To better understand this post, you should have read Parts One, Two, and Three first. If you haven’t, you can link to them here.
From the program titled: Maplewood Minstrels, Twelfth Annual Minstrel and Dance, February 3-4-5, 1944. This is page 14.
I have nothing to add about this page. Perhaps a reader will?
I think I’m usually in a Maple mood. That’s a good name. I don’t have any photographs of Mr. Amos’s Shoe Shining Parlor but I’ve got one of a barbershop with a shoe shine man.
Notation on the back of this barbershop photo: “Taken on May 1, 1925. Just three months before Estel died on August 4th, 1925. Estel Surratt is the one in the middle.
Mr Tom Rayle
Jimson
Surratt”
I’m assuming the shoe shine man is Jimson identified on the back of the image. The calendar is from the People’s State Bank of Maplewood. That building still exists.
The People’s Bank building is still here but it almost wasn’t. This big fire in the 1930s reduced the adjacent building to two stories which it still is today.
Another view of the People’s Bank building showing their big neon sign. Sure wish we still had that.
The Big Bend Quarry was located directly beneath the southwestern most buildings in the Sunnen business park. There once were many quarries of varying sizes as the area developed. They filled the need for building stone for foundations and gravel for the driveways and roads.
This ad ran in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on August 29, 1917. I have enough material that I think I’ll make a separate post about the Big Bend Quarry.
The F.W. Woolworth store can be seen on the far left in this image of the southeast corner of Manchester and Sutton in the late 1950s.
The Warring Furniture building is in the 7400 block of Manchester on the south side. I believe I have enough material on this business to do a separate post of it alone.
The Lange Studio also advertised on this page. The business did not survive. I have searched but not found any evidence of what happened to their archive. Man, that would be a coup if some of it could be located. I only know their name from a few of the images in our collection. They are outstanding!
In this 1934 image from the Lange Studio, the view is to the south where Hanley Road dead ended at Manchester.
This is another image from the Lange Studio. Taken at the same time as the one prior, this is the same location, Manchester at Hanley, looking west along the former.
Believe it or not, I got nothin’ on this one, either.
Ditto.
OK, here we go. I know I’ve got a couple of images of Roper-Danz. Empire Supply opened in 1931 and is still in business. The Casa-Blanca Bar at 3100 Sutton rings a bell. Let’s see what I can find.
The Roper-Danz Ford dealer once was located at Margarette and Manchester. One of the early White Castle buildings can be seen just above the car parked at the curb. Just above it, a corner of the Katz Drug Store building can be seen. It survives.
The Empire Supply Company opened in 1931 the same year as the Empire State Building hence the name. They have a magnificent neon sign.
Empire Supply looks like this today. It is a good source for windows of all different types. They are manufacturers reps for many good brands. The price will be right, too. And that magnificent neon sign … it’s still there beneath the modern cover!
I didn’t find anything about the Casablanca Bar at 3100 Sutton but the address has certainly supported that sort of activity. For a long time the building was used as the Moose Hall. Prior to that, between 1917 and 1925, Albert Schwartzman and his wife Rosie operated a dance hall upstairs. They called it Schwartzman’s Dance Hall.
Ok, you longtime Maplewoodians, how many of these names do you recognize? It has only been 80 years since this was published.
The inside of the back cover.
The back cover. I once did a post about Shearer Chevrolet. You can read about it here.
The Minstrels program turns out to have been fertile ground for our garden of community history. Thanks to Dawn Yourtee for this donation to our archives at the library.
Happy Holidays, everyone!
Doug Houser December 23, 2024
OMG Love this. The ministel shows were a little before my time, but the booster page. Holy cow! It was like a who’s who of Maplewood Lodge and Maplewood Eastern Star, including my grandparents and aunt and the ladies that my grandma quilted with at Maplewood Temple every Wednesday. What a great trip back in time