Our Flashback Friday postcard this week features — ta-dah! — The Bland Hotel. The name alone compels you to check right in, doesn’t it? Or maybe not? More than that, this postcard poses many more questions, as well.

Oct. 21 / 38

Dear Mr. Bedney:
Many thanks for for the package of match covers. They were fine. I’m sorry the postmarks were not cut properly but may have some more for you later.
Yours very truly.

[signed] L.B.

#379

Now, here’s the puzzle. How did a Raleigh postcard depicting the Bland Hotel end up being sent from ‘L.B.’ in Canada to ‘Mr. Bedney’ in Minnesota? And what’s the deal with ‘match covers’ and ‘improperly cut postmarks’? And who’s the seller here? Mr. Bedney apparently sent the ‘package of match covers’ to L.B., but L.B. apologizes about the ‘improperly cut postmarks’ and will have ‘more’ to send to Mr. Bedney ‘later.’ Go figure.

The Bland Hotel was built about 1912, and was located at the corner of Salisbury and Martin streets, prominently situated on the streetcar line, and just two blocks from Raleigh’s Union Depot. An ad in the 1915 Raleigh City Directory states:

THE BLAND HOTEL
T.L. Bland, Proprietor
New — Fireproof — Modern
European Plan
125 Rooms, $1.00 and $1.50 per day
Large Sample Rooms Free

‘Large sample rooms’ — Hmm, maybe The Bland catered to a traveling salesman clientele.

By 1942 the hotel had been renamed The Andrew Johnson — “The Hotel Everybody Likes.” (1942 city directory)

With the gradual decline of downtown Raleigh in the 1960s, the Andrew Johnson entered into a steady decline as well. By the 1970s the building had been stripped of its distinctive medallion-crowned parapet and its balconies and marquee; its street level had been ‘modernized’ with plate glass windows, and a porn shop operated out of one of its storefronts. By then it had essentially morphed into a cheap ‘residential hotel,’ or flophouse. An elderly resident died there as a result of a fire in 1971.

In the early 1980s, the N&O acquired the derelict structure and demolished it to accommodate the expansion of its printing plant.

This week’s ‘art colored’ post card was published by Raleigh stationer James E. Thiem, and was printed in Chicago by the Curt Teich Co. (C.T. American Art Colored’)

Curt Teich Co.   1893-1974
Chicago, IL

A major publisher and printer. Their U.S. factories turned out more cards in quantity than any other printer. They published a wide range of national view-cards of America and Canada. Many consider them one of the finest producers of White Border Cards. The Linen Type postcard came about through their innovations as they pioneered the use of offset lithography. They were purchased by Regensteiner Publishers in 1974 which continued to print cards at the Chicago plant until 1978.

 

“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!

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This week’s Flashback Friday postcard features Raleigh’s iconic art deco Durham Life Insurance Company office building, or as I always used to refer to it — “the Superman Building.”

Sept. 27 ’56
Hi
Having Plenty of rain so far. Expect to make Florida tomorrow.
See you in a couple weeks.
Love, Nettie & Carl

And yet another postcard sent to folks back home by northern travelers headed down the east coast ‘Route 66′ at the half-way point on their way to Florida.

Designed in the late art deco style by the renowned Winston-Salem architectural firm of Northrup and O’Brien, the Insurance Building was completed in 1942.

The Insurance Building consists of fifteen stories above Fayetteville Street sidewalk plus two additional stories for elevators and equipment and two and one-half stories below Favetteville Street sidewalk. The framework is constructed of concrete and steel, outside walls of granite and limestone, backed up with brick.

The Fayetteville St. landmark was Raleigh’s tallest skyscraper until 1964, when the International style BB&T Building, aka the ‘Little Seagram Building,’ (now Capital Bank Plaza) was erected across the street.

The postcard also shows the 1924 Hotel Sir Walter, now a city of Raleigh senior housing facility, and a tiny corner of the 1915 Wake County courthouse grounds showing the old newsstand and the county’s World War I memorial — both now long gone. I love the angle parking on Fayetteville St. and the huge neon sign and radio tower atop the Sir Walter!

Our postcard this week is an example of the ‘linen’ type, a popular format during the 1930s through the 1950s. It was published by the Raleigh News Agency, and printed by the E.C. Kropp Co. of Milwaulkee.

E. C. Kropp Co.   1907-1956
Milwaukee, WI

A publisher and printer that began producing chromolithographic souvenir cards and private mailing cards in 1898 under the name Kropp. These cards were of much higher quality than those that would printed under the E.C. Kropp name.

