K & W: A Twin City treasure…

Grady Allred built a cafeteria empire

In 1927, Charles Apostle and John Campourakis opened the Carolinian Coffee Shop at 422 North Cherry Street, between the Union Bus Station and the Hotel Robert E. Lee, in Winston-Salem. Things went well at first, but when the Great Depression struck in 1929, business began to decline. The cafe was acquired by brothers Thomas, Kenneth and William Wilson, who were soon joined by their brother-in law, T.K. Knight. On Thanksgiving Day, 1935 Grady Allred went to work there. The first day, he noted that only $42 had been taken in. He would not receive a paycheck for several months.

But in early 1936, good fortune struck. The annual Northwest Basketball Tournament, sponsored by the Winston-Salem Journal and Sentinel, began in early March. Over a three week period, about 2,000 high school basketball players, coaches and officials would need to be fed. Tournament founder and director Frank Spencer awarded the food contract to the Carolinian. Grady Allred finally got paid.

Probably the first K&W menu, 1937…at the time K&W was a straight up restaurant, not a cafeteria…

In 1937, the partners changed the name of the cafe, choosing K (for Knight) and W (for Wilson). Allred soon became a partner. Knight left, and in 1941, Allred bought out the last Wilson brother and became sole owner. He opened a second K&W in High Point.

K & W, 422 North Cherry Street

In 1951, a fire shut down the Cherry Street cafe, which would take nearly a year to rebuild. But that turned out to be a good thing, because Allred had noticed that cafeteria style service was a growing trend. So when the K&W reopened in 1952, it had become a hybrid cafe/cafeteria. Soon, both the High Point and Winston-Salem locations had been converted to cafeteria only operations.

K & W, 1950s…Forsyth County Public Library picture collection…

In 1960, Allred opened his second Twin City location in the new Parkway Plaza Shopping Center on Corporation Parkway, now Silas Creek Parkway. It was an instant success. The original downtown cafeteria continued to thrive.

In 1971, the legendary Hotel Robert E. Lee closed its doors for good. At that point, a very bad decision was made under the influence of the fad for “urban renewal”. The northern portion of the block between Fourth, Fifth, Marshall and Cherry Streets would be demolished. Down came the Robert E. Lee. Down came the magnificent Art Deco bus station. And down came the K&W. Allred reopened in a new building near the Memorial Coliseum.

Around 2:30 AM on January 18, 1988, the K & W on Knollwood Street, across from the Thruway Shopping Center, exploded, leaving nothing but a pile of rubble. The Sheraton Motor Inn next door was so badly damaged that it had to be demolished. Three people were injured. Investigators later determined that the cause was a spark that ignited a poorly maintained natural gas line.

From the time that Allred became sole proprietor in 1941, he had made the K&W into a family operation. When he died in 1983, he had expanded the business to 16 K&W locations in the Carolinas and Virginias. He was succeeded by his sons and grandsons and daughters. K&W is still a family centered business, with 35 cafeterias operating in the Carolinas, Virginia and West Virginia, a bona fide Twin City institution.

 

Conventional doings…

No doubt, nearly everyone has heard someone complaining about the block of Fifth Street between Cherry and Marshall Streets being blocked off for months now. That is the heart of what is known as the “Twin City Quarter”. The quarter consists of the Benton Convention Center, two hotels and some parking decks. The blockage is caused by the fact that the Benton Convention Center is once again undergoing a serious renovation. That is inconvenient, but we might do well to consider that over the last half century, the convention center and the hotels have been the most consistently positive part of the downtown economy.

That did not happen automatically. There have been ups and downs. But it might not have happened at all, as we shall see. Here is the story.

Winston-Salem had been a convention location for many years before the term “convention center” was coined, beginning in the 1880s. The earliest conventions were religious gatherings, and state meetings of confederate veterans, political parties, educators and groups like the North Carolina Firemen’s Association.

Eighteen cities were represented at the1905 firemen’s convention. In addition to business sessions, there was a grand parade and a number of competitions such as reel and ladder races, all attended by thousands of spectators. The top event was the engine competition. Elizabeth City won the timed getting up steam competition in 3 minutes, 8 and 4/5 seconds, edging New Bern by an eyelash. But New Bern won the water distance pumping with a throw of 230 feet, 11 inches, almost a foot better than the Elizabeth City boys.

 

Not long after the Civil War, local reunions of veterans became popular. Soon there was a statewide association. The town of Winston hosted several state conventions. Seen here, some of the attendees in 1894, with their venue, Brown’s Tobacco Sales Warehouse in the background.

The earliest venues for such gatherings were Brown’s Opera House, Brown’s tobacco sales warehouse, the original Zinzendorf Hotel, and, after 1896, the county courthouse. When the second Zinzendorf Hotel, considered one of the finest in the South, opened in 1906, it became the focal point of a variety of events, including several “Good Roads” point-to-point rallies, and the first organized motorcycle races in North Carolina, which were held in 1912 at Piedmont Park, near the current Smith Reynolds Airport.

Lobby of the second Zinzendorf Hotel on Main Street

 

Large events were held in the tobacco warehouses. Here, legendary evangelist Billy Sunday, a former major league baseball player, preaches in Brown’s Warehouse, 1925

But as Winston-Salem Journal reporter Chester Davis wrote in 1969: “This city’s real involvement in the inter-city scramble for the convention dollar began in the 1950s when the War Memorial Coliseum was finished and a Convention Bureau was established by the Chamber of Commerce. These moves were by no means original. In the same general period other majore cities in the state – Asheville, Charlotte, Greensboro, Raleigh and Durham – moved in the same general direction. It was a response to the times.”

