Portrait of Route 66: Images from the Curt Teich Postcard Archives
280
Portrait of Route 66: Images from the Curt Teich Postcard Archives
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780806153414 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Oklahoma Press |
| Publication date: | 09/15/2016 |
| Pages: | 280 |
| Product dimensions: | 8.90(w) x 11.10(h) x 1.00(d) |
About the Author
T. Lindsay Baker, who holds the W. K. Gordon Chair in Industrial History at Tarleton State University, Stephenville, Texas, is Director of the W. K. Gordon Center for Industrial History, Thurber, Texas, and editor of the Windmiller's Gazette. He is the author of A Field Guide to American Windmills and North American Windmill Manufacturers' Trade Literature: A Descriptive Guide.
Read an Excerpt
Portrait of Route 66
Images from the Curt Teich Postcard Archives
By T. Lindsay Baker
UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS
Copyright © 2016 University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Publishing Division of the UniversityAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8061-5341-4
CHAPTER 1
ILLINOIS
U.S. HIGHWAY 66 BEGAN near the lakefront in downtown Chicago, at the intersection of Jackson Boulevard and Michigan Avenue. After one-way streets were introduced, its westbound start shifted one block north, onto Adams Street. This was a skyscraper district where businessmen stayed in lodgings such as the Conrad Hilton and the Palmer House and dined in places like the Berghoff Restaurant and Miller's Pub. The unassuming roadway extended westward and southwestward past the landmark Union Station and Lou Mitchell's Restaurant, where people still savor the special French toast, and on into residential neighborhoods. From there the highway proceeded on four-lane streets via Cicero and outlying suburbs into farm and dairy country through tidy towns like Joliet and Dwight.
Soon the Illinois landscape changed from urban housing to rural fields. Its summertime stalks of corn grew more than head-high. Motorists took rest stops in places like the City Café in Pontiac or the soda fountain in the O'Malley and Stitzer Drugstore in Dwight. The roadway cut through the natural wonder of an isolated maple forest on an otherwise treeless prairie at Funk's Grove. The travelers drove on to the state capital at Springfield, passing the impressive domed capitol building, and some made the pilgrimage to Abraham Lincoln's home and mausoleum or paused to sample freshly fried corn dogs at Ed Waldmire's Cozy Dog Drive-In.
By the 1940s the thoroughfare between Chicago and St. Louis was paved with concrete, two lanes each direction, so travelers could speed along between the two great cities. The pavement made broad loops around many of the communities along the way. The situation ahead would be far different for early drivers in many states, such as Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, where the first pavement was only being contemplated. Nevertheless, motorists in the Midwest enjoyed smooth going except during the wintertime, when ice and snow might impede travel and even paved Route 66 became treacherous.
As the Mother Road gradually descended into the immediate valley of the Mississippi River southwest of Edwardsville, travelers encountered more traffic congestion. Industrial enterprises lined the sides of the great river that drains much of North America, and metropolitan St. Louis lay just ahead on the other side. Some motorists with a little time diverted to Spencer A. Atkins's stern-wheel riverboat, which had been converted to a floating restaurant and party venue in an inlet along the Mississippi just upstream from St. Louis, while others sped on to find lodging for the night or a nice meal on Italian Hill in the city itself.
1
Conrad Hilton Hotel
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
1952
The Conrad Hilton Hotel, now the Hilton Chicago, fronts on Michigan Avenue four blocks south of the beginning of Route 66 at Michigan and East Jackson Boulevard. Constructed in 1927 as the Stevens Hotel, the twenty-nine-story facility for many years held the distinction of being the largest hotel in the world.
James Stevens, who had made a fortune running the Illinois Life Insurance Company, was joined by his sons in building the Stevens Hotel on the Chicago lakefront. The opulent facility was almost a city unto itself, having its own rooftop miniature golf course, theaters, bowling alley, and multiple restaurants. Guests entered through the main entrance doors on the front, each surmounted by a giant stylized S. Hard economic times, however, were not far away: the Black Tuesday stock market crash would occur only two years later. Eventually son Ernest was tried for embezzling insurance company funds to help keep the hotel afloat, though the conviction was reversed by the state supreme court. The family struggled to retain ownership of the hotel and eventually sold it to the federal government during the Second World War to serve as housing and classrooms for trainees in the U.S. Army Air Corps. The Grand Ballroom, scene of elegant soirees, for a while became a giant mess hall.