They became the E.C. Kropp Company in 1907 and produced large numbers of national view-cards and other subjects. Their later linen cards had a noticeably fine grain. Sold to L.L. Cook in 1956, they are now part of the GAF Corp. U.S.

“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!

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This week on Flashback Friday we feature a dual-view ‘linen’ postcard depicting Johnny’s Drive-In Grill and the adjacent Johnny’s Supper Club. Raleigh’s first and finest.

Ate Lunch here 9/22/51

This postcard was never mailed, so I’m guessing the penciled notation was probably written by a traveling businessman as a reminder of the various stops he visited along the east coast north-south highway artery, US Route 1.

Raleigh businessman John (Johnny) W. Griffin erected the art moderne styled grill and restaurant just outside the Raleigh city limits in 1948. Within 10 years he had added a motel to the complex — Johnny’s Motor Lodge.

Johnny’s Supper Club, Drive-In Grill & Motor Lodge (John W. Griffin), Western Steaks, Charcoal Steaks, Chicken in Rough, Seafood. We cater to parties from 5 to 150, Air Conditioned Rooms, TV, Room Service. 1625 Louisburg Rd, Tel TEmple 3-1901.

– Raleigh City Directory, 1959

Johnny’s offered all the amenities the automobile-traveling public could wish for. (I have no idea what ‘chicken in rough’ could be!)

Griffin sold the Supper Club about 1960 and the new owner renamed it the Black Steer Steakhouse. In July 1965 the iconic Raleigh landmark burned to the ground.

Reported at 3:55 a.m. by telephone by a passing motorist. Firefighters battled the blaze in a heavy rainstorm. The fire was started by a faulty thermostat on the deep-fat fryer. The restaurant was built in 1948 and operated for 10 years as Johnny’s Supper Club. Loss $136,416.

– N&O July 29, 1965 (Cited by Mike Legeros)

Griffin expanded the motel and grill in the early 1960s and updated the restaurant with one of Raleigh’s first modernist ‘googie’ style canopies.

Johnny’s Grill still offered curb service when I was in high school in the late ’60s and was a favorite hangout for my friends and me. I’ll never forget sitting in the car and wolfing down shakes and burgers under that googie canopy. Flash forward to 2012 — the original grill building still stands, but has undergone extensive remodelings in the past 45 years and is barely recognizable to the image seen in the postcard. And the googie canopy is long gone.

This week’s postcard is an example of the ‘linen’ type, popular from the 1930s until the ‘photochrome’ type replaced it in the 1950s. This card was published by Henry H. Ahrens of Charlotte, N.C.

‘Linen’ is a reference to a postcard that has a linen-like fabric texture embossed into its front surface. The Curt Teich Company of Chicago was the first to use this texture for large scale production starting in 1931. To increase their brilliance Linens were often spot printed with a fifth color, often light blue, which was added to the normal CYMK pallet.  There are publishers who produced postcards with a linen texture on them many years earlier as novelties, but only cards manufactured after 1931 when they dominated production are referred to as Linens. Though printed alongside photochromes for many years, the use of linens ended by 1959 as chromes became more popular with the public.

“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!

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This week’s Flashback Friday postcard was mailed in 1911 and features the brand new ‘Engineering Building’ on the NC State campus. I’m sure our regular Goodnight Raleigh readers who are NC State fans will recognize this campus landmark.

My dear little Baby –
I am afraid that your Mother has forgotten me — I think about you every day & just long to see you. I wonder if you are in short dresses. I hope not, for you must not get too big — We will soon be home now — then you will be all mine for a little while — don’t forget your loving
Aunt Helen.

Reading this sentimental message, I would guess ‘Aunt Helen’ doted on her little niece ‘Mary’ — and was most likely childless. Looks like her sister didn’t write her very often, either. The part about the ‘short dresses’ stumps me, though.

The ‘Engineering Building’ was erected in 1910 and was later named in honor of George Tayloe Winston, second president (1899-1908) of the College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts. Winston Hall now serves as a classroom and office building for NC State University’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHASS).

Courtesy NCSU Libraries Special Collections Research Center

 This photo of Winston Hall probably dates from 1915 or so.

Our postcard this week appears to be based on an architect’s rendering, as the loggia across the front was never built, and I have no idea where that wide expanse of lawn came from! It was published ca 1910 by F.M. Kirby, of Wilkes-Barre, PA.

Fred Morgan Kirby   1887-1997
Wilkes-Barre, PA

A publisher and large retailer of postcard views of the American South and mid-Atlantic region. These cards were sold from their Five & Dimes stores which numbered 96 in 1912.