War Memorial Coliseum, 1954

Before that, Asheville and Pinehurst had been the primary convention destinations in the Old North State, but by 1963, the Twin City was in the thick of the competition. That year, the city hosted a record 93 conventions representing 61,905 delegate days and adding an estimated $1.4 million to the local economy. But there was trouble on the horizon.

In the 1950s, the downtown area had accounted for 25% of all city tax income. But since then, retail sales had fallen 20% and tax listings were down 25%. Most downtown business and property owners were in a “wait and see” mode.

The original Robert E. Lee Hotel, 1921

As it turned out, the coliseum was too large for all but a handful of conventions and local motels were too small for even little ones, so the Twin City’s hopes rode on the aging 1920s Hotel Robert E. Lee, which had 12 public rooms capable of handling between 12 and 450 persons, so could accommodate conventions up to about 600 people. The hotel owners had joined with the Jack Tar chain in an ambitious project to add a 200 car parking deck, an auditorium-ballroom capable of serving 800 people and 40 new motel-like units across Fifth Street from the old hotel. They bought the land for the motel units for $400,000, but then could find no more money and the plan collapsed.

The Robert E. lee with 1928 addition

 

Robert E. Lee lobby

In 1964, the number of conventions fell to 72. That same year, Robert Ellett, the chairman of the Chamber’s Convention Bureau, suggested spending $445,000 to convert the old 1920s city market into a convention center. For a number of very good reasons, that suggestion was rejected out of hand. But a seed had been planted. In 1964 and again in 1965, the struggling Robert E. Lee asked the city and county to lower their tax valuations. Something had to be done.

In early 1965, the City-County Planning Board developed a concept for a convention center on Second Street between Trade & Liberty Streets. A model was even created.

Mayor Red Benton, city manager John Gold, and Chamber members Robert Ellett, Jim Haley and a few others began putting together a plan for the revitalization of the local economy. After a few false starts, in 1966 Benton introduced a $15 million city bond package that included $3.5 million for a new convention center. The Chamber of Commerce did not like the idea of spending public money to build a convention center, but endorsed the bond package anyway. The bonds passed readily. Two sites, one on the Coliseum property, the other near the intersection of I-40 and Silas Creek Parkway were suggested and quickly rejected. Virtually everyone agreed that the center needed to be downtown. Two more, one on Second Street between Trade and Liberty, the other the block directly across Fifth Street from the Robert E. Lee, were then floated. For a time it appeared that the Second Street location would win the day, but after some consideration, and a good bit of bickering over the mayor’s supposed conflict of interest, since he was also a board member of the hotel corporation, the latter was chosen.

Once the site was selected, the existing businesses on the block had to be relocated. All did so successfully except for the Robert E. Lee Billiards, which was located beneath the Formal House with an entrance on Cherry Street

The internationally known St. Louis firm of Helmuth, Obata & Kassabaum was chosen to design the building, with Colvin, Hammill & Walter as local associates. Their original plan came in over budget. So trimming began. Ten feet were lopped off one side of the building. The number of elevators was reduced from two to one. Even so, when the construction contract was awarded to Fowler-Jones, there was already another shortage. Money was appropriated from the street repair fund. By January, 1969, there was still a deficit of over $330,000 required to complete the building. The money was borrowed from the construction and equipment account of the Reynolds Memorial Hospital, with a firm commitment to repay.

The original design for the convention center had the building sitting right at the sidewalk line. But once people saw the simple, somewhat stark modern lines, they found it off-putting. The architect suggested moving the building back about thirty feet and placing a sunken garden between it and the sidewalk, with a bridge over the garden to the entrance. That worked. The building itself was a handsome edifice.

So when the Winston-Salem Convention Center opened on October 8, 1969, the $3.5 million estimate had become $4.5 million in reality. And that did not include the several hundred thousand dollars still needed for street and parking improvements and the extensive landscaping required by the plan. The final figure would reach $5.1 million. In a rare burst of honesty, one city official admitted that the $3.5 million number had been “pulled out of the air” because it sounded like a reasonable figure. Those who are paying attention will note that nothing much has changed in that respect over the last half century.

Under construction

The North Carolina Rehabilitation Association paid $550 to become the first group to use a portion of the new Winston-Salem Convention Center. By October 10, Ray Baker, the manager of the facility, announced that he already had bookings for about 200 days. The center was off to a good start. A couple of weeks later, 2,000 people showed up for a barbershop quartet convention. As it happened, that was the week that the Dixie Classic fair set a new record for attendance. And on Saturday afternoon, a huge crowd packed Bowman Gray Stadium to watch Atkins High School pull off its first ever football win over Reynolds High School, 7-6. So by late afternoon, there were thousands of hungry people out and about looking for somewhere to eat.

They found that the K&W cafeteria had been closing on Saturday and Sunday for two months. Owner Grady Allred later explained that there was a severe shortage of restaurant workers in the city and that his staff had flatly refused to work weekends. The cafes at the Robert E. Lee and the bus station were packed, with long waits for tables. At the Downtowner Motor Inn, people without reservations were turned away. The same thing happened at the Sir Winston restaurant in the basement of the Pepper Building. At all the shopping center eateries, long lines snaked down the sidewalks. There are no reports of anyone starving to death, but local leaders were alarmed. They promised fixes, but they were a long time in coming.

The tunnel under Fifth Street was completed and is still in use. All parts of the Twin City Quarter are connected by covered passageways today.

