Lost places preserved in pair of photo books

Images of America: Lost Little Rock  Ray Hanley
Images of America: Lost Little Rock Ray Hanley

Hundreds of photos show Arkansas as it was a century ago in a pair of new books by state authors Ray Hanley and Chris Dorer.

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Images of America: Little Italy Chris Dorer

Hanley's Images of America: Lost Little Rock (Arcadia, $21.99) tours the city's downtown the way things looked from around 1900 to 1980. The Democrat-Gazette's daily feature Arkansas Postcard Past is by Hanley and his late brother, Steven.

"This book includes much that has been lost," Ray Hanley writes, having watched the city change for more than 40 years, "but there is hope for a brighter future."

Dorer's Images of America: Little Italy (Arcadia, $21.99) marks the centennial of the community near Wye Mountain northwest of Little Rock. Dorer is history department chairman at Central High School in Little Rock, and heads the Little Italy Centennial Committee.

The book's photos "are proof that this little place existed," Dorer writes of his home community, "and that its culture and historical impact will affect Arkansas' history for generations to come."

CROSSROADS OF ARKANSAS

A century ago, Little Rock claimed the downtown intersection of Capitol and Main was the "crossroads of Arkansas," as Hanley's book shows.

Horse-drawn buggies still clopped in the streets, but open-topped jalopies crowded the curb. Men wore three-piece suits, and they bought their smokes from under neon signs that proclaimed cigars.

One of the busiest scenes is a photo of the 100 block of Main Street around 1955: "A solid stretch of commerce," the caption reads. Automotive traffic makes way for a half dozen city buses. Bygone attractions include the Gus Blass department store.

The Blass store was famous in its time for being the first in Arkansas to install an escalator, in 1950. The building survives, but nearly everything else in the photo is gone -- today, "a huge parking lot," Hanley writes.

The book depicts times when a hamburger at the Minute Man cost 35 cents (1955), and socks were 29 cents a pair at Pfeifer's (1933).

Movie theaters were practically as common to old Little Rock as Redbox machines are now. From boxes to palaces, the images of lost theaters scroll by like a list of end credits: the Rex, the Roxy, the New, Main, Savoy, Majestic, Heights, Kempner, Palace (renamed the Capitol), Royal and Center.

The Center replaced the Royal with 1,252 seats for a single screen, Hanley writes. In 1954, it showed Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball in The Long, Long Trailer with just such a home on wheels parked outside. In 2009, the theater itself gave way to a parking lot.

City landmarks come and go, but the book highlights some of Little Rock's old-time features that appear to have been irreplaceable:

• F.W. Sanders toy and gift store on Main, its show windows full of eye-catching dolls and dishes in 1910.

• The Nut Club, a 1940s dance hall that offered Friday and Saturday "Whoopee Nite"s, with dancing to the sounds of Frankie Littlefield and his 10-piece band.

• Hamilton's Drug Store on Main, with all that it took to feel good in 1911: a soda fountain with white-uniformed attendants and a row of stools hard to count past the first dozen as the line recedes into the distance.

Hanley hopes "no more of historic downtown Little Rock will slip away, and a valuable heritage will be preserved for future generations."

THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE

Little Italy is barely a spot on today's state map. But it's a big jug of a subject in Dorer's book, Little Italy, his account of this century-enduring settlement that was famous in the days of wine and Prohibition.

The community started with five families of Italian immigrants, he writes. The rolling green hills of Pulaski and Perry counties reminded them of northern Italy. Winemakers, they planted grapes by the hundreds of acres.

"New families arrived each year," Dorer writes, "bringing names like Ghidotti, Chiaro, Zulpo, Vaccari and Carraro."

Prohibition, 1920-1933, might have stomped their chances. But the law didn't keep people from drinking so much as it created a thirst for alcohol that was safe to drink.

The settlement became "a popular destination for many of the state's most powerful politicians," Dorer writes, and the wine and cognac flowed as usual.

Grapes were so important that "Little Italy's farmers spent far more time in their vineyards and barns than they did in their homes," he writes. Children dressed up and posed for pictures in front of white-blooming vines, and everybody pitched in for the harvest.

Hard as they worked, they danced at the slightest reason to bring out an accordion, and no event topped the annual grape festival.

The festival attracted thousands of visitors. Even as Prohibition bore down on the rest of the nation, these happy campers paid five cents a cup for what came billed as "sweet grape juice," but wasn't, and 25 cents for an authentic spaghetti dinner.

Meantime, Arkansas' Little Italians built a Catholic church, made salami-like sopressa and sausage and tended their businesses -- all shown in the book's photos:

• Prominent Little Italian Gelindo Solda's store sold gasoline and tobacco as well as alcohol. The picture shows him in suit and tie, gassing up a car with a smoke in his mouth.

Solda played the bachelor-about-town in Little Italy thanks to his citified luxury of a motorcycle with a sidecar. Hair slicked back, he used this "rarely seen mode of transportation," Dorer writes, "to strike up conversation."

• Carl Bailey owned a tavern so raucous, the county made him a gun-toting deputy sheriff to keep the peace in his own establishment.

• Wine production trickled out after Prohibition, and the settlers' children looked for work in town. Domenico Zulpo had learned to make tamales from working with Mexican migrants in the Delta.

He sold -- the way his sign read -- "Hotta Males" from his cart on Little Rock's Main Street.

Style on 09/27/2015

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