“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!

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This week for Flashback Friday we feature a rare interior postcard view of a long-time (and sadly, long-lost) Raleigh establishment, the California Restaurant. Gotta love those palm trees!

CALIFORNIA RESTAURANT
Famous for Old Fashioned Southern Cooking
Established 1900

A “Natural-Finish” Card Made by Graycraft Card Co., Danville, Va.

Leo and Gus Vurnakes (Vurnakes & Co.) opened a ‘confectionery’ store on Fayetteville St. in 1900. They sold ice cream, candy, and fruits. By 1910 they had relocated the store to 111 Fayetteville St. In the 1920s a new owner, James Stathacos expanded the business and renamed it the California Fruit Store. His business partner, Peter Stathacos, added a lunch counter in the 1930s, and thus the ‘fruit store’ became the California Restaurant. Around 1940 the building’s facade was remodeled in the then fashionable art moderne style.

The California Restaurant closed in the mid-1950s, and Adler’s, a ladies’ clothing store, moved into the space. Adler’s and its next door neighbor, the Ambassador Theater were remodeled in a simple modernist style a decade later.

But, don’t go looking for the California Restaurant or the Ambassador Theater or Adler’s today. The entire east side of the 100 block of Fayetteville St. between the NC Supreme Court building and Empire Properties building was demolished to make room for a parking deck when the Wachovia Building (now Wells Fargo) was built across the street in 1991.

 Below is the California restaurant as it appeared in 1940. A corner of the Art Deco Ambassador Theater (1938) can be seen on the right.

Photo courtesy North Carolina State Archives

The 1938 photo below shows the confectionery with its marble soda fountain. The restaurant dining room was located at the rear of the store.

Photo courtesy North Carolina State Archives

I took the photo below of the 100 block of Fayetteville St. with my trusty Kodak Instamatic camera in 1966. If you look closely, you can see the ‘ghosts’ of the three second-floor windows of the  former California Restaurant. Next door is the Ambassador Theater with its 1960s modernist ‘googie’ canopy. “The Sound of Music” with Julie Andrews was playing at the tme.

This week’s postcard was published by the Graycraft Card Co. of Danville, Va.

During the 1940s and 1950s, Robert H. Sanford, Jr. owned and operated a company that produced black-and-white images all over the South. … His Graycraft Card Co. produced so many scenes from Southern communities that his cards today provide the core of many view card collections.

“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!

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This week Flashback Friday features a “photochrome” postcard of Bragaw Residence Hall on the N.C. State University campus. It was designed by the Wilmington, N.C. architectural firm Leslie N. Boney, AIA, and built in 1958. Bragaw Dorm was the first modernist-styled dormitory erected at N.C. State.

DORMITORY, STATE COLLEGE CAMPUS
Something new and modern in College Student living. Raleigh, N.C.

Beginning in the 1920s, dormitories on the N.C. State campus had been designed in the prevailing academic neo-Georgian mode of the era. The Tucker-Owen dormitory complex (1947) was the last to be built in that style.

Bragaw was built on the site of ‘Vetville,’ a collection of two-story wooden barracks and duplexes which had been erected in 1946 to accommodate WWII veteran students on the GI Bill and their families.

Boney’s “new and modern” college dormitory was featured in the June 1959 issue of Southern Architect:

North Carolina’s largest dormitory at N.C. State College was dedicated last month after Capt. Churchill Bragaw, an alumnus who died heroically in World War II … The dormitory was begun in 1957 … and cost $1,931,684. It is in the shape of two “boomerangs” connected at their vertaxes by a central one-story activity area. … The exterior wall materials used are red brick and limestone … Continuous aluminum windows are on the exterior walls.

The original plan included a twin structure to be built to the west of Bragaw. However, it was never built, and Lee and Sullivan dormitories (1964) occupy the site today.

Below is my favorite view of Bragaw in this postcard series.

Bragaw Hall, North Carolina State College, named in memory of the late Capt. H.C. Bragaw, Class of 1938, accommodates 816 students, two per room, in four-room suites with bath. It has a snack bar, lounge, TV in the main lobby, and an apartment for married faculty counselors in each wing.

This view shows the “central one-story activity area” connecting the “boomerang vertaxes”.

Our postcards this week were published by Tichnor Brothers, Inc., and the Thomas Dexter Press.

Tichnor Brothers, Inc.   (1912-1987)
160 N. Washington Street, Boston and Cambridge, MA

A major publisher and printer of a wide variety of postcards types. Their view-cards were produced on a national level. They also produced a black & white series on the hurricane of 1938 in line block halftone.

