Saturday Evening Mail, Volume 28, Number 1, Terre Haute, Vigo County, 3 July 1897 — Page 3

VOL. 28-3TO. 1.

Domestic Life.

rk an

Queen City of the Wabash.

Its Proud Record, Its Substantial Present and Its Inviting Future.

Terre Haute the queen city of the rich and populous Wabash valley. Am thin anniversary number of The Mail in its wide circulation will fall into the hands of some who are looking for a more prosperous or more inviting location than they now are in, it is appropriate to present

which to happily and comfortably live on

Terre Haute's Commercial Successes, Rich Territory, and the Wide

what has been made. It is a solid and sub-

handsomely

resources

education,

ished

finished city, but

as the

Sweep of Its Business Influence—The Inviting Fields for In

vestment and Effort—Fine Educational and Philanthropic In

stitutions and the Attractions of Terre Haute for Business and

here some of the many advantages which hHVe yet attracted, the soil is agriculturalnmke Terre Haute a city to thrive in or in jy

possessor

which makes city life

less

complete

and

We can show that all the conditions of present comfort, future progress and competence and pleasant and elevated living exist in a high degree in Terre Haute, and that it Is a most inviting field for the men who look for an opening for their own energies and for a model home for their families It is afield for acquiring a competence or for investing the competence already acquired.

The leaps into the future of Mr. Wilkins Micawber failed, one after another, for lack of capital, until he emigrated with a little money in his pocket and found prosperity as a colonist. Terre Haute offers to the Mlcawbers, looking for openings or waiting for something to turn up. advantages in proportion to their capital and a living in proportion to their ability and effort with more certainty than st cities of its si/.e. It is the heart of a teritory which can employ much more capital and labor than yet has occupied it and support enough more people to make this section as densely populated as little Rhode Island. i^i kstions vnorr

pk.sik vui.k

t.-Kwi.triKs.

When looking at a location ask: I).»es it command a good territory is it easy to ship out of ami into are railroad facilities good and freights low is it a large market in any lines of commerce to bring customers together is tlf^re an air of thrift and prosperity and a high standard of commercial morality are there good sto're«and pleasant residences to rent or buy. good churches and fine schools, a pleasant social atmosphere and a cultured society, without tinsel* All these questions

The Mail proposes to answer, an to answer with an emphatic "Yes." The Mail has studied Terre »ute for twentyseven years, and sp.*aks with sotn 'authority.

TIIK CITY'S \Tt KVt. TERRITORY. Stick one leg of a pair of compasses into the map at Terre Haute, swevp the other

paving brick, pottery, and the manufacture of ochre and paints, mosaic ware, etc. Quarries of stone and glass sand are found within the same limits. These natural resources scarcely h»- been tapped.

In spite of the mineral deposits, which invite much more enterprise than they

lerful

stantial business town with many as yet fruits to the large city markets. The one undeveloped interests, while to satisfy the large canning factory of the city cannot complex demands of intelligentand thrifty

U!W

people and of modern life, it offers the merchants from shipping them in carload benefits of

pleasant social atmosphere, watermelons and canteloupes that are and a high standard of moral and intel- shipped from this point by the million, lectual living-

the district around Terre Haute is

country of gardens which sends out won-

quantities of garden stuff and small

enough peas to keep the commission

city that is metropolitan, I )„ts. Southern Illinois cannot surpass nor

built, unusually healthy, with equal the strawberry lands around Terre superior

for ordinary and higher Haute, nor the sunny south produce the

j„ the

KititK ii\r as kimsiiki) citv. has been pushing tae corn and wheat (Jeorgetown, 1). was shown to the growers back and taking their acres for 1'rince of Wales as that

rare

thing, a

fin-

American city -it had stopped grow commission merchants and producj dealing. In that sense Terre Haute is not a

ers

last ten years the market gardener

profitable crops than the cereals. The

of the large cities must look to Terre

much Haute as a great source of their future sup-

desir- pijes for an over-growing demand.

aille. Without the crudities and deficiencies The great, elevator of Birtlett. Kuhn & of the newer western towns.it. is so

wt'"

move from one town to another to make money, save money, and spend money, to find openings for work, business and investments, to enjoy he comforts of life without being forced by false standards of life to ostentation and a high pressure system of living, and to find the advantages of education, religious training and refined social influences for their growing families. They desire to enjoy these material and esthetic privileges in a city that is beautiful, healthy and abreast of the era's progress without being handicapped by the burdens, tierce competition, and the clique and caste lines of metropolitan life.