 

Journal reporter Joe Goodman did an assessment of the aesthetics of the new building

It had been assumed that the convention center would automatically cure the ails of the Hotel Robert E. Lee. Part of the plan was a tunnel under Fifth Street connecting the center and the hotel, which would have a right of way through the hotel to connect with a planned pedestrian walkway system connecting it to the rest of downtown. The tunnel was built up to the curbline on the north side of Fifth Street. But more than one local businessman said “That is as far as it will go. It will be too expensive to go under Fifth, and nobody will be willing to pay for it.” The tunnel was completed, but it was too late to save the hotel.

At 7:30 AM, March 26, 1972, an explosion shook the downtown of the Twin City. It originated in the south side of the basement of the Hotel Robert E. Lee. 8.2 seconds later, the ten story hotel had become a two story pile of rubble. The grand facility that had hosted Joe Dimaggio, Ava Gardner, Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope, Ike and Mamie Eisenhower, Elvis Presley, the Monkees and dozens of governors, senators and other celebrities was no more.

That was the result of “urban renewal”, a disastrous idea that brought down whole city blocks of historic buildings and replaced them with chaff. All the old Robert E. Lee really needed was a thorough renovation, a bit of expansion, some visionary leadership and a new name. If we had it back today, it would be worth its weight in gold.

The Robert E. Lee was quickly replaced by a downsized clone of Atlanta’s Hyatt Regency. It had a spectacular nine story atrium with an indoor “sidewalk cafe”, but the best part of it was the separate building behind it known as Beneath the Elms, a parking deck that incorporated a basement level ice skating rink and sidewalk cafe and a cluster of trendy retail spaces.

The new Hyatt House, with Beneath the Elms behind

By then, that space was connected by a pedestrian walkway system extending from Cherry Street to the new pedestrian mall, a closed to auto traffic two block area of Trade Street extending from Sixth to Fourth Street, which connected to a pedestrian bridge that led to the new NCNB Plaza, Winston-Salem Savings & Loan and Liberty Walk on Third Street. The architecture there was the best integrated of any in the city because all the space was designed by the same architectural firm. Just across the way was a new Federal Building and Fred Butner’s spectacular new Forsyth County Hall of Justice.

The pedestrian walkway between Cherry and Trade Streets

 

Trade Street, before and after the Mall

There was a lot of promise there, but in the end, for the most part, the concept failed. The heart of the whole thing, the Trade Street pedestrian mall, needed new businesses that would attract people, especially young adults, to that part of the city. But local businessmen were still in “wait and see” mode, so nothing much happened. Instead, the most memorable businesses there ended up being drab discount stores and a wannabe art theater that quickly transformed into a triple-X haven. The mall is long since gone and Trade Street restored to a two-way traffic setup.

The Winston Plaza was originally a Stouffer Hotel

But the convention center and the Hyatt hotel flourished, to the point that within ten years a much larger hotel, the Winston Plaza, was built across Cherry Street from the Hyatt. Since then there have been a number of changes at the hotels and at the convention center, with major renovations made at the center in 1994 and 2006.

In 2006 the Benton Convention Center got a new entrance, but the bulk of money was spent on new carpets

In 2004, the Atlanta-based Noble Investment Group bought both hotels and assumed management of the convention center as well. The area was given a new name, the Twin City Quarter. The old Hyatt is now called Embassy Suites…the old Stouffer is now the Adams Mark Winston Plaza. It will be interesting to watch as the area continues to develop.

 

Edwin Clemmons…the stagecoach man…

As always, click the pix for larger size

What is a stagecoach?

In the beginning, people walked. Later, those who could afford it rode donkeys, or horses, or mules. By the late 18th century in America, a select few traveled from town to town in horse or mule drawn coaches. Such travel was very expensive. Since speed was important, the horses/mules were changed roughly every 20 miles. Those changes became known as stages. Once some of the people who operated the change stations began offering food and overnight accommodations for passengers and animals, those places became known as stays. There were hundreds of stays in North Carolina. But by then, the coaches and the stages had become inextricably interwoven, thus the name stagecoach, not staycoach.

What is a hack?

There are a number of vehicles which have earned the appellation “hack”, but in the stagecoach world, a hack was the smallest size of stagecoach, drawn by two horses and barely accommodating four passengers. In a pinch, as many as four or five more passengers might rough it on top. A real stagecoach, drawn by a four horse team, could carry six passengers inside and maybe the same number on top. An honest to goodness Concord coach was drawn by four to six horses, depending upon terrain, and carried nine passengers, with up to twelve on top (poor horses), and weighed well over twice what the hack did. In the 1870s/1880s, a Concord coach cost $1,500 to $2,000, depending upon amenities.

An Abbott-Downing hack…drawn by two horses and barely accommodating four passengers…

Edwin Clemmons, the stagecoach man

Edwin Clemmons was truly the stagecoach man

Edwin Theodore Clemmons was born in the Clemmonsville area of Stokes County, NC on October 27, 1826 to James and Mary Thomas Hanes Clemmons. He was the great grandson of Peter Clemmons, the founding father of the town of Clemmons, NC and the Clemmonsville Township.

The birthplace of Edwin Clemmons in Clemmonsville

Edwin briefly attended the Moravian Boys School in Salem, NC and was apprenticed to a local cabinet maker, Jacob Siewers, but he had little interest in that sort of work. In Salem, he had become intrigued by the romance of the stage coach rigs that passed through the town, stopping at Dr. Augustus Zevely’s hotel on Main Street, bearing the US mail and passengers bound for exotic destinations…south to Lexington and Greenville, South Carolina; north to Milton and Fredericksburg, Virginia; west to Jefferson and Wytheville, Virginia and even some place called Tennessee.

