After spending the remaining three hour drive from Kingsville to the southernmost tip of Texas being perplexed by the Louis S. Curtiss Mystery Urns and the brief fuzzy image of a "railroad station" that appeared to be a Curtiss design, I set out to do an internet search on the worlds slowest wireless internet connection from our condo. I was in search of an image of the Kingsville railroad station. After quite a few strategic shuffles of key words, some five minute waits for photo downloads and some google magic, I discovered a postcard image of my quest.It turns out that the station was not a railroad station at all, but was the headquarters or "general offices" of the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railroad (St.L.B.&M.) in Kingsville, Texas. This was the only image that I could find on the internet and it definitely was the hand of Kansas City Architectural hero Louis S. Curtiss.
But what about the mystery urns? There were none in the colorized photo postcard. Hmmm...
More to come....
6 comments:
I wonder what year it was built...looks like an all concrete building. I wonder if that railroad was acquired by the St. Louis-San Francisco(Frisco) Railway whom my Father worked for. They had a key port in the Gulf...Very cool!
Good work. Is there a way to get the images you saw at the museum?
Nate:
I plan on contacting the museum some time in the near future.
http://www.txgenweb.org/postcards/Towns/Kingsville/KingsvilleCasaRicardoHotel1915.jpg
This will show you the origin of the mystery urns. They lined the path to the Casa Ricardo hotel.
When I saw this picture on Google images, I couldn't believe it. I have an original photograph that I found in a junk shop bin that shows the general offices, complete with a few unidentified men waiting for the train. The smoke from a passing train is seen. This is definitely the same building in your postcard picture. Please follow the link below to see the photo.
http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6ssvexpFx1qzne80o1_r1_1280.jpg
Contact me at cslangham@gmail.com if you like. Cool blog!
I saw the image of the Kingsville, TX railroad offices (postcard image) and couldn't believe it. About 15 years ago, I happened to find an original vintage photograph circa 1911 that shows the offices in the background and a couple of unidentified individuals waiting for the train. You can see the smoke from the train that just passed. That's definitely the same place. The placement of the bushes and trees even match. Cool post!!
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