Infinite Gold
King Edward 2005
Belhaven’s Haunted Beanery
There’s a beanery in Belhaven Heights. Over a lifespan of 80 plus years it has been host to wayfarers, a Rebel…and a ghost.
Before I get ahead of myself, let me explain what a beanery is. The term dates from the year 1887 in England and was loosely thought of as an inn for travelers on their way to further destinations. It had nothing to do with coffee or tea or a vegetable. In America, a beanery became the name of a hotel for railroad men; a place to rest, to eat, to sport or reflect on their way to further destinations. The term beanery came to mean “let’s go eat” and breakfast, the primary meal for freshly awakened sojourners, was served by “beanery queens” – waitresses, some left over from the night before. Our beanery stands at the curved intersection of Spengler and Madison Streets in Belhaven Heights. Built in 1927 as a two-story craftsman residence, it resembles a fugitive image from the Old West with a downstairs porch and upper balcony that could have welcomed the likes of Jesse James or Doc Holladay.
According to present owner Steve Colston who has done his own research on the building, the structure was purchased from Mrs. Louise Middleton by J.W. Miller in 1930 and was called Miller’s Café,
with Humphries Barbershop on the east corner. It was subsequently renamed Millers Place and remained so for a number of years. According to Colston, back in the day you could get an upstairs bed for $.35 a night and for an additional ten cents, access to a shower, probably a good investment. Plate lunches were available downstairs where the special was a large bowl of soup for a quarter. Over the years the building passed through several hands and purposes. Mrs. Louis Miller ran the restaurant in the 1940’s, while J.W. took care of upstairs. From Herbert Stair’s restaurant in 1950, it became the GM & O Beanery Restaurant in 1954, Hugh Tullos’ restaurant a year later and the Spengler Street Café through the early 1960’s. It was vacant for several years before housing the Central Systems Company in 1973. It was bought by Colston in 1976, where it served as the Steve Colston Photography Studio for 35 years.
Throughout its early history it was a rough and tumble home for hundreds of men en route to thousands of destinations along countless twists of fate. Then came the railroad. The Gulf, Mobile and Ohio (GM&O) Railroad, as later generations remember it,
began operations in 1940 when the Southern Railroad sold its Mobile & Ohio bonds to the Gulf, Mobile and Northern Railroad. The GM&O then combined with the GM&N to form the GM&O. As a point of interest, Colonel William Clark Falkner of Ripley, grandfather of Nobel Prize winner and famous Mississippi author William Cuthbert Faulkner, was instrumental in the formation of the Southern Railway in northeast Mississippi in the 1870’s. The modern day GM&O had two points of origin, New Orleans and Mobile, with headquarters in the latter. The New Orleans line passed through Jackson and connected with the Mobile tracks at Meridian. This main line then extended north through St. Louis and the Ohio valley. The GM&O passenger train which passed through Jackson was named The Rebel and a sister train, The Hummingbird, connected Memphis, Birmingham and Montgomery. The Rebel may still be remembered by older Jacksonians as the sleek red and silver locomotive which pulled into the depot under the old Pearl Street bridge west of Jefferson Street daily before heading north past the fairgrounds and by our old beanery toward the heartland of the nation. The GM&O has one great distinction among railroad lore. It developed the first diesel locomotives in the country and I can still remember their whistle and roar from my open bedroom window on Manship Street when I was in my single digits.
The GM&O tracks on the eastern edge of Jackson carried far more traffic than the Rebel. While not as exciting as the dashing passenger train, the freights conveyed endless dry goods, oil and lumber into Middle America. Rebel travelers detrained at their depot and repaired to meals at the Elite, Bon-Ton, Belmont and Mayflower Restaurants and lodged in the Heidelburg and Edwards Hotels. Soldiers were returning from the Great War (WW I) and small town girls took the train to the capitol city to visit the bustling shops that once thrived on Capitol Street. Engineers and workers on the freight lines ate nearer their work stations and many times lodged at the beanery at 1032 Spengler. This was where the railway shops were and a roundhouse just east of their night’s rest.