Their photochomes went under the trade name Lusterchrome. They also produced an early Tichnor Gloss series in offset lithography that was so heavily retouched they floated somewhere between being artist drawn and being a photograph. The company was sold in 1987 to Paper Majic.

Thomas Dexter Press   1934-1980
West Nyack, NY

Printer 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 boor 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!

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In recognition of Black History Month, we are publishing for Flashback Friday this week a rare postcard depicting Raleigh’s renowned Lightner Arcade. The hotel and amusement center once stood at the heart of the city’s 20th century African-American business district — E. Hargett St.

HOTEL ARCADE
Select family and tourist hotel. Running water in each room. Private dining room, with parlor for receptions.
122 E. Hargett St., Raleigh, N.C., Phone 9146
P.T. Hall, Prop.

With stricter enforcement of Jim Crow laws in Raleigh in the early 1910s, E. Hargett St. soon emerged as the city’s business center of  the African-American community — Raleigh’s ‘Black Main Street’ . Calvin E. Lightner*, prominent black Raleigh businessman, builder and funeral home owner, erected a three-story brick office building at 125 E. Hargett in 1915.

Lightner Office Building (125 E. Hargett St.) under construction ca 1915. Apparently Hargett St. was paved with Belgian block at this time. 

Six years later,  in 1921, Calvin Lightner built his Lightner Arcade Hotel across the street at 122 E. Hargett.

For several decades thereafter, the Arcade served as the only hotel in Raleigh which catered to African-American travelers. It featured a restaurant on the first floor and a ballroom on the third. A barbershop, drugstore and a newspaper (now known as The Carolinian), also occupied the first floor. Among those who stayed at the Arcade Hotel were Cab Calloway, Count Basie and Duke Ellington, who also performed in the upstairs ballroom.

All the big bands would be at the Arcade. On Saturday you could not get through there. That is where everyone would come and congregate. They would be standing out on the street, socializing.
– Clarence Lightner interview, Culture Town: Life in Raleigh’s African American Communities

Various social clubs, such as the Swan Club and Daughters of Ruth, also occupied the building over the years. For the decades of the 1920s-1940s the Lightner Arcade was the premier social hub of Raleigh’s African-American community.

This is a view looking east on Hargett St. in 1926. The Lightner Arcade Hotel can be seen at the right, with the Montague Building (still standing) at the end of the block.

Lightner eventually lost ownership of the building, but the Arcade Hotel continued in business for many years thereafter. The NC Homemakers Association acquired the building in the late 1940s, and the name was changed to the Home Eckers Hotel. In the 1960s the Peebles Hotel occupied the building until it was destroyed by fire in 1970. The site of the Lightner Arcade is now occupied by the city’s central municipal bus depot.

The Lightner Arcade, as it appeared while the Home Eckers Hotel, ca 1950.

Archival photos courtesy North Carolina State Archives.

*Biographical note: Calvin E. Lightner was a contemporary of Raleigh physician Dr. Manassa T. Pope. In 1919 Dr. Pope headed a non-partisan African-American slate of candidates along with Calvin Lightner. Pope ran for mayor and Lightner for commissioner. Given that blacks were essentially disenfranchised at the time, the outcome of the election was self-evident — they garnered few votes. Nonetheless, their participation in the election was a bold political statement by Raleigh’s black community.

Calvin Lightner’s son, Clarence, was born in 1921, the year the Arcade was built. Clarence Lightner successfully ran for Raleigh City Council in 1967 and served six years. He was elected Raleigh’s first African-American mayor in 1973. The Lightner Funeral Home, founded in 1911 by Calvin Lightner, continues in operation today under the management of the Lightner family.

“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!

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A few weeks ago we published on Flashback Friday an early 20th century postcard view of Hillsboro St. as seen from the Capitol building. This week, we’re in the same time period, but the view is now looking up the street toward the Capitol itself.

This card dates from the ‘undivided back’ era, so the message was written on the front.

How are you these days?
Suppose this scene looks familiar to you.
Love from Blanche

A nice sentiment. But what strikes me most about this postcard view is that it reveals that Hillsboro was primarily a residential street in the early 20th century.

On the left can be seen the community grocery store, which in 1907 was operated by E.H. King. The two-story frame building itself had been on the site at least since 1872. In the mid-1920s it was replaced by a modern brick store front, which continued to serve the community as a grocery for many years. That building was demolished in the 1970s.

Any Goodnight Raleigh readers care to guess what occupies the site today?