So as soon as he was able, he traveled to the national capitol and began negotiating for a federal mail contract. In April, 1851, the Postmaster General awarded him his first mail route, from Salem to Jefferson, 94 miles via Huntsville, Hamptonville and Wilkesboro, carried by a two-horse hack.

Edwin Clemmons’ first stage route ran 94 miles from Salem to Jefferson, NC…he lost the mail contract briefly a couple of years later, but by 1856 had regained it…

When the first trains of the North Carolina Railroad began running between Charlotte and Goldsboro in 1856, Edwin’s stagecoaches met the cars at the High Point depot and brought the mail and a few passengers to Salem, returning the next day.

By 1855, Edwin knew that he would not be returning to Clemmonsville, so put all his property there up for sale. In those days, there was always a “prospect” of a plank road nearly everywhere. Like most of those, the Salem to Clemmonsville plank road never happened.

By then, he and his brother John had three four horse coaches running, to High Point, to Lexington and, via the great Fayetteville & Western plank road, to High Point, Asheboro, Carthage and Fayetteville, where passengers transferred to Cape Fear River steamboats for the journey to Wilmington. Soon they had a fourth line running westward to Jefferson, tracing his original mail contract, then on to Wytheville in Virginia. Soon they added another line, from Salem via Clemmons, Mocksville, Statesville, Lincolnton and Spartanburg to Greenville, South Carolina.

The former Zevely Hotel, 1890s, left ,at the corner of Main and Blum. After Dr. Augustus Zevely’s death in 1872, the hotel was converted into apartments. You won’t recognize anything there today, because the hotel has been restored to its original 1844 appearance as constructed as a private residence/workshop by David Blum, and is now the Zevely Inn, B&B. The 1824 Traugott Leinbach house at the right and the commercial building next to it were demolished in the early 20th century. The Leinbach house was reconstructed in the 1970s. Old Salem Museums and Gardens.

 

 

The Salem congregation operated the Salem Tavern for the benefit of the community until 1850, when they put the business up for auction. After a few false starts, it was operated by Adam Butner as the Salem Hotel, but always referred to as Butner’s Hotel, for many years. In this photo taken prior to 1897, we see someone’s stagecoach parked next to the hotel. Old Salem Museums and Gardens.

 

All of their lines were based at the local stage station at Dr. Augustus Zevely’s Hotel, and later, at Butner’s Salem Hotel across Main Street (the former Salem Tavern). But when Edwin married Harriet “Hattie” Butner in 1858, they did not live in downtown Salem, but in the southern suburb which would later become known as the Southside and eventually Washington Park. Their nearest neighbors were Constantine Banner, a prominent farmer and influential politician whose house still stands on Cascade Avenue, and John Alspaugh, a lawyer and the publisher of the weekly Western Sentinel newspaper in Winston.

Harriet “Hattie” Butner Clemmons

 

Operations in the Salem district

Fayetteville and the east

The Clemmons brothers continued to expand and improve their stagecoach lines for the next few years, establishing a second staging center in Fayetteville, where they operated lines from Fayetteville to Raleigh; Fayetteville, via Hope Mills and Red Springs, to Shoe Heel (now Maxton); and from Fayetteville to Lumberton; and Fayetteville to Harnett Courthouse (now Lillington, near Buie’s Creek); and Fayetteville to Wilmington via Cape Fear steamboats in conjunction with O. H. Blocker, who was a partner in many other runs. The Clemmons often teamed with owners of mail contracts like Blocker to run the actual stagecoach part of the business, so their names were not always attached to the lines they ran, but they were among the most important stage coach operators in the Old North State, from Wilmington to Goldsboro and Fayetteville, to Raleigh, to Charlotte and Greensboro and Salem to Asheville and Tennessee.

As soon as steamboats were invented, they were plying any navigable stretch of water in North Carolina. When president James Monroe visited Wilmington, he was taken by steamboat to visit a nearby town. Dozens of boats made the run between Fayetteville and Wilmington carrying passengers, cargo and mail, connecting with dozens of stage coach lines along the way. Later, there was even a steamboat named “The City of Coolemee” on the South Yadkin River in Davie County. Here we see the steamer “Cape Fear” docked at Fayetteville.

Other Clemmons operated lines ran from Warsaw to Fayetteville, as a part of the Weldon to Goldsboro to Fayetteville line; from Charlotte via Monroe to Wadesboro; and from the Chatham Railroad to Jonesboro on the Fayetteville & Western Railroad.

But by the end of the Civil War, Edwin found himself drawn to a new market, based in Asheville, with promising connections to the soon to be booming west. In 1870, he and Hattie still maintained a residence in Salem, but they were already living in a boarding house in downtown Asheville.

Operations in the Fayetteville district

Asheville and the west

Within a couple of years, Edwin had bought the oldest hotel in Asheville, the Eagle, originally built on Main Street in 1814, and had made it the base for his first over mountain line, to the railway depot at Henry’s Station, two miles west of Old Fort.

Henry’s Station, two miles west of Old Fort, was the end of the under construction Western North Carolina Railroad in the early 1870s, and the beginning of Edwin Clemmons’ Great Western line through the Swannanoa Gap to Asheville and Wolf Creek, Tennessee. One night in 1871, hurricane force winds arose in the area while Edwin and Hattie were there. The building shook and swayed. Just as the worst seemed to be over, a huge gust of wind uprooted an entire tree which struck the building and nearly demolished it. By great good fortune, no one was injured.

