Corpus Christi History by Murphy Givens
Corpus Christi History is published
Wednesdays. Murphy Givens also sits on
the Caller-Times editorial board and can be contacted at givensm@caller.com
Wednesday, August 2, 2000
Corpus Christi's downtown area in 1883
Reading a copy of the first edition of the Corpus Christi Caller, dated Jan. 21, 1883, I notice that most of the business ads did not list an address, not even a street.
It's understandable. Corpus Christi in 1883 was a small town of 3,000. People didn't need to be told that John Hall's tin shop was next to Mrs. Merriman's boarding house. People knew where the stores were. They didn't have that many to keep in mind. There were 48 businesses in 1883, most of them concentrated in a few square blocks below the bluff.
The top taxpayer in the city then was Richard King (he died two years later). Top firms in 1883 were bankers Doddridge and Davis; Norwick Gussett's wool and hide business; lumber dealer E.D. Sidbury; J.B. Mitchell, hardware dealer; banker John Woessner; and dry goods merchants Morris Lichtenstein and Julius Henry.
Some of the city's grandest homes were perched on the bluff, looking down on the city below. There were a few businesses on the bluff. Jose Acebo, who came here from Spain in 1855, had a dry goods and grocery store on the bluff. There was a blacksmith and wheelwright shop on Antelope Street, A. A. Myers, which specialized in painting and upholstering fine carriages.
The town center in 1883 was Market Hall between Schatzel and Peoples on Mesquite. Market Hall housed city offices, fire station, and several business stalls, including Dreyer's and Gutierrez's meat markets. The second floor is where dances were held. There was a watch tower and fire bell on top of Market Hall.
The streets were dirt and when it rained the Victoria clay became almost impassable. The big delivery wagons would bog down in the deep gumbo. The wagon wheels caked up and had to be scraped.
But there were some civic improvements. Mayor John Baptist Murphy had drainage ditches dug to the bay to drain the downtown streets. He used city jail prisoners to dig the ditches; those who declined to work were fed bread and water only.
There were no electric lights; stores and homes were lit by kerosene lanterns, which worked well enough in the winter, but barely defined the darkness in the summer when the windows and doors were open. The streets also had kerosene lanterns, which the lamplighter lit at sundown and extinguished in the morning.
A few stores were made of shellcrete, a local speciality, but most were wood-frame buildings with wooden sidewalks and porch overhangs.
There was no water system; that was 10 years away. Homes and stores had cisterns that were filled with roof runoff when it rained. The big round cisterns were made of shellcrete or cypress planks; they were partially submerged and usually had a plank covering to keep out boys and dogs.
When it didn't rain, people bought water from water carriers called "barrileros." Water sold for 25 cents to $1 a barrel, depending on how bad the drought was. The water was shipped in by railroad tank car from Agua Dulce Creek.
In a city of wooden buildings, fire-fighting was important. The city's volunteer fire departments pumped water from the bay. Downtown streets ending at the bay had fire piers where the fire wagons could roll out to lower their hose ends. On the bluff, the firemen had to rely on cistern water.
There were signs of progress. Western Union had arrived. The Tex-Mex Railroad was two years old. The town had a transit system, which consisted of mule-drawn "herdic" coaches, named after the inventor, Peter Herdic. Local people called them "herdies." The St. James Hotel on Chaparral advertised in the Caller that "Herdics pass the House to and from the depot.''
The puzzle I was trying to figure out was where the major stores and homes were located in the downtown area. I used a sort of triangulation to locate a few places. The sources include the first edition of the Caller, which did list the location of some firms, rare photos of street scenes, and the 1885 city map prepared by the Sanborn Map Company. This map identifies a few places by name, but most are listed as dwellings, dry goods stores, and so on.
Filling in part of the historical map of Corpus Christi's downtown area will begin next week at the corner of William and Mesquite.
(This is the first of three parts. Next Wednesday will include a column on Mesquite Street in 1883. The following Wednesday will include Chaparral and Water streets.)
(Murphy Givens can be reached by phone at 886-4315 or by e-mail at givensm@caller.com.)