finished as to invite a law influx of peo- Indiana "hard red," in a pie from

Co. draws millions of bushels of wheat,

favored localities, {HertsoI1- fr0m the territory tributary to Terre Haute. The three distilleries (the largest three in tha world and the homiuy manufactories (with the largest consumption of white corn in the world), of course, are located where they can best obtain their corn, and most readily distribute the products, which is at Terre Haute, on the border of the great corn belt, and at the nucleus of many railroads.

In brief, the advantages of Terre Haute's location are its adjacent population of 400,000 people, its nearness to coal, clay, stone, etc., its environment of rich garden lands, its surrounding territory of corn and wheat lands, linked to this city by a network of railroads, and its advantageous position for reaching the whole country with its commerce.

TERRK ll.U'TK IN PANIC YEARS.

Few cities owe so little to outside capital as Terre Haute, which has been substantially, compactly, and elegantly built up with its own money and conducts its extensive business enterprises with a remarkable self-reliance upon the individual resources of its business men, who borrow less money and lean less upon banks and loan companies than is done in the average city of similar extent. This must account for the great solidity of this city's enterprises and that freedom from panic and failures in the depressed times which Terre Haute has enjoyed in every crisis since the beginning of the war. Terre Haute business men may shorten sail in squally times but they seldom go to wreck. It is to be observed that finer and more extensive improvements have b.*en made in this city during the last five years of stres.9 than in any previous ten years. In that period were erected all of the finer stores on Main street, the Rose Dispensary, great distilleries, the brewing plant was doubled, new ice plants, elegant churches, handsome school houses, a hundred stylish resiliences anil a thousand delightful homes were built, hotels were erected or remodeled. streets were paved with asphalt um or brick, or macadamized, and mauy miles of artificial stone sidewalks were laid new manufacturing enterprises, trust companies, building and loan societies and business firms were organized, and thus during the five dull years Terre Haute was improved and extended by the use of its own resources and capital, to become "the finished city" it is, but yet there is no fence around it.

The solidity of Terre Haute, its substantial enterprises and the extensive business

leg around at a distance of thirty miles, ^as done for its people. "The past is and you will enclose a little area inhabited for nian the only guide for the by about 2UMW people. Extend the travel-1 future. what man has done men will do." ing leg to fifty miles and you will describe a circle which surrounds about 400,000 people, all within the radius of a live city's influence. all of whom use one thing or another that is made or sold in Terre Haute, or can be

it* Urge establishments show what the

AS A MAXI* FACT VRtNO CENTER.

Ixok over the territory of the thirty mile around this city the earth is underlaid

MSM

the steam engine The next inducement for manufacturers is railroad facilities. Any one can find here good sites with switching privileges that will put him right on the great trunk lines east and west, north and south. Nine roads enter the city.

The transportation facilities and rates, the cheap fuel and rich territory, and the individual enterprise that have Already built up great or thrifty institutions here can develop more. Allusions are made under other heads to the hominy manufacturing, which, begun with a few barrels a day some years ago, now supports two large concerns, one of which is capitalized at a milliop dollars, and leads in the United States, and is always busy with domestic and foreign trade, and to the flouring mills with a joint capacity of 2,500 barrels a day, businesses that have earned several comfortable fortunes. Iron works of large capacity have enjoyed as much prosperity as has fallen to the trade elsewhere during the last twenty years.

Shovels and tools, engines and boilers, stoves, mining machinery, bicycles, vehicles, stone work, mosaic tile, pressed brick, beer, highwines, furniture, tents, burial caskets, office and store fittings, electrical machinery, books, gun stocks, boxes, wheels, hubs and spokes, cooperage materials and barrels, crackers, confectionery and pharmaceutical preparations are successfully made here and shipped in all directions.

