Monday, November 23, 2009
Lost Memphis The Memphis Riverfront in the Early 1900s
Posted by Vance Lauderdale on Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 9:45 PM
First of all, you can't help noticing all the cotton, in bales and bags, just piled outside. I guess this is a stupid question, but wouldn't that stuff just swell up like a balloon if it rained?
There are lots of interesting details in the background (and just to be helpful, I've enlarged portions of the photograph below; you'll have to scroll down or go to the next page). First of all, the big white building with the twin towers (one of them, if you squint, has two clock faces), is the old U.S. Customs House, later a post office, and currently being converted into the law school for the University of Memphis. Next to it is the rounded extension of the original Cossitt Library, one of the finest buildings ever constructed in this city. Look carefully, and you can see the red-sandstone turret (it's kind of hidden behind an extremely tall telegraph/telephone pole.)
The two tall white buildings in the distance are (I believe) the Tennessee Bank and Trust Building (erected 1904-1907), and to the right of it, the Memphis Trust Company building (erected in 1904). That second building was expanded in 1914 by simply doubling the width of it; it's still standing today on Main Street as the Commerce Title Building, and if you stand in front of it, you can see the vertical seam where the addition was slapped on.
Now what's really interesting is the cute little square building, right in the top center of the main photo (and shown in detail below). It's hard to see in the scan, but wording around the edge of the roof tells everyone this was the office of "S.W. Green — Wharfmaster" and it was his job to keep track of all the boats and wagons and carts that you see here. He must have been a busy man.
Awhile back I took a more recent photo (below) from about the same vantage point, but trees and new construction along Front Street make it difficult to really make a good then-and-now comparison. But if you look carefully, just to the right of the Morgan Keegan Tower, you can see the rear windows of the old Customs House, just about the only part that has remained unchanged over the years.
And yes, the cobblestones are still there.
Comments (4)
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I think the bags are probably cotton seed. The bales would of already gone through a compress, so the outside might soak up some rain, but the bales were pretty dense even back then.
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After taking a closer look, you can see the compression bands on the bales. So those bales were run through a compress. The bags, at first look like sands bags b/c of the way that they lay on the old time pallets. I'm thinking they are grain bags or cotton seed bags. However, the second picture, the one with the Patterson sign it, shows a horse wagon with those bags and the bags upon comparing them to the rear end of the horse, look like they are big enough to be cotton tote sacks.
Is that a big pile of coal behind the Patterson building?
Nowadays cotton is left at the side of the field where it is grown. They now have smaller portable compresses that they compress the cotton with at the field. These large piles of compressed cotton are called "modules", and the tops are covered, but they stay outside until being transported to the gin.
Compressed cotton is VERY dense. If it catches fire, water cannot put it out. The old-timers' way of extinguishing a cotton fire in compressed cotton was to pour kerosene on it ... the kerosene would soak into the compressed cotton and smother the fire, so I don't think water would bother the bales of cotton awaiting shipment no longer than they would be outdoors awaiting shipment.