 

The “Hattie Butner” prepares to leave the Eagle Hotel in Asheville, after 1874

That run was made by his newest coach, which he named the “Hattie Butner” for his wife. The “Hattie Butner” was a nine passenger Concord coach built by Abbott-Downing in Connecticut. It was driven on that same run, behind six gray horses, by the same drover, John “Jack” Pence, who had been running that route since 1859, well before Clemmons took over. He was described as a married man from Salisbury who never learned to read or write, a quiet but careful drover who paid close attention to his business and never had an accident in his 25 years on the job.

“For miles he drives along the very brink of the precipices, and slowly he follows the narrow slippery track to the mountain’s dizzy height,” said an 1873 article in the Fayetteville Eagle. “Oft in the stillness of the night has he sounded his stage horn and heard the echoes reverberate from peak to peak and range to range.” Because of the six horse team required to scale the steepest parts of the run to Asheville, Jack’s whip could not reach the lead horses, so he kept a box of small rocks near his feet to get their attention when extra effort was needed.

When Jack died a few years later, it took three men to replace him…Dew Reinhardt was a young and dashing driver who handled the most difficult and dangerous uphill runs, from Old Fort, crossing the Blue Ridge through the Swannanoa Gap, first along the Mill Creek, then up the cliffs and precipices along the narrow, deep Crooked Creek valley to the top at Ridgecrest. That run, a distance of six miles, took three hours on a good day. Two miles later, horses and drivers were changed, and Reinhardt retired for the day, knowing that he would have to make the even more dangerous drive down through the gap the next morn ing. Mack Reynolds or Bob Chum managed the rest of the trip to and from Asheville.

Edwin named one of his coaches for Jack, the “John Pence”. By then, Edwin was focusing on the hotel business, having demolished the original Eagle Hotel and built a grand new brick replacement, also known as the Eagle. And he had interests in a number of other hotels in Hendersonville, Old Fort and Black Mountain. Around 1880, he handed over his stagecoach operations to his long time lieutenant, Gus Weddin, who took a new, younger partner to operate their old Great Western Stage Line, which had added runs between the Hendersonville / Flat Rock area and Asheville, and northwestward from there up through Madison County to Warm Springs (now Hot Springs…see, things ARE getting warmer) and across the Tennessee border to Wolf Creek, which connected to lines in Newport, Tennesse, leading to Nashville, Memphis and Birmingham; and Greenville, Tennessee leading to Cincinatti, Chicago, and the greater midwest.

The Allen Inn, Wolf Creek, Coke County, Tennessee, was the western terminus of Edwin’s Great Western line and the gateway to the rest of new America

By then, the “Hattie Butner” and the “John Pence” had been joined by a host of other coaches with names like “Governor Vance”, “Rosalie”, “Asheville”, “Swannanoa”, “Rover”, “French Broad”, “Lover’s Leap”, and, of course, “E.T. Clemmons”. By the mid-1880s, Edwin and Hattie were in semi-retirement, spending most of their time in Philadelphia, enjoying the luxuries of urban life in the gilded age. In 1893, they returned to Salem, where they were greeted as heroes. Edwin died in 1896, the same year that the Great Western Stage Line and the “Hattie Butner” went into retirement. When Hattie died in 1910, she willed the sole remaining coach, her namesake, to the Wachovia Historical Society.

Operations in the Asheville district

After Edwin’s death, a letter to the editor of the Asheville Citizen-Times explained how Edwin transformed the Asheville economy:

But Edwin’s death was only the beginning of yet another adventure. In his will, after seeing to the comforts of his widow, he left the remainder of his substantial estate to the Southern Province of the Moravian Church, with the proviso that they build a church and a first rate coeducational boarding school in his old hometown of Clemmons.

The church fathers took his wishes quite seriously. The project was tasked to the Provincial Elders Conference, so came under the direct supervision of the most powerful Moravian leaders, the Right Reverend Edward Rondthaler, president, and John W. Fries, the Reverend James E. Hall, William T. Vogler, E.F. Strickland and Herbert A. Pfohl. In fact, the Reverend Hall was appointed as principal of the school. It opened in a renovated building in 1900 and a year later moved into its magnificent permanent quarters nearby, which served both as the church and the school.

The Clemmons School opened in 1900 in a renovated residence

The grand new Founders Hall opened on Clemmons Hill in 1901

 

The entry hall

 

The assembly room

 

A classroom

 

The young ladies’ dormitory

 

The principal’s house

 

The campus, with headmaster Mendenhall’s house at left

 

Baseball at the Clemmons School

 

Rates for boarding students…adjusted for inflation, $135 would be about $3,950 today

 

Cover of the 1908-1909 Clemmons School catalog

 

1908 Clemmons School register, page one

 

1908 register, page two

 

1908 register, page three

 

1908 register, page four

 

Last page of the Clemmons School catalog, 1908-1909

 

C.M. Miller’s 1907 map of Forsyth County puts the Clemmons School in context…it is the hour glass shape just south of the Baptist church in the town of Clemmonsville…the school also assisted in the operation of the school for black children seen just to the southwest…

The school operated successfully for fourteen years, but in the end, there was not enough money in Edwin’s estate. In 1914, the school began receiving public money and a transition began to a semi-private school with an emphasis on agriculture. In 1925, it was replaced by a fine new public school, a part of the Forsyth County school system. But the grand original building survived for many more decades as the church building. Unfortunately, eventually, choices were made and a few years ago the building was demolished.