After the war the army sold the huge building to a local businessman who in turn sold it to Conrad Hilton and his Hilton Hotel Corporation. In a major project, the company renovated the entire facility into a luxurious mid-twentieth-century hotel. It added a giant ice stage to the Boulevard Supper Club to feature elaborate ice-skating shows. Remaining part of the Hilton chain, the hotel received an even more extensive update during the mid-1980s, when the 3,000 guest rooms were reconfigured as 1,544 larger and more comfortable chambers. The name changed to the Chicago Hilton and Towers, later the Hilton Chicago, though the large letter S for Stevens remains in bronze above the main entrance doors on Michigan Avenue.
In spring 1952 the Hilton Hotel Corporation in Chicago ordered a remarkable five hundred thousand color postcards from Curt Teich and Company based on this photograph. Employees at the printing house began the production process on May 19, 1952, giving the printing job stock number 2C-H726. The first fifty thousand cards were due for delivery to the customer within twenty-five working days, with the balance to follow.
2
Berghoff Restaurant
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
1952
The Berghoff Restaurant at 17 West Adams Street is two blocks from the start of Route 66 in downtown Chicago. It is a landmark, and not just for travelers. For decades it has been a mecca for lovers of German food and German beer.
Herman Joseph Berghoff, an immigrant from Dortmund, Germany, in 1887 founded a modest brewery in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He managed to get a concession to sell his beer to fairgoers at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and from that springboard in 1898 he opened a saloon and eating place on West Adams Street in the Windy City. He sold beer to his patrons and offered free sandwiches and other foods to increase business, which continued until the start of national prohibition in 1919.
Berghoff switched to bottling nonalcoholic near beer and soft drinks, adding a full-service restaurant to supplement his business. When Prohibition ended in 1933, Berghoff's received City of Chicago Liquor License No. 1, a distinction it continues to hold each year. Since 1933 customers have enjoyed Berghoff's distinctive Dortmund-style German beer.
Food, however, is still a major attraction at the Berghoff, which for decades has operated at 17 West Adams Street, one door down from its original 1898 location. In 1931 food writer John Drury proclaimed, "Pig's knuckles and sauerkraut, Thueringer sausage and red cabbage and other such heavy Teutonic dishes [are] served appetizingly in this old landmark on the Loop." Modern food critics Jane and Michael Stern have written rhapsodically about Berghoff's "meat-and-potatoes meals ... with a German accent," like pot roast served with noodles "glistening with butter."
The Berghoff Restaurant Company in Chicago ordered twenty-five thousand color postcards based on these photographs. The paperwork with the photos enclosed must have reached Curt Teich and Company by October 9, 1952, for on that day its staff gave the job stock number 2C-P2531 and began the printing process.
3
Greyhound Bus Terminal
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
1953
Many of the travelers on Route 66 chose to take the Greyhound bus rather than drive. The Greyhound Corporation became the largest of the interstate motor coach firms, though it did not have a single large terminal in Chicago until the 1950s. As early as 1941 the company began planning a large new terminal to take the place of its two separate stations. It acquired the western half of a city block bounded by Randolph, Clark, Lake, and Dearborn Streets in the north end of the Loop area in the central city, but then the rationing of strategic materials during World War II made it impossible to secure the materials needed to construct the facility.
In the summer of 1949 tenants began vacating the last buildings at the proposed Greyhound terminal site, with demolition following. Construction soon began on a projected five-story bus station, two levels of which would be underground. The sub-basement became the bus-loading concourse, capable of handling thirty-one motor coaches at the same time. Above it but below street level were the main waiting room, ticket offices, and other passenger services shown in the picture. At ground level a third concourse surrounding the open space above the waiting room housed thirteen retail stores that opened both inside and outside to the sidewalk. Above these areas were two levels of automobile parking for bus customers and others. Six escalators moved people conveniently from level to level.
