and Trust Company, Raleigh, N.C.
This week for Flashback Friday we feature an unexpected find — yet another postcard sent in 1913 from our love-smitten Raleigh swain, ‘Cullen,’ to his sweetheart in Florida.
9-25th 1913
118 Polk St
Raleigh NC
I sure had a fine time Monday pm and night. Met at 2pm in Masonic lodge then to a street car ride to the country to a Barbracue [sic]Â and a general feast. Night we were back at lodge and had a gener[a]l gathering of all wake county Masons. It is real cold here now.
Best wishes to all. Cullen
Cullen had written to Emmie only a week earlier, longing for her company. I wonder whatever happened to them.
Amazingly, the Raleigh Banking and Trust building still stands today. Although it has been greatly expanded (upward)Â and unrecognizably altered over the decades, it is still a downtown Raleigh landmark. Can any of our Goodnight Raleigh readers identify it in its present-day form?
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06/03/2011
I believe it’s the Raleigh Building now. I used to work on the 6th floor and loved the old brass elevator cars. My mom said it used to have a ballroom dancing hall on the top floor when she was younger.
06/03/2011
According to the Interwebs (and assuming these are the same people):
A young lady named Emmie Elizabeth Curry (1896-1975) married Horace Bunch Gould, who was a commander with the US Navy in WWI and WWII. Both are buried on St. Simons Island, Georgia. The Gould family history on the island goes back to its earliest permanent settlements.
The primary resident of 118 Polk Street in 1912, according to the Raleigh City Directory, was a gentleman named Charles (not Cullen) H. Garvin. Of course, the homes in that area often had apartments for several individuals or families.
06/04/2011
hah! Rodney — you are correct sir! (And I love how our elders can always add a little bit more ‘spice’ to our own experience.) Here’s the low-down on the Raleigh Building — http://www.emporis.com/application/?nav=building&id=raleighbankingandtrustcompanybuilding-raleigh-nc-usa&lng=3 The large, art deco, three story ‘pilasters’ one sees today are the masks of those enormous monumental Roman ionic columns seen in the 1913 postcard.
Dev Med — Your research is awesome — Thanks! Cullen may have been a relative of Chas. Garvin, or possibly a student renting a room at 118 Polk, as a Thos. Alexander is listed as the primary resident there in 1914.
06/05/2011
RALEIGH BOY, DO A GOOGLE SEARCH FOR EMMIE E CURRY… YOU WILL FIND PICTURES OF EMMIE AND HER HUSBAND AND OTHER INFORMATION, ALSO.. THE HOUSE AT THE ADDRESS OF EMMIE IS STILL THERE IN KEY WEST AND GOOGLE EARTH WILL TAKE YOU ALMOST TO THE FRONT DOOR… I FEEL SURE THIS IS “OUR” EMMIE, JUST BECAUSE OF THE DIFFERENT SPELLING OF HER NAME.. IT IS ALWAYS INTERESTING TO TRY TO RESEARCH WHAT I CAN OF THESE UNKNOWNS..
06/05/2011
That CVS at the bottom really spices the old gal up.
06/05/2011
Claude C. — Good job — Thanks! I found the site and here is the link for our readers — http://www.oatland.org/Photo_Gallery/James_Dunn_Gould.htm Scroll about half way down and you will see a photo of the Gould brothers and their wives, including Horace and Emmie. It looks to me it probably dates from the early 1920s.
b-fuss — yeah, the CVS is a dump. It’s predecessor was a far more elegant drug store — Walgreen’s. It had a soda fountain and a lunch counter. That is the one I remember from my youth.
06/07/2011
I wouldn’t mind the CVS so much if it was just larger. A pharmacy store like CVS or Walgreen’s combined with a convenience store that had quick fix food and drinks would be nice.
06/20/2011
This building was my playground when I was young and became my workplace later on. My grandfather bought the building in the 1940s with a couple of partners from Connecticut. He ran the thing, then passed the job onto my father, who passed it on to me. After my father died, the building went to auction. In some ways it’s a wonderful building, but it has an unusual footprint. We replaced all the windows ourselves and added a bathroom on each floor (originally there was only one per floor). The original elevators were always driven, at my grandfather’s insistence, by attractive women in sharp navy uniforms. After we replaced them with automatic units, we had nothing but trouble.
If its walls could only talk…