My own familiarity with the beanery was as a teenager in the middle 1950’s. My friend Jimmy and I would walk down the hill from his house on Madison Street and visit the place for a hamburger. My latest visit to the building, courtesy of Mr. Colston, revealed a downstairs room much smaller than I remembered when I was 15. The old bar was still there with only five stools remaining and the corners where the jukebox and pinball machines rang out their allure were filled with the dust and debris of half a century. Jimmy and I were underage – even for a hamburger in an establishment that sold beer, but the proprietor would let us stay awhile and watch the railroad men play the pinball machines for money and listen to Hank and Lefty on the jukebox before there was a Willie. It was a thrill for us to be in what we thought of as a nightclub of worldly men, not knowing or at that point in our lives caring that their temporary diversions and long-term loneliness were for only a time assuaged by a can of beer and a little steel ball. We were not allowed to go upstairs. This was probably a good thing. But had we sneaked up those stairs in the rear instead of just going home to our folks, we might have seen the ghost.
No old haunt worth its copper plumbing would be complete without a ghost. Of course our beanery has one and not only that – it’s been documented. In a feature article in The Times-Picayune’s “Dixie Magazine” dated October 28, 1978, Maybelle Gorringe interviewed owner Steve Colston who confirmed the specter.
“One day my grandmother and I were working inside the building to complete its restoration and be able to move in. I was in one room and my grandmother was working in another nearby. Suddenly, she heard footsteps overhead and called to me. I went upstairs but didn’t see anybody, but I heard the footsteps too.” Colston set about talking with neighbors about the structure. Upon authority of several informants he heard two men had met mysterious deaths there. One was literally stomped to death over a woman in an upstairs bedroom, the other fatally shot on the stairs leading up to the second floor. A former owner’s statements found echoes in the memories of other anonymous testaments. One said, “I know a fella who helped a girl escape from there after World War II, when it was a house of prostitution,” but was afraid to talk of the man who got shot on the stairs because “relatives of the man are still living and I’m afraid to talk about it.” Colston said some railroaders told him stories of police raids. One said he saw police back a paddy wagon up to the door and load it full of people arrested for gambling. On another occasion police chased a man from one of the upstairs rooms to the nearby rail yard and shot up three train cars getting him out. Other tenants told stories of curtains moving in an upstairs window, someone walking from the sink to the bed, and on another occasion a man and his business partner were inside the building when “the wind began to blow. Suddenly we heard the damndest noise you’ve ever heard. We rushed up the stairs and looked into each room. We found the ceiling had fallen in one of them.”
Colston said that several of his employees witnessed unexplained activities over the years. One said he was in an upstairs room with the door closed when the doorknob suddenly began to turn. He thought another employee was upstairs and called out. A woman who was downstairs said
she heard him and thought he must be talking to himself since no one else was in the building. Colston said light fixtures have fallen from the ceiling without apparent reason. He has also heard a mysteriously tinkling bell, and although getting used to footsteps and turning doorknobs, he still was reluctant to go upstairs at night. “Any time I do, I feel the hairs stand up on my arm and chills run down my back.” Other strange events have taken place in the old beanery over the years. The 1979 flood covered the first floor of the structure and when workmen replaced the floors they discovered human bones and a boot. Could this have been the unfortunate soul killed on the stairs? Was there a ghost? Is there one now? Could it be that being a professional photographer Colston could have a specter silhouetted on a lost negative in a forgotten drawer of his old roll-top desk? Were there footsteps in the hallway? Did the bell ring? Did the doorknob turn and voices mumble in the night? Or was it just the wind?
Trains have always held a fascinating place in our nation. From the Union Pacific to the super trains in the west and the northeast, these serpentine and silver ships of the land have fired the imagination with adventure, danger and riches. Jimmie Rodgers and Arlo Guthrie sang of them, Thomas Wolfe wrote of them and pioneers rode them to new lands and opportunities from coast to coast. Along their tracks are the lives of the millions they connect. In depots and freight yards across our country are the chapters of our history. There were thousands of beaneries and millions of patrons and countless memories woven along the rails. And so our beanery stands today and after 88 years still remembers when it was Miller’s Place or home to Louise Middleton or when Steve Colston was young and making pictures of a vibrant Jackson. Now it silently looks over the rear of a barbecue restaurant, swaths of Johnson grass and a warehouse grown over by weeds. Its architecture is unchanged but gone are its bedrooms, its beer and fries, its colorful patrons and the old jukebox of country favorites. The roundhouse has passed into history, the tireless railroad workers and vagrants to their thousand destinations and the girls and roustabouts from the second floor to the denouement of their lives. Not even the tracks remain or the water tank or the steam.
