Viaduct

8 November 1917: 1. Harris County Courthouse, 5 floors, 301 Fannin, [1910]; 2. Paul Building (Republic Building), 1018-1022 Preston, 8 floors, [1907]; 3. First National Bank, 8 floors, 201-205 Main; 4. Scanlan Building, 11 stories, 403 ½ Main; 5. Armour & Company, packing and storage, 1016-18 Commerce, 6. Flaxman Dry Goods and Notion Company, 101-105 Main, 1002-1008 Commerce; 7. Houston Land & Trust Building, 119 Main; 8. United Cigar Stores Co., 301 Main; Alex Chiacos clothes cleaner and shoe shine, 301 ½ Main [Sweeney- Combs & Fredericks Building, Sweeney Building, 3 floors, 1889]; 9. Desel Boettcher Co. Produce, 919 Commerce; 10. John Bonno & Co., 911 Main; Dissen & Schneider Wholesale Produce, 913-15 Commerce; Cumming & Son, printers 913 ½ Commerce; Gus Japhet Wholesale Produce, 917 Commerce; 11. Joe LaRocco & Co., produce, 907 Commerce; Myers Produce Co., 909 Commerce; 12. Desel-Boettcher Co., produce [Later, Spaghetti Warehouse] 901-905 Commerce; 13. Baldwin & Cargill, Wholesale Fruits, 102-104 Main; Weld-Neville Cotton Co. and Magnolia Compress & Warehouse Co.104 ½ Main; 14. Herman Leiser, wholesale liquor store, 908 Commerce; 15. Sou Brokerage Co., 902 Commerce; Lang & Frucht, produce 904 Commerce; Houston Fruit & Produce Co., 906 Commerce [Frederick Produce Company]; 16. Dorrance Building, 5 stories, 114 ½ Main, 1890; 17. Commercial National Bank, 6 floors, 917 Franklin [1870]; 18. Union National Bank, 12 floors, 218-220 Main [1910]; 19. Southern Pacific Railroad Building [Later, Bayou Lofts], 9 floors, 911 Franklin [1910]; 20. City Market north tower, 1904; 21. Joseph Meyer & Co., iron & steel, agricultural implements, wagon & carriage materials, 802-812 Franklin.
Label: "Photo by Geo. Beach" See Union National Bank for view about 1912 of his photographic studio.

20 June 2004: The perspective found in the 1917 postcard can no longer be achieved because there is no structure now standing which would permit a photographer to stand above the railroad tracks. This photo was taken from the railroad tracks themselves, a vantage point no longer possible with today's stricter access around the transportation grid.

1. Harris County Family Law Center, 7 floors, 1969; 2. Harris County District Attorney’s Building, 201 Fannin, 1115 Congress, 10 floors [1939, demolished in 2019]; 3. Harris County Courthouse, 301 Fannin, 5 floors, 1910; 4. University of Houston Downtown Commerce Street Building, 101 Main, 4 stories, [2005]; 5. Franklin Lofts, remodeled from the First National Bank Building, 201-209 Main, 8 floors, 1904; 6. Three Houston Center (Fullbright Tower, Chevron Tower), 1301 McKinney, 52 floors, 1982; 7. Harris County Administration Building, 1001 Preston, 10 floors, 1978; 8. One Houston Center (LyondellBassell Tower), 1221 McKinney Street, 48 floors, 1978; 9. Two Houston Center, 909 Fannin, 40 stories, 1974; 10. First City Tower, 1974, 1001 Fannin, 49 floors, 1981; 11. JPMorgan Chase Tower (Texas Commerce Tower), 600-624 Travis, 75 floors, 1982.

Postmarked: 8 November 1917; Houston Logan Branch
Stamp: 2c Carmine George Washington #406

To: Miss Hattie Melvin
Liverpool N. Y.

