Fannin Street, Houston, Texas, Looking North from Lamar Ave.
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2010: The once-looming City National Bank Building is now nearly obscured by the Main Place Building, a recent addition to the ever-higher skyscraper landscape of Houston. Houston Center has replaced the Ambassador Hotel, and although the Texaco Building had endured years of neglect, it has recently been involved in an extensive reconstruction.
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1952: Looming on the left is the massive 24 story City National Bank Building, built in 1947, relatively new on the landscape of downtown of that day. Across the street is the Rossonian, once a prestigious residential address, but by this time reinvisioned as The Ambassodor Hotel. Further up Fannin Street at near dead center, the white skyscraper is the Texaco Building.
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I took the black and white photograph on April 4, 2010 from the same vantage point on Fannin from Lamar as illustrated in the postcard. The angle required me to stand in the middle of Fannin Street, and this busy street is filled with traffic every day of the week except Sunday. Even on its least busy day, I had to dart into the street to take quick snapshots before retreating to the safety of the curb.
There is just a hint of the City National Bank Building that looms so large in the 1952 postcard on the left, and the front of Two Houston Center opposite barely protrudes into the view. Both buildings are now quite dwarfed by the recent construction, making them look very inconsequential. The Art Deco City National Bank Building on the left is one of the few remaining Art Deco buildings left in Houston, built in 1947 by architect Alfred C. Finn, who also designed the Esperson Buildings. The Rossonian across the street on the right was once a prestigious address to call home, once the residence of Houston notables such as Julia Ideson (Houston Library Director) and Niels Esperson himself. For a time before its demolition the Rossonian was called the Ambassador Hotel. I used to have lunch with my wife at James Coney Island the next block over when she worked at IBM in Two Houston Center. Afterward, I would wait for the 30 Calhoun bus in front of the bank, and on hot days I would spend part of that waiting in the cool lobby pretending to have business to conduct. I had no idea then that my wife's office was on the site of the Rossonian Hotel. If I had I known that history, I might have speculated about the lives of Houstonians from so many decades before as I waited for my ride back to academia. The message on the back of the card is intriguing. Like the author of the note, Helen, I once worked doing copy in an advertising office (Sears Roebuck in about 1974), and so I have an idea of what the work might have entailed. Television advertising was quite new in 1952, and Helen must have felt very modern. She seems quite well educated, and perhaps just a little pretentious (like me), I think I would have liked her very much. In June 2010 this postcard pair was submitted in a postcard contest sponsored by the Heritage Society of Houston, and won the competition See Home Page, "Exhibitions"). This earned me a year's membership in the society and a copy of Daniel Monsanto's book, Houston, Postcards of America Series [ISBN-10: 0738571725; ISBN-13: 978-0738571720]. The postcards from this portfolio, Houston Time Portal, were featured on the CBS Houston affiliate, Great Day Houston with Debra Duncan on 13 August, 2010. |
Finding the recipient of a postcard is always made easy because the address is prominent and the postmark gives a precise date. With these facts it is simply a matter of using Internet genealogy sites to search for the person in the address box. Finding the author of a postcard can be far more difficult. Brevity is important in these small communications, and many senders give only their first name, as Helen did in this postcard of 1952. Fortunately, Helen also gave her address so by checking that address in the City Directory, Helen’s identity was revealed.
Helen Skrinar was a well-educated woman, a teacher and author who had no doubt met Mrs. Wilbur Bennett through a common occupation. Blanche Mildred Rhoads Bennett was a teacher, wife of Dr. Wilbur Keith Bennett, a physician in Red Cloud, the home of Willa Cather. Blanche would soon become a founding member of the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial & Educational Foundation. She was an author of two books and many articles, and an eventual Ph.D. at the age of 74. Helen was of Slovenian ancestry, a first generation American born and raised in Joliet, IL. Her book, Burnished Gold, an edited literary book, had been published in 1940 by the Sisters of St. Francis of Mary Immaculate, her employer and alma mater of the College of St. Francis in Joliet. She spent most all her life in Joliet, except for 1948-49 in Omaha, where she must have met Blanche Bennett, and an even briefer stay in Houston in 1952. In both cases she worked in Advertising, a “crass” departure for a literary person like herself. She never married, and lived a deeply Catholic life. Significantly perhaps, her Houston address at 812 Holman overlooks Holy Rosary Catholic Church just a block away. She died in Joliet at St. Joseph Medical Center in 1994 at the age of 79, and is buried at St. Joseph Cemetery there. She shares her tombstone with her sister Bernice of “Bernice’s Restaurant” a famous local hangout of the time. |
This is the location where Helen lived in 1952, now a vacant lot on Holman near Milam. The church in the background is Holy Rosary Catholic church built in 1913. Helen had Catholic roots and may well have attended this church so close to home.
812 Holman Street in 2011
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4500 Block South Main
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The advertising agency where Helen worked was in the 4500 Block of South Main, near the intersection of Main and Richmond. The buildings at that site look as if they might have been in existence in 1952. Since it was about a half a mile from her apartment, Helen could have walked to work, or taken a streetcar or bus on rainy days.