The Greyhound Bus Terminal served Chicago travelers for almost forty years. During the 1980s the company was already planning construction of a replacement terminal that would be nearer to the major railway stations. By this time deferred maintenance was taking its toll on the building. Chicago Route 66 historian David Clark remembered, "It was a dump." Consequently the terminal moved to a new facility located more conveniently for travelers just a few blocks from Union Station, the arrival point for Amtrak passenger trains.
The Aero Distributing Company of Chicago ordered twenty-five thousand color postcards showing the interior of the new Greyhound Bus Terminal based on this artwork created by Curt Teich illustrators and copied from a photograph. Production began on April 22, 1953, when the printing house staff assigned the job stock number 3C-H565.
4
Morton's Restaurant
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
1951
Morton's Restaurant became one of the dining landmarks in the Hyde Park area, on the south side of Chicago, from the 1930s to the 1950s. Mort Morton initially began the enterprise as a saloon at the end of Prohibition in 1933. When the commercial space next door became available, he enlarged the operation and added food service. By the early 1950s the combined eating and drinking establishment at 5487 South Lake Park Avenue occupied the ground levels of two adjacent three-story apartment buildings. A sign across the front in neon tubes and incandescent bulbs spelled out "Morton's an Adventure in Good Eating." This location not far from Lake Michigan could be easily accessed by motorists via South Lake Shore Drive from the head of Route 66, about six and a half miles to the north.
Mort Morton, his sons, and other family members expanded their restaurant business in the mid-1950s, opening Morton's Surf Club at the site of the old Palm Grove Inn about six blocks east of the old eatery at the extreme end of East Fifty-Sixth Street on South Lake Shore Drive. That larger restaurant, managed by son Eddie Morton, specialized in barbecued ribs but also offered all the standard dishes, including steaks, chicken, chops, and seafood.
Another of Mort's sons, Arnold J. Morton, born in 1922, became famed in Chicago for his culinary achievements. With others he cofounded the Playboy Club in 1959; he was the partner responsible for food and drinks. He later established a series of other bars, restaurants, and nightspots, among them the notable Morton's Steakhouse on North State Street. This eatery opened in 1978 and later became the basis for the creation of the international chain of restaurants called "Morton's: The Steakhouse." Chicagoans remember Arnie Morton most especially as the founder of the annual "Taste of Chicago" summer food festival, which began in 1980.
Morton's Restaurant ordered twenty-five thousand postcards printed in green from Curt Teich and Company based on several photographs; the printing company assigned the job stock number D-9808 on May 8, 1951.
5
Cocktail Lounge, Hotel Louis Joliet
JOLIET, ILLINOIS
1942
Constructed in 1927, when hotels were still the most popular overnight lodgings in the United States, the Hotel Louis Joliet was for decades the largest and most luxurious hostelry in Joliet, the first real city that Route 66 motorists encountered after leaving Chicago. Named for the seventeenth-century French explorer of the upper Mississippi, Louis Joliet, the city prospered into the 1920s due to factories, steel mills, proximity to the Illinois and Michigan Canal, access to multiple railway lines, and state operation of a major prison.
Urban hotels during the 1920s were more than just places where people found overnight lodging. Their rooms for business meetings and social functions and their establishments serving food and beverages became the places where major deals were made for the exchange of goods and services. The eight-story brick and stone Hotel Louis Joliet, one of the largest structures in downtown Joliet, for years played this important role in the city's economic and social life.
In 1926 local real estate promoter Fred J. Walsh and others organized the Clinton Square Hotel Corporation to raise funds in the amount of $750,000 to build the Hotel Louis Joliet. Construction began later that year. The U-shaped, eight-story structure, which was made of reinforced concrete, brick, and stone and had 225 guest rooms, opened in August 1927. Its location at 22 East Clinton Street was only half a block east of the 1926 alignment of U.S. Highway 66 through Joliet along North Chicago Street. It shared a block with the 1926 Rialto Square Theater, regarded by some as one of the ten most beautiful theaters in the world.