Yet, if you look closely at an upstairs window on the east side of the balcony, you might imagine Maybelle’s ghost, watching and listening itself for the thunder and rumble of the Rebel, the clash of switching boxcars and that mournful whistle of an early diesel locomotive heading north toward the river trestle, pulling behind it a time forever gone, where only an empty beanery and a ghost remain.
Bill Harvey
February 2012, revised March 2015
Copyright Bill Harvey, 2015
Praise the Lord Day Care
Lavender Tunnel
Sylvandell: More than a Myth
Tucked away in the environs of our historic neighborhood is a bit of Greek mythology. A wooded area at the eastern end of Pinehurst Street was once the dream of Jackson land developer L.L. Mayes who saw in its forests, hills and streams a domicilable setting for young families to begin their lives. Mr. Mayes began the development of Sylvandell in the late 1920’s and many of its homes of varied architectural styles may be found in the 1400 block of St. Mary Street (east side) and around the southeastern corner of Laurel Street to Laurel Street Park.
Pinehurst Street (named for the Pinehurst subdivision) was cleared and developed around 1915 as an integral product of Captain William M. Gillespie’s land purchase prior to the Civil War. Captain Gillespie moved to Jackson from Tennessee and for $840 purchased a country place consisting of 40 acres along the “Canton Dirt Road”. The Gillespie Place, which was the origin of the Belhaven neighborhood, was later known to be comprised of portions of North State, Arlington, Hazel and Wells (Poplar) Streets. After the captain’s death the old Gillespie place burned, but was known to have been surrounded by beautiful woodlands so dense only the gables of the house could be seen from the road. It was said that Captain Gillespie left a fortune buried on the grounds of his homestead and thus the land became the clandestine haunts of a number of treasure hunters shovels in hand. That legend, however, is a tale for another day.
Prior to the mid-twenties, that portion of Pinehurst Street that developed east along the southern campus of Belhaven College and on to St. Ann Street was previously known as Harper Street. At its terminus at newly-developed St. Mary (‘s) Street, it dipped into hostile typography: ravines and ditches, hillocks and gulches, filled with a multitude of critters and cries in the night. Most potential developers viewed it as worthless terrain. But not L.L. Mayes, then living with his family in a neoclassical home designed by Emmett Hull, which still stands on the southwest corner of Peachtree and Pinehurst Streets.
Mayes saw a residential niche in the six acres he initially purchased in early 1928. He was sensitive to the needs of young families who either could not afford to buy or preferred to rent their starter home. Mayes described his acreage as a “beauty spot where one would expect to hear Pan playing on his reed pipes and to see fairies and wood nymphs dancing in the dells to his irresistible music.” He therefore commissioned Mr. Joseph Barras, sculptor, to design a concrete entrance of wide steps anchored by nymphs and leading down to the bucolic setting which became Laurel Street Park. Behind the homes on St. Mary and Laurel Streets there were woodlands to the west and a meadow to the east. A descending natural stairway led from the entrance to a simple bridge and winding walkways built of crushed gray slag with white borders which dropped down to ravines and undergrowth and a “babbling brook”. The walkways coursed through rustic walls emulating old English country sides. Interspersed were several benches and tables also designed by Mr. Barras and cast by the N.W. Wright Stone Works that also cast the figures for the main entrance. Homes were built of buff brick, trimmed in white and topped with light apple green tiled roofs. Both the front and rear of the homes were set in a forested atmosphere designed to be attractive from the street.
Each new home was comprised of a living room, dining room, one or two bedrooms, tile bathroom, kitchen, basement, storage attic, “warm air plant”, electric cooking stove and hardwood floors. They averaged 1,000-1,200 square feet and according to the 1930 census, rent ranged from $65 per month at 1466 St. Mary to $85 per month at 1436, with rates based on the overall structure and size of the lot. There was a screened side porch for hot summer evenings, later closed in by most when AC arrived in the late 40’s. Community garages were built at suitable points so as not to take space and esthetics away from the original building. The homes were furnished prior to rental for according to an ad by the R.E. Kennington Company in 1929, “it has been our pleasure to furnish the shades, rugs, draperies and furniture for the living rooms, bedrooms and dining rooms of the beautiful Sylvandell homes.”
