Fayetteville Street, Raleigh, N.C.
Goodnight Raleigh presents for Flashback Friday this week — Kodachrome! A colorful view of Fayetteville Street is revealed in this postcard mailed in 1951.
Looking north on Fayetteville Street in Raleigh, N.C. The State Capitol Building, one of the most beautiful in America, faces this street at the north end.
Kodachome by C.A. Brandenburg
Hello Marvin
We got down to Uncle Loyd. We are going to O.T. [?] Wed. I will write to you when we get down their [sic]. Uncle Loyd & Aunt Ruby is coming down their [sic] next week. be a good boy.
love Mama
So, Master Marvin received a gentle admonition from his mama to “be a good boy.” This message is rather cryptic to me, though. Mama, Uncle Loyd and Aunt Ruby were all going “down their;” I sure hope little Marvin was down there awaiting their arrival! Or, maybe little Marvin had been left at home. And who the heck was ‘Dr. Frank Slaughter’?
Since we began our Flashback Friday feature last year, Goodnight, Raleigh! has published several postcards depicting Raleigh’s historic Fayetteville Street — including one from a homesick schoolgirl who wrote her favorite teacher back home; another from a lovelorn swain who pined for his girl to be with him; Also Fayetteville Street’s transition into the modern era; and even one of Fayetteville Street as I remember it — as a young Raleigh Boy.
Fayetteville Street has long had a colorful past — and it looked great in Kodachrome!
This week’s postcard was published by Raleigh’s William Daniels Camera Shop, and was printed by the Dexter Press of West Nyack, NY.
Thomas Dexter Press  1934-1980
West Nyack, NYPrinter of a wide variety of postcards subjects as linens and photochromes. Thomas A. Dexter was the inventor of gang printing. The Company merged with MWM Color Press in 1980 to become MWM Dexter, and they moved to Aurora, MO.
While all the photochromes printed by Dexter bore the words Genuine Natural Color they went through a variety of phases. Their early photochromes went under the name Dextone and tended to be flat and somewhat dull in appearance. As years went by their optical blending techniques improved producing richer and more varied colors.
“Flashback Friday†is a weekly feature of Goodnight, Raleigh! in which we showcase vintage postcards depicting our historic capital city. We hope you enjoy this week-end treat!
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
Subscribe to RSS feed
Subscribe to posts by Email
Sign up for the Newsletter
06/29/2012
The Web is a great place to try and solve mysteries over lunch. Perhaps Mama was admonishing Marvin to be good because he was a teenage houseguest in the Slaughter family home. It seems he spent several weeks there.
The Aug. 31, 1951 issue of the Bradford County Telegraph http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00027795/03131/6 featured a story about Rotary Club awards given on Aug. 24 to those who had completed swimming courses given by the YMCA. One of the seven courses was listed as “The Jr. Savers,” and two of the graduates were Frank Slaughter and Marvin Mundy. Eight years later, a feature item http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00027795/03485/7 described a party given by Dr. and Mrs. Slaughter in honor of Frank Slaughter Jr. and his new wife. Perhaps Marvin spent part of the summer of 1951 with this son.
As for Dr. Slaughter, the same 1951 newspaper contains this tidbit: “Dr. Frank Slaughter, noted author and lecturer and part-time resident of Keystone, was guest speaker at the Lions Club meeting at the Inn Monday night.” And here’s a blog entry about the doctor/author and one of his books: http://www.cobbledstones.com/2009/11/subject-makes-slaughters-daybreak.html
Unfortunately, the Web also delivers unhappy news. Another site informs us that “MARVIN MUNDY was born 16 August 1933, got Social Security number 223-38- 6505 (indicating Virginia,) and died March 1976.â€
06/29/2012
Wow, Curt, if you’re not a Private Eye now, you must have been one in a former life. Amazing.
Trying to pick out the familiar Fayetteville St. signs in today’s posting brought back a long-buried memory: an ancient, well-worn and always vacant shoe shine stand at the Salisbury St. entrance to either Woolworth’s or McClellan’s. It was a couple steps up high to the right as you exited that back door, by the never clean window, and the two chairs (I think) were well-patinated. Hopefully an antique dealer got the ensemble when that time came, hopefully the stand didn’t go into a dumpster. It was history. Decades of legislators and attorneys must have sat there for a pre-work buff and shine.
Unless I’m mixing memories, also there was a line of 3 or so old, old wooden phone booths on the opposite wall, also well-patinated and a little…sticky.
07/01/2012
Someone beat me to it! I thought I recognized the name Frank Slaughter. In one of the things I found it showed that he was married to Jane Mundy and they spent their summers in Keystone Heights.
Amazing tidbits you find on the internet! Thanks for the Friday postcards, always enjoy them!
07/03/2012
Curt — Thanks for digging up all that info on Marvin Mundy and Dr. Slaughter. Fascinating. Our Goodnight Raleigh readers are awesome!
hg — I don’t remember that shoe-shine stand at McLellan’s but I do remember the one inside the entrance to the Union Bus Station on Morgan St. It was there at least until the mid 1970s.
Catherine — Glad to know you enjoy our weekly Flashback Friday posts!
07/05/2012
I remember another shoe-shine stand in the basement of the the Sir Walter. I believe it was at the inside entrance to the barber shop (there was also an outside entrance, down the creepy metal stairway between buildings.) If I’m not mistaken, the young man who shined shoes (at least in the 1960’s) was named Johnny.
My dad took me there for haircuts (but I don’t think I ever got a shoe shine!)