So... Upon returning from our stay on South Padre Island, Texas, I wanted to look in my book, Stalking Louis Curtiss by Wilda Sandy and Larry K Hanks. I had to see if the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railroad General Offices in Kingsville, Texas were included in the locally published monograph. Turns out that the St.L.B.&M General Offices project was a Louis Curtiss design and it was not some long lost or forgotten project. There it was on page 59 and it was a black and white image cropped from the exact same photograph that was used in the post card, minus the color tinting. By the way, the building was built in 1911 and if you blow the photo up large enough you can make out FRISCO on the front of the building. Frisco was the railroad that purchased the St.L.B.&M. line.But the biggest surprise was on page 58, which depicted another Curtiss project in Kingsville, a rendering of a hotel for Fred Harvey of Harvey House fame, called Casa Gertrudis and a construction photograph of the same project renamed, Casa Ricardo.
I was disappointed to read that both the Hotel and the railroad offices were demolished sometime around 1970.Still, there were no Louis Curtiss mystery urns visible in either image.
More to come....
1 comment:
Wow..the St. Louis-San Francisco Railway bought this railroad, I had a feeling that was the case...I'm sure my father spent a lot of time in this building when he was superintendent of that division in the late 1950's, and keenly aware when it was demolished...Cool!
Post a Comment