 

 

 

 

90 years of automotive history on Liberty Street…

As always, click the pix for full size…

In 1917, Paul Montague closed his Ford agency in Winston-Salem. You could still buy a Ford in the Twin City, but no one was trying too hard to sell you one. In January, 1918, Fred J. DeTamble, of Charlotte, born in Canada, and his wife Elsie, arrived in town. Those who were paying attention knew that something was about to happen. DeTamble had a long automobile industry history, reaching back for over a decade to his partnership in the Carter International Automotive Manufacturing Company in Detroit. By 1910, he was associated directly with the Ford Motor Company in Detroit. When Ford opened an assembly plant in Charlotte in 1914, DeTamble moved there as the assistant manager of the plant. In their first full year, 1915, the Charlotte Ford plant assembled and shipped 6,850 new Fords (see separate article below).

Twin City Motor Company opening ad, February 6, 1918

But DeTamble was not interested in working for wages. He wanted his own show, and the fastest growing city in the South seemed like the right place. On Saturday, February 2, 1918, the Twin-City Daily Sentinel ran an article about DeTamble, stating that he had acquired the sole right to sell Ford cars, trucks and farm vehicles in Forsyth and most of the surrounding counties except Guilford. Four days later, on Wednesday, February 6, 1918, DeTamble opened a new Ford dealership, the Twin City Motor Company, at 610 North Liberty Street (for a history of that building and its later uses, see “A sweet move”). He immediately doubled the size of the building, extending it through the block to Trade Street, then leased the new space to a company that he had contracted with to do maintenance and repair on Ford vehicles.

Twin City Motor Company, 1926, elevation drawing by Northup & O’Brien

By mid-1919, Detamble’s company had outgrown that building and found itself landlocked, so in 1920 he moved to a new fire-proof quarters at 221 South Liberty Street. The site was shared by the Norfleet-Baggs Company and the budding Jarvis Battery Company. In 1922, Ford bought the Lincoln Motor Company and DeTamble added the local Lincoln dealership to his portfolio. On Saturday, July 18, 1925, the new building was ravaged by fire. Norfleet-Baggs and Jarvis Battery were completely burned out. A couple of dozen cars, including the Winston-Salem Police Department’s “Black Maria” patrol wagon, were incinerated. DeTamble had the building repaired and continued to operate from the site, but also initiated the construction of a grand new building at 631 North Liberty Street.

Opening ad, September 2, 1926

The new three story building ran all the way through the block along Seventh Street between Liberty and Main and was designed by the city’s leading architectural firm, Northup & O’Brien. It contained 44,000 square feet for administrative offices, new car display and sales, auto maintenance and repair facilities and a retail parts department. The Twin City Motor Company moved to that site on September 2, 1926. More than a month later, they held their grand opening with a spectacular “salon” show of the latest in motor car design (see separate article below) and, in conjunction with other area Ford dealers, a wildly popular gas mileage contest.

Grand opening, October 24, 1926

 

Grand opening, Oct 27 – Nov 6, 1926

The Twin City Motor Company would continue to operate on that site for 27 years, until it was replaced, in 1953, by the Hull-Dobbs Ford dealership, a national chain that originated in Memphis, Tennessee (see separate article below).

Hull-Dobbs pulled out in 1965 and was replaced by Odell Matthews Motors, Plymouth Valiant and Simca dealer, for a little over a year. By 1967, Ed Owens Chrysler-Plymouth had moved in. They would remain until 1972. That same year saw the arrival of Automotive Associates, Wayne D. Falls, president, H. Bruce bates, vice-president and Rene Tano, secretary, which styled itself as the one-stop spot for auto needs and included city wide delivery, a towing service, a parts service, general auto repairs and a body shop. Automotive Associates has now been there for over 40 years and is considered to be one of the best independent auto repair facilities in the Twin City.

Fred and Elsie DeTamble both died in 1961, a few months apart. They were generous people. When the Memorial Industrial School opened north of the Twin City in the mid-1920s, Fred DeTamble supplied the orphanage with Ford farm vehicles at minimal cost. The DeTamble Library at St. Andrews College, designed by A.G. Odell, Jr. & Associates, was named for them. DeTamble Auditorium in Tribble Hall on the Wake Forest campus is named for Elsie.

Hull-Dobbs Ford

Hull-Dobbs Ford, Union Avenue, Memphis, next to the Peabody Hotel

The Hull-Dobbs Ford dealership was founded in Memphis in 1921 by Jimmy Dobbs and Horace Hull. It operated for decades on Union Avenue right next to the landmark Peabody Hotel (think ducks parading in the lobby). Soon they began to open franchised dealerships and became the largest sellers of Ford vehicles in the world. They invented the regimented high-pressure techniques that dominated the automobile sales industry for decades. They later expanded into restaurants…the Hull-Dobbs Houses eventually bought out their biggest rival, the Toddle House…became the largest airline catering firm in the world…and were pioneers in the fleet vehicle business.

The Lincoln Salon

Lincoln Brunn Roadster

Early Lincoln cars were ridiculed for their bland designs, much as were Henry Ford’s early cars. When Ford acquired Lincoln in 1922, they decided to change that image, hiring a variety of the most advanced auto body designers to create new Lincolns. About the same time, the first New York grand auto salon was presented, featuring the newest auto design from around the world. The idea soon spread to Chicago, San Francisco and beyond. Lincoln and Dusenburg became two of the biggest players in that game. By 1923, Lincoln had created its own traveling salon, which reached out to smaller cities around the nation.

Lincoln Judkins Brougham

In October, 1926, Fred DeTamble brought the annual Lincoln salon to Winston-Salem. He billed it as the largest exhibit of advanced auto design in North Carolina history, which it certainly was. If you had been in the Twin City in the fall of 1926, for over a week you could have seen all of these cars and more at DeTamble’s Twin City Motor Company on North Liberty Street at Seventh.