Among the establishments that are really immense and employ a great deal of

As long as coal is used to raise steam mosaic and other tiles are to be more In and make electricity Terre Haute will U9e*be remarks of the state geologist are joy one predominant advantage in mann- pertinent and especially applicable to facturing—chea^ fuel. For many miles Terre Haute. He said in a late report

labor are the car works, distilleries, brewery, homiuy and flour mills, iron works, ithree plants), cracker bakery, fork and tool works, canning plant, and brick yards, and others could be named.

It. is not the custom of the Terre Hau te men in the above-mentioned enterprises to say their branches of business are overdone, but they express surprise that more do not enter them right here. Each successful man asserts that to capital and enterprise Terre Haute is yet an open and profitable field.

ONE OF THE 0PESIS09.

The territory of which this "Prairie City" is the shipping point is remarkably rich in various clays and shales. A very successful beginning has been made in the manufacture of pressed brick, vitreous paving brick, mosaic tile, ochre, etc., bat only a beginning.

In view of the fact that the greater part of the street paving with brick in the United States is yet to be done, that more sewer pipe than ever is to be used, that

thal

circle to s*k» what is in it. On each of the with several strata of the best bituminous. "Millions of tons of shales and underuine railroads centering at Terre H*ute block and semi-block coal. Underneath clays well fitted for making the best grades many coal mines, for the whole field the city Itself are several veins of coal, of paring brick exist in the coal-bearing is underlaid with the mineral, that will I This coal employs much Terre Haute seem inexhaustible when every oil anil gas capital and can employ more. Many a w, in the state has eeA«*-d to flow. Even boiler here is run with good coal for steam ti.»w. when coal suitable for steam pur that costs fifty cents a ton. No other city delivered to the consum »r at fifty in the United States with an equal populacents ton. the ordinary factory e*n tion and railroad facilities has as cheap of the state for paring brick, no less than years ago another dry goods house sold little difference in the cost of the' different coal, nor as uniformly good, as Terre was sent to Ohio and West Vir- goods in a double front, one story room, fuels. It would cut no figure, for in-! Haute. It comes in on the nine railroads ginia for that products. These uuder-clays It now fills a triple front, four story block, staiuv. in burning brick, or many other from mines five to twenty-five miles dis- and shales." be says, "can also be made Still another house, that had no upstairs kiuds of work tant and by wagons from mines a mile or into the best of sewer pipe, roofing tile, room, is now fitting np afire story double

In the s*nio are* are wiy vpiw miles, two away It is cheap. gtK*l. inexhaustible. terra cotta. hollow brick, pumps, pressed stone front, that costs «,*» a year, underlaid near the surface, or cropping An immediate result is seen in the cost of front brick, etc." There is another four story double block ..ut on hillsides, with various kin of electricity Terre Haute pars less forj It is suggested that in the clay industry 1 occupied by a dry goods store. These four lay. adapted to furnace lining*, firebrick, lighting than other cities. This is an im- especially Indiana capital should be carry magnificent stocks and display tile, ceramic ware, vitreous, pre**-1 aai portant

counties of Indiana. These clays lie in the closest proximity to the fuel necessary to barn them: yet previous to 180ft, of the $ss4,flft7 expended by twenty-seven towns and cities (not including Indianapolis)

Terre Haute's New Ciround-Floc Theater.

The above view of the new ground-floor theater that is in course of erection in the rear of the Terre Haute house was made from drawings prepared by Floyd & Stone, the architects. It shows the new building to be substantial in Its exterior, and attractive in appearance. The portion of the new building devoted to the theater faces on Cherry street, but the ma1 entrance will be on Seventh, with the gallery entrance on Cherry. The Seventh street portion of the building will be devoted tobusinass and office purposes, and will have all the modern conveniences.

The theater itself is to be finished on the interior with all the latest improvements known to theatrical architecture. The stage will be large avd roomv, the dressing-rooms will be large, well lighted and well ventilated, and "back of the scenes" will not be such a dreary place to members of the theatrical profession, as is so often the case in a great many theaters. The house will have a seating capacity of about 1.500. The interior decorations, so far as decided upon, will make the new theater one of the most beautiful In the country.