The hotel prospered during the late 1920s but suffered economically during the Great Depression. By the time the photograph of the cocktail lounge was taken about 1942, the hotel had entered three and a half years of full occupancy and profitability during World War II. It slipped back into the doldrums again during the 1950s and 1960s due to competition from outlying motels and a general decline in the central city. The Active Order of Carmelites of the Aged and Infirm purchased the building in 1964, converting it to a residence for the elderly, a role it continued to serve until its much more recent purchase and rehabilitation, when it became the Historic Louis Joliet Apartments.
The Hotel Louis Joliet itself ordered twenty-five thousand color postcards from Curt Teich and Company based on this photograph. Employees assigned the job stock number 2B-H983 on September 12, 1942.
6
West Main Street
DWIGHT, ILLINOIS
1928
Druggists John O'Malley and Laurie Stitzer wanted a postcard to show their business in the 100 block of West Main Street in Dwight, Illinois, a village located eighty miles southwest of Chicago. In so doing they associated their building with its prominent neighbors to the northeast, the Frank L. Smith Bank and the Keeley Institute.
In 1905 Dwight businessman Frank L. Smith, in partnership with others, established the bank. He hired a budding architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, to design their building, a story-and-a-half stone structure with strong horizontal and vertical elements. Opened in 1906, the bank continues serving the community as the First National Bank over a hundred years later. In the photograph its building is covered with vines. Thousands of heritage tourists driving on Route 66 stop off each year to view this early commission by the internationally known architect.
Farther down the street, to the right, stand two masonry buildings with columns. They formed part of the complex of the Keeley Institute, a well-known center established by Dr. Leslie Keeley in 1879 for the treatment of alcoholism. Together with later franchised facilities in more than two hundred other locations in America and Europe, the Keeley Institute assisted people suffering from alcoholism with treatments that included multiple daily injections of biochloride of gold and other substances. The institution closed in 1965, but these buildings currently form part of the W. W. Fox Developmental Center, operated by the Illinois Department of Mental Health.
O'Malley and Stitzer played their own role in the history of Dwight. John O'Malley purchased a small drugstore in the town in 1911 and then was joined by Laurie L. Stitzer as a partner in 1919. By the 1920s the two men had built the enterprise into one of the largest drugstores in Livingston County. The emporium offered not just medications but also stationery, sundries, tobacco, confectionery, and even ice cream and beverages at a soda fountain. The property was cleared about 1990 to make way for construction of a drive-up window at the bank next door.
Curt Teich and Company received a request from O'Malley and Stitzer in Dwight for one thousand black-and-white postcards showing the 100 block of West Main Street. Employees at the printing house received the materials by September 27, 1928, on which date they assigned the job stock number 122896 and began production. At the customer's request, Teich artists slightly retouched the photograph to "take off chimney" and "show lettering — O'Malley & Stitzer Drugs."
7
Phoenix Hotel Restaurant
PONTIAC, ILLINOIS
1927
Because they attracted out-of-town attorneys, clients, and others during legal proceedings, courthouse squares became prime locations for hotels during the nineteenth century. Before the arrival of railroads these hostelries often doubled as stagecoach inns for passengers. This was the case of the Union Hotel, constructed south of the Livingston County Courthouse at Pontiac in 1871. Its builders could not have predicted that their almost-new structure would burn, together with adjoining buildings, in a fire ignited by Independence Day fireworks only three years later, on July 4, 1874. Built quite literally on top of the ashes, the three-story brick Phoenix Hotel rose just months later. When U.S. Highway 66 was designated in 1926, its initial route through Pontiac passed directly by the hotel. The facility provided lodging for travelers for almost a century; it closed in 1973 and was razed the next year.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Portrait of Route 66 by T. Lindsay Baker. Copyright © 2016 University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Publishing Division of the University. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS.
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Table of Contents
Contents
FOREWORD, by Joe Sonderman,PREFACE,
INTRODUCTION,
MAP,
CHAPTER ONE ILLINOIS,
CHAPTER TWO MISSOURI,
CHAPTER THREE KANSAS,
CHAPTER FOUR OKLAHOMA,
CHAPTER FIVE TEXAS,
CHAPTER SIX NEW MEXICO,
CHAPTER SEVEN ARIZONA,
CHAPTER EIGHT CALIFORNIA,
INDEX,