the great hotel hunt- the ongoing story of my new old steamer trunk

My recent acquisitions included an old trunk. A real handsome devil with two vintage labels from the same place, both damaged and each with a partial address. As a former researcher, I hit the trail to find some provenance for this trunk.









There was a name on the end, Russell Clark of New Orleans and I did find an actor in the 1920's with this name. Could be the same guy, but I wanted to work on the labels before I decided it was his.

So on to the label and the internet.




I pieced together the two labels in photoshop to see if I could pull any more info out of the labels. I knew I would be able to complete the address, though I was guessing not the establishment.

 

So, together, they read Fourteen East 60th Street and then I have an EA and a big missing space and a BCOCK with an illustration that looks like a street scene.

 

I started with the address, without a city or state to see what would come up. Perhaps there is a hotel still in that location, or a train station.  And, I can up with the address for flagship store for Barney's in NewYork! It is a cool old looking building and the street is Madison Ave. I also found other businesses with that address including The Library of America and the Central Park Conservancy. Not from or in NY, I'm not sure how all this plays out. Maybe the building spans the street to the avenue since all three business claim that address on Citysearch... not that that is really advancing my cause.

 

I searched the history of the building that Barney's is in and I have contacted the conservancy as well as a blog about New York City's historic buildings hoping they can point me!

 

 

Oddly I also found an e-book poorly, poorly formatted... so poor that I cannot tell exactly what the subject is. Too bad, because it could be exactly what I need. There is an entry that reads like this:

 

 

Fourteen East 60th street, 156 rooms, 84 baths. Eager &

Babcock, proprietors; Theodore Fassig, steward; Felix
Delill, chef. 

This appears to be a hotel with 156 rooms and the proprietors would fit the EA and the BCOCK on the label to my luggage... but what is this place! What kind of food did Felix Delill cook? When was Theodore Fassig the steward? Was is fancy? Was it an apartment hotel?


I still do not know, but hopefully I will soon. In the mean time, here are some detail shots of the trunk... currently airing on the patio.

Historic preservation meet LEED-AP at the Montevallo hardware store

So, I was dovetailing my commitments to the University of Montevallo's alumni board meeting and doing my homework of documenting a historical interior for my research class. I decided to do lobby of the first school building, built in 1851, because that's where my meeting was. I remembered everything, but my measuring tape. So, I stopped into Holcombe's Lumber and Hardware, just across the RR tracks in Montevallo, to pick one up. And the man at the counter was asking questions of the two clerks about the smelly nature of oils or acrylics and which is less and getting no where, when I chime in... "I think you are looking for a low-VOC paint, it's really the volatile organic compounds that make the smell and are so bad for you, not the type of paint" Ummm, ladies are not supposed to chime into man-talk in a hardware store. The clerk informed me that he was looking for paint to seal a concrete wall. I didn't see that the use made a difference, so I just smiled and nodded. He then reluctantly agree that I was actually right and well... "concrete sealing paint doesn't come in low-VOC yet."

Mmm hmmm, that's what I thought, mister.