Lincoln Lebaron Sedan

 

Lincoln Dietrich Cabriolet

 

Lincoln Brunn Sport Phaeton

Lincoln Town Car, from the French magazine L’Illustration

Charlotte Ford Assembly Plant

Statesville Avenue assembly plant, building #1, 1924

In 1913, the Ford Motor Company began opening more than two dozen assembly plants around the nation. They opened a service facility at 222 North Tryon Street in Charlotte in 1914. Within weeks the site had been expanded to incorporate an assembly plant. The plant assembled Ford bodies, then mated each one to a chassis shipped from Detroit. In its first full year, 1915, the Charlotte plant shipped 6,850 Ford vehicles. In 1916, the plant moved to a larger facility at 210 East Sixth Street. In 1924, Ford built a new 240,000 square foot plant off Statesville Avenue. That plant employed 500 local workers and produced 300 cars and trucks per day in its first year. The plant closed in 1932 during the Great Depression, having assembled a total of 231,068 Ford vehicles. During World War II, the plant became a Quartermaster Corps Depot. In the early 1950s, it was refitted as the Charlotte Ordnance Missile Plant, which manufactured Nike missiles and Honest John rockets.

 

The Red Store, ca 1915…

As always, click the pics for full size…

Recently, there has been a good bit of discussion about neighborhood grocery stores. From the late 19th century, there were dozens of such establishments in the Twin City, many lasting into the 1960s and 1970s.

Today, Janice found one of Bill East’s articles from the 1960s about one such store in Waughtown. Of most interest to me is the part about the weekend music and dancing on the “roof garden”. The Crouse family, based from the early 20th century in Ardmore on Hawthorne Road near Knollwood, was a veritable industry of music, with family bands, orchestras, quartets, etc playing a wide range of music from classical to popular. Walter Crouse’s band performed frequently at venues all across the Old North State.

The 1907 Sanborn Insurance map shows the location of the Red Store and the residence of its owners, John and Mary Charles, next door. The map is a bit confusing because streets have moved and changed names. At the time there were at least three Waughtown Streets, the oldest being well to the east and running through what is now Happy Hill. This particular Waughtown was renamed Junia. Haled Street actually moved northward at some later time. And through a spelling problem, Arcadia became Acadia. The only building shown on the map that is still standing is the Forsyth Iron Bed Company…the last time we looked, it was the Forsyth Mechanical & Construction Company, which has been there for about 35 years…

 

Upcoming Genealogy Programs

Summer is coming and it’s a good time to rev up your genealogy research. The warm weather brings families together for graduations, vacations, weddings, and day trips. Talking about past vacations, trips, and events can offer up lots of helpful information and insights for your research.

Our free genealogy programs are designed to help you get the information you want. Genealogy 101 is our beginner program that gets you stared with the basics of genealogy research and an introduction to online research. Genealogy 202 takes your research up a level with database search techniques and expanded records research information.

So enjoy the summer months with family and friends at the backyard barbecue, on the beach, at the lake, or anywhere in between and when nostalgia gets people talking be ready to listen!

Enter a caption

 

 

The Davis (Military) School and more…

As always, click the pic for full size

The Davis School, Winston, NC, c. 1892. At the rear, the two main buildings are at the right, next to the chapel…the barracks at center and faculty housing at left. The railway line to Mocksville runs across the center of the scene past the Davis School depot at the extreme left. In front of that building stands an old log storage building and barely seen is a bit of the Brookstown/Bethania Road (now Reynolda Road), with at lower left the bridge across Peter’s Creek. Old Salem Museums and Gardens…

In October, 1886, Colonel A.C. Davis opened the Davis School in La Grange, NC. It was a military high school for young men. After the 1889 Christmas holiday, the school was swept by an epidemic of “grip” (flu), and classes were suspended in early February, 1890. It was expected that the school would be reopened in the fall. But other forces were at work.

At that time, Trinity College in Trinity, NC, which had a chronic money problem, was looking for a safe haven. And the location of a new Baptist Female University was also up for grabs. The Davis Military School got sucked into the sweepstakes. By March, it appeared that Raleigh might get all three schools. But Raleigh only won one, the Baptist school, which was renamed Meredith College in 1909 after John Meredith,  the founder of the “Biblical Recorder”. Buck Duke got busy and lured Trinity to Durham, where it would eventualy become Duke University. Winston lawyer and newspaper publisher John W. Alspaugh, a Trinity grad who had rescued the school more than once from collapse, was bitterly disappointed that Trinity did not come to Winston, but ended up settling for the Davis school.

Ruger & Stone’s 1891 Birds-Eye view of the Twin City gives us another look at the Davis School, including the twin bridges above the parade ground leading to the military training area of the campus…Library of Congress…

By June, with the enthusiastic participation of Winston business leaders, a suitable tract of land on the Old Town Road near Peter’s Creek had been purchased, the contractors, Porter & Goodwin of Goldsboro, were hard at work on the residences and barracks, and Philadelphia architect J.D. Daugherty had completed plans for the campus’s main building. The school opened in September with nearly 200 boys in attendance.

Some baseball action…pitcher at left…the batter is wearing a hat, tie and vest…Old Salem Museums and Gardens…

By the turn of the year, the school had become an integral part of the community. On February 27, 1891, the lads came marching down Main street in double file to a drum cadence and turned in at the Gymnasium Hall to be entertained by the young women of the Salem Female Academy in a program of songs and piano solos. Two and a half hours later, they marched away to the air “The Girl I Left Behind Me” played by their brass band and the sighs of the academy ladies. These would become regular events looked forward to by the students of both schools.