The new building was designed by Floyd & Stone, the well-known architects of this city, the work of erection Is being done by August Fromme. a well-known home contractor, and it will essentially be a home enterprise. The credit for the erection of this magnificent building, of course, belongs to the directors and stockholders of the Terre Haute House Co., but chiefly to the energy and "push." of Charles Baur. proprietor of the hotel. Wm. P. IJams. president of the company, and Col. John Beggs. who were chiefly instrumental in making arrangements for the funds to be used in erecting the building. Messrs. Ijams and Beggs made a trip to New York for that purpose, and when they telegraphed back here that they had been successful, there was general rejoicing among those who were familiar with the object, of their visit. The new

theater

TERRE HAUTE, IND., SATURDAY EVENING, JULY 3, 1897. TWENTY-EIGHTH YEAR

which the electric motor is preferred to dollars now annually sent out of the state began in one room, about 18x50 feet

for clay products ba kept within bounds. So valuable are the deposits around Terre Haute for the manufacturers of clay articles, glass, pottery, etc., that an experienced ilian lately took samples of them to Great britian and Belgium to show to manufacturers and capitalists.

Oil ought to be a prospect, when a Terre Haute oil well has yielded steadily for nine years, a rare lease of life for an oil well, pointing to some subterranean pool or lagoon of petroleum that leaks into this well and holds in reserve a vast amount of oily richness. Enough wells were bored in the wrong places to discourage further quest for oil, but that it exists in considerable quantity under or near Terre Haute is believed by cautious men who, though cautious, are yet willing to bore a few more holes.

FOR THE WHOLESALE TRADE.

The existing wholesale trade of Terre Haute is evidence of the extensive territory tributary to the city, of high reputation and of facilities for buying and shipping. The wholesale grocery trade in which four of the houses are very extensive is most substantial. One house alone, Hulman & .Co., has customers at nearly six hundred towns and stations. Its plant is a seven-story building 140 140 feet, (the finest grocery establishment in the country), a six-story spice and coffee mill, 60xl2u, and three warehouses, each 35x100.

In the wholesale dry goods and notion business four firms do a very heavy business and are housed in magnificent build-

Is placed conveniently near the finest hotel In

the stute. barring none. It is the universal testimony of travelling men that at no other hotel In this part cf the country can they secure such splendid treatment as at the Terre Haute, and Its reputation in that respect Is national. And now that we are to have a modern ground floor theater practically In connection with the hotel Its reputation will be grtatly enhanced.

The final papers have been signed and the new theater has been leased to T. W. Barhydt, Jr.. a well known and successful manager of Peoria, who comes highly recommended to the directors of the company. He will move his family here and devote his time and attention tlon to the new theater, his other theatrical attractions being looked after by his agents.

ings. Four flrmsdo a big business in manufacturing and jobbing shirts, overalls and clothing, selling in many states. Other wholesale lines are stoves, hardware, confectionery, drugs, burial caskets, boots and shoes, liquors, produce, bottled goods, saddlery goods, etc.

A man who used to work hard in a railroad freight house went into the commismission business in a modest way to sell potatoes, cabbages and other garden stuff. Now he has a splendid warehouse and handles southern and domestic produce in a great wholesale way, and makes the railroad freight men work for him. Terre Haute is located in a garden country and on a great railroad system, which is just right for the commission business, if a man wants to work as hard and be as successful as Mr. Goldsmith, the big commission man.

This town is on the Pennsylvania and Big Four trunk lines, and its shippers have Chicago rates. It is on a direct north and south line between the gulf and the lakes. It has trade in California, New Mexico, all the southern states, and as far as Maine It has customers in Europe, Africa anu Australia. What has been done can be done again by somebody else.

THE RETAIL TRADE.

The state of the retail trade is an index of prosperity. About ten year# ago one of the best dry goods booses did business in two rooms under the opera house. A few months ago it moved into a six story doable front, at IT,(100 rent, that would look fine on State street in Chicago. Fire

item in light manufacturing in forested and the several millions ofi metropolitan style. A notion house that ing firms now occupy fine. Urge factories, I

1ft.

her has a double terra cotta front, four stories including a large number of our most rehigh, 142 feet deep. Furniture houses spectable and brightest young women. In have grown to double fronts, and clothing this so-called dull time some of them are

dealers must have two rooms abreast, and the result is that there seldom is any vacant room on Main street. The retail grocery trade of Terre Haute is remarkable for its energy and the style of its ores, as many grocers occupy the finest rooms in the city, drive the best horses to their wagons and put on a great deal of style in their displays. They are great advertisers.