In addition to Kennington’s store, there were a number of local companies, firms and individuals who contributed to the ambience of Sylvandell. Among these were Enterprise Furnace Manufacturing, A.F. Nash, plumber, Eagle Lumber and Supply Company, Stephenson Brick Company, Jackson Lumber Company, Ricks Storage Company, McCleland, Addkison & Bauer Hardware, D.P. Denny, contractor, E.W. Cook Lighting Fixtures, Ray Wright Sheet Metal, Capital Paint and Glass Company, Moseley, Nelson & Smith Insurance, C.A. Hollis, builder, Ellis Stewart, painter and decorator and Planters Lumber Company.
While not directly in the Sylvandell plat, some residents remember a small building at the top of the hill on Laurel Street where some stone steps now lead to a vacant lot. The structure near this lot is reputed to have been a neighborhood library and careful examination of this garage building shows where this might have been possible. This was most likely a private effort on the part of a literary resident. It was a small but meaningful service to surrounding residents. But whose effort was it? Who cared enough to take the time? Who now knows?
Corinne Fox is a current resident of Sylvandell. As a former Jackson city planning director, she is professionally familiar with neighborhoods, architecture, codes and building policies. She has owned and lived in her home on St. Mary Street since 1971. Corinne knows the history of the development and remembers the remains of the alley dividing portions of her block and the community garage behind what is now an apartment unit on Laurel Street. For 41 years she has never regretted moving from other Jackson locations to Sylvandell and learning of its history since eye physician Dr. W.L. Hughes was her house’s first tenant in 1930. Other early residents in these homes according to the census were Bernard Lowe (fire insurance agent), P.R. Galbreath (automobile dealer), Donald Munroe (geologist and weatherman), Hamilton McRae (wholesale hardware), Freeland Gale (store clerk), Lacey Hughes (dentist) and Ernest Laird (bank cashier). “The people who settled this area were of some prominence,” she says, “and still are today through their myriad interests, achievements and gifts to this community.”
“I love being in this house,” she responded when asked of her home. “This is an area with an ideal mix of people – young, old, all income levels and interests in life. I feel safe here with furnishings of my earlier life and among friends who are part of my life today. My new neighbor is an FBI agent. No wonder I feel so safe!”
Special Agent Robert H. Ruby, who grew up in Starkville, came to Jackson from New Orleans about a year and a half ago. He kept hearing good things about “a small town setting (Belhaven), sitting in the middle of Jackson”. He at first considered building a new house on a vacant lot, but later decided to renovate an existing structure in Fondren or Belhaven. A Belhaven realtor told him about one of the Sylvandell homes which had fallen into serious disrepair. Upon first inspection of the property Robert said “no way”. But the more he learned of the neighborhood the more determined he was to live not only in Belhaven but that very house. His decision was made. “It took 13 months from the time I obtained the property to get the multitude of clearances from the city which had originally wanted to demolish the existing structure. I spoke with a builder who is college buddy and he told me he could make the house look like new while keeping the original appearance.” The task is now complete and Robert has moved into the house which is a showplace and he plans to have it as his “home forever”.
When resurrecting old structures one of the first things you want to know is if there is a ghost. “Of course there is a ghost,” Robert says, “one of a former tenant, and he welcomed me with sights and sounds the first week I lived here.” The first night, while Robert was sleeping, there was the sound of a picture falling from the wall. He turned on the lights, investigated but could not find where this had occurred. The second night he thought he heard a key turn in the front door. Again, no evidence. On the third night there was a ‘crash’. No motive could be found. Although there have been no incidences since, the new tenant feels confident he has been accepted by his ghost and there will be no further contact.
You may now wish to pause for a moment and enter the heart and thoughts of the young couple viewing their new dwelling for the first time some 80 years ago. You can imagine their dreams of starting their life together in prosperous times, planning their family and roads to success. You might think of them walking hand in hand on the pathways along the stream, pointing out the hues in the foliage and discussing improvements and the larger home they would one day own. You can also see in the mind’s eye the development of this neighborhood and the foundations of its larger future.
The fairies and nymphs are gone now. Well, almost. The concrete foundations of Pan’s pipes remain crumbling at the dead-end of Pinehurst and the steps and little footbridge across the brook and into the park have returned to the soil. Sylvandell has given way to Greater Belhaven. Laurel Street Park is entered from the north. The remaining homes are now of varied hues and the woods have grown over the little footpaths. Driveways and garages have replaced the hidden community carports originally earmarked for resident’s vehicles. Pan and his music have gone back into the flocks and shepherds from whence they came. But a single nymph remains, hidden along a nearby driveway in the vicinity of her once statuesque beauty. She is quiet now and pensive, recalling her origins in folklore and proud of her singular role of helping frame one of Belhaven’s most classical neighborhoods.