A football game at Davis…note the more rounded rugby ball…the forward pass was still illegal…Old Salem Museums and Gardens…

Their annual spring athletics day, consisting of mostly track and field events, became a popular entertainment…the newspapers hinted that they were especially enjoyed by the local shop girls. The most popular event was the tug of war, in which teams competed ferociously to win the ribbon.

The annual May Day dress parade on the courthouse square was a highlight every year…this one in 1894…Old Salem Museums and Gardens…

And on May Day each year, they put on a grand dress parade at the courthouse square, marching to the tunes of their own brass band, and performing close order drill and other military maneuvers, under the direction of First Lieutenant W.E. Shipp of the 10th US Cavalry, who had been assigned to the school by the US Secretary of War. The school was delighted with the city and the city was delighted with the school.

The faculty of the Davis School…Colonel A.C. Davis is seated at the right, next to his father, who was a physician…his brother Jeff is at the left…Old Salem Museums and Gardens…

For some time there had been a good bit of confusion over the name of the school. The original charter from the state General Assembly had been simply the Davis School. But sloppy journalists and overeager marketers had used a variety of different names, including the Davis Military Academy and the Davis Military College, which it was not. In 1893, local legislator Cyrus Watson petitioned the General Assembly to change the name to the Davis Military School, which was done.

James Edward Peterson, Jr., of Salem, was one of the many local boys who attended the Davis School…Old Salem Museums and Gardens…

But that same year, the US economy went into a tailspin. A year later the gross national product was down more than 10%, spending was down about the same amount and capital was extremely hard to come by. All indicators began a fairly rapid recovery, but certain areas of the economy, which most definitely included boarding schools, would struggle for several more years. Suddenly, without warning, in early November, 1897, a statement appeared in the local newspapers. The Davis Military School had gone into the hands of a receiver. A number of local leaders, the most vocal of which was P.H. Hanes, called for the rescue of the school, but that was not forthcoming. In December, Superior Court judge Darius Starbuck decreed that the receiver should auction off the private property of the school. That was done on July 16, 1898 and the Davis Military School was no more.

The property stood abandoned for several years. In 1900, a fire destroyed two of the barracks buildings. And two years later, the remainder of the campus burned to the ground and all traces of the school were gone. In 1909, the land was acquired by the Methodist Church and eventually became the North Carolina Methodist Children’s Home. That story will be dealt with in another post.

Early days of Children’s Home, c 1915…the buildings are, left to right, the dormitory for large sized boys, the dormitory for middle sized boys, the dormitory for small sized boys and the dormitory for middle sized girls. The brick building in the distance was the Cornelius Building, dormitory for large sized girls. In between, behind the horse and obscured by trees was the original dining hall. That story coming soon to a blog near you…Forsyth County Public Library Picture Collection…

Meanwhile, that same year, a new military school came to Winston. Professor J. W. Tinsley of Havre de Grace, Maryland, announced that he was looking to establish a military academy somewhere to the south. Immediately, the local Board of Trade and Chamber of Commerce jumped on the bandwagon. Even though the local newspapers insisted on spelling Professor Tinsley’s hometown as Harve, in a trice, the deal was done.

The Barber Printing Company had just moved into their new quarters on Third Street, leaving their early 1890s building at 214 West Fourth Street available. The local boosters promised full support and spent something over $1,000 sprucing up the building, which would become both the home of Professor Tinsley and his family and the campus of the new military institute.

But when the Tinsley Military Institute opened in the second week of September, 1909, only a handful of cadets were on hand. The local newspapers, the “Journal”, the “Sentinel” and the “Union Republican” for once found common cause in attacking the boosters for failing to provide the promised support. A committee was appointed to correct this problem. Local lawyer H. Montague, who could always be counted on to support education, offered to finance a scholarship for the school. That became the solution…if the children of the wealthy would not enroll at TMI, then local boosters would provide scholarships for the children of the poor.

Tinsley Military Institute cadets on parade, c. 1912…hand colored postcard…

That worked for a while. In its second year, TMI moved to the former Salem Boys School building on South Church Street. And the cadets began to assume a similar role to that of the former Davis School boys in the community. Prominent Salemites pronounced that having TMI so close to the Salem Academy & College campus could not fail to produce positive results. A number of joint programs between the two schools were produced. But there was something, never mentioned publicly, wrong.

In May, 1913, TMI and the Salem Academy and College held their annual commencement ceremonies, with a good bit of crossover between the events. Earlier that month, the towns of Winston and Salem had at long last officially joined to become the city of Winston-Salem. That would lead to many complications as the assets of the two communities were reallocated to suit the common good. Among those complications was the promise of a new Central School to accommodate Salem students. But because funding was already committed to the new Fairview School in north Winston, Central would have to wait for a couple of years.

TMI occupied the 1896 Salem Boys School building from 1910-1913…Old Salem Museums and Gardens…

Suddenly, on May 24, in the middle of the two commencement celebrations, and with no prior public discussion, the new city government and the elders of the Salem congregation announced that the former Boys School building would become a part of the new joint school system for at least two years beginning in the fall of 1913. No mention was made of the fact that the Tinsley Military Institute was already using that facility. And when reporters tracked down Professor Tinsley, he seemed not to know anything about the new arrangement.

Nothing more was said on the subject until August, when Professor Tinsley announced that he had made arrangements to use the second floor of the former Salem Town Hall and that a new school, minus the military aspect, focused on business courses and adult night school classes, would open in the fall. Of course, that never happened. And Professor Tinsley literally vanished from the earth.