The jewelry, millinery, boot and shoe, hat and cap, queensware, and drug stores of this city are equally brilliant in their shops and displays.

We snow of no 40,000 city which has as long and fin" a retail street as Wabash avenue (usually called Main street in memory of pioneer days), with so many great plate glass fronts, beautifully trimmed by expert trimmers.

As for prices—The Mail sometimes amuses itself by comparing the prices in Terre Haute advertisements with the big displays in Chicago and other papers goods seem to be just as cheap right here in Terre Haute.

REAI. ESTATE.

Real estate in Terre Haute has never suffered from a real boom nor known a general decline, even in the last five years of depression. It is a safe investment with an outlook to it. The uniform growth of the city in all directions, the even diffusion of street improvements, good pavements, sewers, water mains, electric lights, trolley lines and school houses, in every quarter of the city to the boundary lines, prevents any section of real estate from receding, insures the steady upbuilding of all parts aud a gradual and certain rise in values. If one quarter should increase in importance more than another it would be that wide expanse comprising the whole southeast quarter of the city aud its outlying suburbs. Why Because of the opening of a new eighty acre park in that direction, the pushing through to the park of fine city avenues, and the bridging of railroad tracks to unite that inviting section to the center of the city. The land being level with an elevation towards the park, already traversed by good streets, and with an extensive sewer system provided for, is most attractive for residences, and there is ample promise that the remarkable growth of the city in the northeast quarter towards Collett Park will be equalled or surpassed in the southeast quarter towards Deming Park. It probably will become the city's finest residence addition.

To return to the northeast quarter that was enlivened by Collett park, there bids fair to grow up a great manufacturing district at the edge of that quarter, where real estate is still sold at acre prices. As a nucleus we have the great elevator, the piano factory building, a large canning plant, a gunstock factory, boxmaking and wheel factories. It commands all the railroad facilities of the city and is within reach of water, electric light and street railroads. It is a magnificent site for factories and residences of labor.

Terre Haute, though uniformly built up. is not densely built nor crowded, and has none of the long tenement rows that crowd or disfigure many towns. The majority of cottages stand on 30 or 40-foot lots, and a great number of houses occupy 50, 75 and-10) feet fronts. For this reason there still is room for building on all the best streets, and desirable lots can be bought in all localities. While the excellent street car system to the suburbs has a tendency to prevent a rapid rise in the center of the city, there is yet a steady accretion of value ever to be seen in normal times, as new housesfill up the vacant interspaces. The lot bought today will be worth a little more next year.

Membership in building and loan associations is a Terre Haute enthusiasm, and an immense number of business men, working men and women, boys and girls, hold shares in some of the many associations, which never die, for when one winds up its six or seven years another is begun. Thousands of bouses have been built by their aid. During the last somewhat dubious five years many hundreds have been making their payments on the buildings begun in the good times of 1888-1802. The associations have held their own, they hare not been throwing mortgaged property on the market, and we offer this as an evidence of the solidity and steadiness of Terre Haute real estate, to which may be added the steadiness of rental values for all good property—they do not pay exorbitant interest, but the owners are doing as well as they ever did.

OBEAT OAKS FROM MTTI.E ACORNS.

Think of something new and bring it to Terre Haute. As an example of bow little new things grow at this natural trade center notice "overalls." Some years ago a store-keeper in an Illinois town commenced in a small way to cut oat and make-up shirts and overalls, a trade then monopolized by the east. He found it was a business and selling out his store, be moved to Terre Haute to establish the wholesale overall trade. Oar unaccustomed people thought fire or ten cents for making a shirt or pair of overalls was very small business, but Mr. Zimmerman showed them that this really paid good weekly wages. He built up a great trade and his bandies of piece work went into hundreds of homes, making a large and entirely new income for the working

an 1 upwar is of 2,000 women are employed,

working overtime, crowded with work The Terre Haute shirts and overalls are sold east and west, as far as California. When Honolulu is in the United States we will be shipping blue denim shirts to the Japs and Chinese on Hawaiian sugar plantations.

Some years ago a brewer put about $2,500 into a little brewery on Poplar street, which has grown into an enormous plant, with a capital of $500,000, a capacity of 800,0X1 barrels a year, cold storage for 50,000 barrels, and a present trade of nearly $1,000,000 a year, and is still growing. Any trade which grows by distribution over accessible, good territory will grow at Terre Haute. It is a railroad center or hub.