Nan Ertle Harvey is a native of Yazoo County, a graduate of Mississippi College and has lived with her husband Bill in the Belhaven neighborhood since 1994. She worked in a research position in the Department of Microbiology at UMMC, retiring in 2003. Nan’s hobbies are photography, nature study and family research. She is a volunteer at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. Bill Harvey is a native Jacksonian, living most of his life in Belhaven. A MSU Bulldog, he has had careers in journalism, education and as development director of the Andrew Jackson Council, Boy Scouts of America. Bill enjoys photography, music, writing articles for neighborhood sources and sharing experiences with friends at a local coffee shop. (Text copyright Bill and Nan Harvey, used by permission of Bill and Nan Harvey)
Sources:
1) “Keith’s Beautiful Home Magazine”, Jackson Daily News, March 3, 1929
2) Corinne Fox, Sylvandell resident
3) Robert H. Ruby, Sylvandell resident
4) 1930 Census (Hinds County, Mississippi, Beat 1; City of Jackson, Ward 5)
Coliseum Reflection
Shady Nook
How many of us have stopped at a gas station with cross front facing gable roof porticos supported by Greek Doric columns? How about one with an entablature below the pediment of the gable? Sure you have if you have dropped by the real estate office of Henry LaRose at 944 Poplar Blvd. or gassed up at 1301 Hazel Street and had a Popsicle back in the day.
The Shady Nook Service Station was built in 1928 (columns added in 1933) at Poplar & Hazel by A. Hays Town, a Louisiana architect who was getting his career started with N.W. Overstreet in Jackson. Mr. Town lived 101 years and designed over a thousand buildings throughout the country including Bailey Magnet School in 1938. Through the years his creation served as a provider of Sinclair (remember the dinosaur on the road maps?), Conoco, Phillips 66 and Chevron oil products. Later the building became the renovated home for the design, planning and selling of homes and office space for new horizons.
A caption under a photo in the July 29, 1937 edition of the Jackson Daily News described Shady Nook as “The only northeast Jackson residential section concern of its kind. Here the autoist can get everything in the way of expert auto service. This includes tire repairing, washing, greasing, and general lubrication. There are hundreds of satisfied customers who trade here exclusively.”
Through the years Shady Nook had numerous managers and product providers. The first was Robert U. McDaniel in 1928, followed in 1930 by R.L. Foster. That was in the days when it had only the one regular gas pump. Ethyl had not yet arrived. In five year intervals there were C.H. McKeithen & Samuel Reid (1935), H.H. Cutrer (1940), jobber Hugh S. Williford (1945), Roy Daffener (1950), W. Fay Demmings (1955), George M. Hill (1960), Jack DerMoushegian (1965), and Merle Ainsworth (1967). The final listing of Shady Nook as a service station was in the 1969 Jackson City Directory with W.B. Tull as manager. Following the final year as an independent neighborhood service station, Shady Nook remained closed until Goodman and Mockbee Architects bought it in 1978. When Thomas Goodman and Sambo Mockbee adapted the structure for themselves, two draftsmen and a secretary a lot of work was needed to convert the old gas and oil format to a modern, odor-free office. “We had no problem with the conversion,” said Goodman, “except to pull eight 5,000 gallon gas tanks out of the ground. One of them still had gasoline in it and we had to sleep with it overnight.”
Goodman and Mockbee moved on to larger quarters in 1980 and the building was sold to Tommy Thames, where it remained until 1985 as J.H. Thames Real Estate. For a number of years the building remained vacant or served as temporary housing for neighborhood events or a political headquarters (Dick Molphus in 1997). Henry LaRose moved into 944 Poplar on November 30, 1997 where his office remains today.
But how did Mr. McDaniel’s old Sinclair station become Shady Nook? Ah. Therein hangs a tale with its origins as nebulous as a curl of smoke. Down around the corner on Hazel and up Pinehurst a block or so was this all-girls school we know as Belhaven College.
Back in the Roaring Twenties, the matrons who guarded their little flock of princesses had to be careful where their charges would stray if not carefully supervised. Consequently, a number of local Jackson day and night spots were declared off-limits as they could tempt the unwary with transgressions such as cigarettes or beer or – God forbid – unchaperoned men. Shady Nook, however, was new and after all, a service station, not an alehouse so it was a time before guardians of virtue at the nearby college got around to issuing a forbidden designation for the facility. Thomas Goodman did a little research on all this before moving in.