Our postcard this week was published by the Rotograph Co. of New York.

The Rotograph Co. 1904-1911
684 Broadway, New York, NY

A major printer and publisher of postcards. They took over the National Art View Company in 1904 and republished many of their images under their own name. A wide variety of card types were issued in 19 letter series plus many other miscellaneous cards and printed items, but they are best known for their view-cards in color rotogravure. Many postcards were printed in the Rotograph style without their logo on them. These early cards may have been private contracts made with the Rotograph Company or from orders placed directly with their printers in Germany. Rotograph produced about 60,000 postcards that were printed in Hamburg, Germany, by Stengel of Dresden, by Knackstedt & Nather of Nancy, France, and possibly by Reinike & Rubin of Magdeburg. While Rotograph produced large amounts cards in clearly defined lettered designated sets, they also produced unique small card sets. Rather than assign small sets a new designation, they were often given a taken letter prefix that corresponded to their subject.

“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!

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For Flashback Friday this week we feature a vintage postcard which captures a glimpse of Hillsboro St. which has long since been lost to memory. I love the image of the streetcar rumbling past the elegant mansions on its route up the dusty street.

Hello Lucy,
Sue and I have had a big time at the Raleigh fair. [The rest of the message is illegible.]
– Nellie [?]

Apparently this treasured card was pasted into a scrapbook at some point, and as a result the message has been obscured.

The large neo-classical mansion seen on the right was the home of Richard B. Raney, proprietor of  Raleigh’s famed Yarborough House, and benefactor of Raleigh’s first public library in 1899 — the Olivia Raney Library. Sadly, the mansion was destroyed by the state in the 1950s. The library itself was torn down in 1966.

All the buildings seen in this postcard view are long gone. But there is a single relic seen here that exists to this day — any GNRal readers care to take a stab?

Our postcard this week was published by F.M. Kirby.

Fred Morgan Kirby   1887-1997
Wilkes-Barre, PA

A publisher and large retailer of postcard views of the American South and mid-Atlantic region. These cards were sold from their Five & Dimes stores which numbered 96 in 1912.

“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!

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For Flashback Friday this week, we present this beautifully tinted postcard depicting our historic state capitol. The fine finishing work on this card renders it almost three-dimensional in effect. There is a puzzle here, though. Can you figure it out?

Typically, a celebratory ‘toast’  is offered with raised glasses of alcohol of one sort or another. I wonder if our correspondent, J.S.G., was perhaps mocking the introduction of prohibition in North Carolina, which had been enacted a scant five months before he sent this card in October 1908 to his girlfriend ‘Irma’ in Virginia. (The state of Virginia itself legislated prohibition eight years later in 1916.)

North Carolina’s Official (Dry) Toast
Here’s to the Land of the Long Leaf Pine,
The Summer Land where the Sun Doth Shine,
Where the Weak grow Strong and and the Strong
grow Great –
Here’s to ‘Down Home,’ the Old North State!

J.S.G.

North Carolina’s ‘official state toast’ was penned by Leonora Martin and Mary Burke Kerr in 1904. In 1957 the North Carolina General Assembly officially adopted the original poem, which is actually four stanzas in length, as the official toast to the state.

Interestingly, the state toast was first delivered not in North Carolina, but in Richmond, Va., in 1904 when the Rev. Walter Moore, a Charlotte native, closed his speech to the North Carolina Society of Richmond with a recitation of Leonora Martin’s toast to the ‘Old North State.’

Painted by Margaret Lane, at Greensboro Methodist College, 1919. (Hill-Taylor Collection). Image credit Susan Taylor Block, a fellow North Carolina blogger.

So, in our holiday toasts this year, let’s all take a moment to remember, and to raise a glass to “Down Home, the Old North State!”

As to the ‘puzzle’ mentioned earlier: A distinctive architectural feature of the capitol building was apparently overlooked by the German artist who retouched the master halftone photograph for color reproduction. I’m sure our astute Goodnight Raleigh readers can figure it out.

This week’s Flashback Friday postcard is yet another example of the fine work of the the Paul C. Koebler Co.

Paul C. Koeber Co. (PCK)   1900-1923
85 Franklin Street. New York, NY and Kirchheim, Germany

Published national view-cards and illustrations in chromolithography and in black and white. Much of their color work has a dark heavy feel to it because of the many thick layers of ink they used. In their later years they published postcards using tinted halftones.

The Paul C. Koeber Co. trademark. The peacock (PCK) image probably represented the company’s extensive use of color in its postcards.

“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!

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