Once it was claimed that Troy. N. Y., did all the laundering business because it had peculiar water. A Terre Haute furnishing dealer, (Janies Hunter), tried a few collars and cuffs in Terre Haute water, and upset the water theory. This firm pushed the laundry work until it secured about 14,000 customers, scattered through two hundred towns, some of them two hundred miles off. The railroad and express facilities of Terre Haute make it convenient for two hundred towns to have their washing done here.

A little bakery was opened some years ago to turn a few barrels of flour a week into bread and crackers. The old Howling Hall, which cost $00,000 when built, is now just large enough for Miller Bros.' bakery, and their dough mixers are run night and day, and Sunday, too, and the town and export trade for bread and crackers is immense.

A. B. Mewhinney & Co. made a little candy in one corner of their wholesale grocery house as a starter. Now their pay

voll

classes. Competitors embarked in the suburbs. It has the best laid electric rail same line and to-day Terre Haate leads all road system in the country, with a clean, others in it. Four of the big manufactur- bright-equipment of cars, and enough of

for candy making alone is $20(1 to

j?l(K) a week, according to the season, and they sell to Chicago as well as to smaller towns.

The philosopher said he could move the world with a lever, if he had some place to stand on. Terre Haute is the foothold for all kinds of trade which depends on god territory and easy distribution, and Terre Haute wares now go to California and South Africa. We are central.

TIIK KI.E.MKNTH OF RKAfTY.

From the upper* windows of the great stores, say of Root & Co., the Havens & Geddes Co. or Albrecht & Co., one looks down upon the encircling river, the leafy environment beyond it, and the distant towers and woods of St. Marys. It is a beautiful view, and is not marred by the commercial flavor of the smoke which rises from the three great distilleries, the flouring and hominy mills, the water works, pressed brick factories and iron mills, on or near the river. From the up p^r floors of Hulman's (the finest grocery warehouse in the land), or, better yet, from the Jackson ciub rooms on the upper fl or of the stately Rose Dispensary building, one sees all Terre Haute and realizes its beauty. On the west the woods and fertile fields of the Wabash bottoms, on the north the groves of Collett park, on the east the circling low wooded hills and a strip of rich, cultivated prairie in a crescent'round the city. PJxcept Main street, every street has its rows of trees to its terminus, nearly every city block, outside of solid business squares, is tree embowered. E ich street is level, hard paved with asphalt, brick or rolled gravel, the walks are pav^d, usually with artificial stone, flanked by green turf. The majority of houses set back, and green yards surround them. The center of the city shows fine houses and surroundings, trim yards and walks, but so do those distant squares where the railroad men and operatives live. How evenly the good points of the city are distributed. On a circle near the city's edge lie the Collett park's thirty acres, the towering elevator and piano factory, the Polytechnic's showy cluster, the Catholic orphan asylum, the Rose orphan home, a little beyond the city line is the beautiful Highland Lawn cemetery on the hill, and further along the woods of the future Deming park: then, just beyond the iron mills and furnace and great car works, the circle drops to the prairie below Straw berry bill, and sweeps along the treebounded horizon to the river. Within this is Terre Haute, looking like a garden the greater part of the year. Here and there rise the noble dome of the stone court house, the tall tower of the Normal school, the lofty dome of the new St. Benedict's, many steeples, high buildings, numerous brick shafts and iron smoke stacks'very pretty when wreathed in smoke that tells of bnsy workmen), even the derricks over the oil wells, and the great iron tank for the oil, fit well in the scene.

The Mail always insists that Terre Haute comes nearest the golden mean. If there is not a bandied thousand-dollar residence, nor one at half that, in the city, the city still is crowded with picturesque or beaafully built homes, and is a stranger to squalid tenements—there are none. The districts of small homes have been built ap by the bailding and loan societies and savings bank deposits with the neatest and prettiest cottages that labor ever lived in.

The city is brilliantly lighted erery night in the year from the center to the remotest city line by arc lights. It has a flltered-water system (the only one in the state with a water pressure to reach the highest roof tops, and pipes laid to the

iooNTiNfEn on sixteen Til page,