It seems the little service station on the corner had become a hangout for the Belhaven girls. In addition to gasoline sales, the establishment had a small grocery store inside which sold candy, gum, ice cream, soft drinks and…cigarettes. It seemed that some of the girls would find their way down Hazel Street after class to the store and purchase a pack of smokes, lighting them up behind the store just like Bogie and Bacall. One of the girls was a student named (Mrs. Matthew) O’Riley, later Goodman’s third grade teacher. According to Goodman, It was Ms. O’Riley who suggested the name Shady Nook to the new owner and the name has stuck to this day.
Over the years many of the older residents of the Belhaven neighborhood remember their association with Shady Nook. Mr. Bob Canizaro recalls when he used his grass mowing money to buy Fudge sickles. Young Billy Harvey would take his bike by to air up the tires and buy a coke from a primitive drink machine where you slid your bottle down a little horizontal track and pulled up a spacer to get your soda. Kids would come by on their way to Laurel Street Park on Saturday mornings for a pack of Nabs or a bag of peanuts and it was always a good stop after school for an ice cream cone. All the while station attendants pumped $.25 gas, wiped windshields and checked the battery and oil. There was a bay on the left where cars were washed. The opposing space on the right was where cars were serviced and tires repaired. There was a counter in front for displays of combs and bobby pins. There were glass jars for candy and peanuts. There were some potted plants around for “atmosphere”. A few old trees were on the right and rear of the building shading the tiled roof.
Today Shady Nook is the real estate office of Henry LaRose, who first learned of the building’s history while dating Ann Tull in 1963. Her father Bailey Tull was then an employee of the service station. “As I walk up the front walk each morning,” Henry says, “I give thanks to God that I work here. Anyone with a passion for Belhaven and with a real estate license could walk into this building and make a good living.”
Today the trees are larger or gone. The gas sells down on State Street for over $3 a gallon. Gum, candy and Dixie cups no longer cost a nickel and cigarettes are more than the gasoline. Henry has maps, computers and modern lighting. The telephones ring with a Led Zep riff instead of the old bell you could hear for a city block. There’s an arch now in front and the potted plants are gone, but never the memories. We hope that as long as there is a corner of Poplar and Hazel there will be a Shady Nook; that behind the modern façade of tiles and sheet rock and air conditioned comfort, there will be within the eight inch walls old grease spots and tire patch burns and perhaps an initial or two of some small boy who parked his bike long enough for the attendant to apply a hot patch to his tire puncture or that suspicious curl of smoke wafting up from that risqué co-ed entering womanhood with a Chesterfield like the one she saw Ingrid Bergman wave about at Rick’s Place the week before at the Paramount.
Shady Nook: It’s down at Henry LaRose’s place. For 87 years it has been a convenience and a part of this place we call Belhaven. Like many of us, it has a new façade and has stood the test of time.
Bill and Nan Harvey, August 2012
Nan Ertle Harvey is a native of Yazoo County, a graduate of Mississippi College and has lived with her husband Bill in the Belhaven neighborhood since 1994. She worked in a research position in the Department of Microbiology at UMMC, retiring in 2003. Nan’s hobbies are photography, nature study and family research. She is a volunteer at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. Bill Harvey is a native Jacksonian, living most of his life in Belhaven. A MSU Bulldog, he has had careers in journalism, education and as development director of the Andrew Jackson Council, Boy Scouts of America. Bill enjoys photography, music, writing articles for neighborhood sources and sharing experiences with friends at a local coffee shop. (Text copyright Bill and Nan Harvey, used by permission of Bill and Nan Harvey.)
Sources:
(1) Shady Nook Photo: Jackson Daily News July 29, 1937
(2) “The Shady Nook Gets a New Lease on Life” by Lynda Smalbout, Clarion Ledger, May 14, 1979
(3) “Life After Death for Gas Stations?” by Andy Kanangiser, Jackson Daily News, Dec. 20, 1979
(4) Interview with Henry LaRose, LaRose Realty, August 27, 2012
(5) Narrative draft, application to U.S. Dept. of the Interior, National Park Service/National Register of Historic Places, August 20, 2012, p. 197
(6) LaRose Realty photo: Bill Harvey
First Christian Church Blue
King Edward East