Message:
Friend Hattie:-
you will no doubt to surprised to hear from me, I am way down here in Texas where the sun shines night & day. I have been made Sergt. q. m. c. & like it real well. I am clerk in the quarter master’s office. My add is Camp Logan Remount 325
Houston, Texas
regards to all your people
Sgt. Ed. Burdick.

Ed. Burdick was Edward Adcock Burdick from a farming family in DeWitt, Onondaga County in the Finger Lakes Region of New York near Syracuse. Hattie Melvin lived in Liverpool about 10 miles away where her father was a dairy farmer and horse dealer. Edwin was 13 years older than Hattie, 34 years old to Hattie’s 21. Ed must have thought of her when he was assigned to the Remount division of forces stationed in Camp Logan. It was a training camp for soldiers prior to their shipping out to the trenches in France In World War I.
Most of the trainees at Camp Logan, members of the Illinois National Guard 33rd Division, were from Illinois, but Ed was an exception. It is not clear how a New Yorker came to be assigned to the Illinois Regiment, but he registered for the draft in his home county on September 12, 1918. He was described as tall and slender with gray eyes and black hair. Within two months he found himself in Texas. Perhaps because he was older than most of the soldiers, he was given more responsibilities, in his case, clerk in the Quartermaster’s office of the Remount Depot. The depot housed as many as 10,000 horses and mules in the 58 buildings as well as 23 corrals, 44 water troughs, a veterinary hospital, and blacksmith shops with extensive forges. Managing the operation were 15 officers and 396 enlisted men situated to the northwest of the tent encampments (an area that is now northeast of Interstate 10 and 610, a warehouse area with car dealerships and the offices of the SPCA). The 33rd Division shipped out to Europe in April 1918, but not before the Remount Depot held a rodeo for 12,000 observers on 17 March 1918. It is not clear whether Edward Burdick shipped out with the regiment, and he does not appear on the usual lists for the U.S. Army Transport Service of soldiers returning from the war.
Edward was the son of William Elijah Burdick and Kate Adcock, farmers in DeWitt, Onondaga County in the Finger Lakes Region of New York. He came from a quite small family consisting of his parents and a sister, Clara, three years younger. His mother Katherine “Kate” had died 27 April 1916, and after the war Edward returned to DeWitt to live with his father and sister (1920, 1930, 1940). Neither Edward nor his sister ever married, and together they eventually took over the operation of the farm. Their father William Elijah Burdick died on Christmas Day in 1932, Edward died 3 May 1952, and Clara died in April 1968. They are buried in Fayetteville Cemetery, Onondaga County, NY, where they had spent virtually all their lives.
Like Edward Burdick, Hattie Melvin grew up in a small family in the lakeside community of Liverpool on Lake Onondaga consisting of her parents, Robert Melvin and Clara Andrews, and one sibling, her brother Warren, ten years younger. Her mother Clara was the daughter of Titus Andrews and Melissa A. Lockett of Cicero, NY about 10 miles northeast of Liverpool. Hattie attended Syracuse University in 1916-1920 where she was a member of Omicron Chapter sorority, Delta Delta Delta, Zeta Phi Sigma, the Womens’ League and the Y. W. C. A.
In 1922 she married Theodore Weller Baxter, a bank clerk in Elmira, Chemung County, NY, son of George W. Baxter and Jennie Bethiah Weller from Troy, Bradford County, PA. Theodore attended one year of college as well, perhaps at Syracuse University. After marriage they lived in Liverpool where Theodore worked as a farmer (1925), automobile salesman (1930), chief cashier in a bank (1940), and sales manager for trucks (1950). They had one child, Mary Janet, who married J. Perry Barger in 1950 after graduating from Goodyear Burlingame School and Cornell University in Syracuse. Theodore died in 1982 in Winchester, MA; Harriet died there also in 1986, and their daughter, Mary Jane Baxter Barger (1927-1989) died in South Yarmouth, MA at 92, long revered trustee of the Boston Ballet.