\nI repeat: Always document your pictures.
\nFew things are more frustrating than being confronted with a pile of photographs that don’t have dates, don’t have addresses, don’t include names of the people in them, don’t record the event at which the picture was taken . . . you get the idea.\u00a0 We always assume we’ll remember, but twenty or forty or eighty years later, they fall into the clutches of people like Marie and I, and we wring our hands in despair and try to create context by tracking down the model years of the cars and studying what you’re wearing.\u00a0 If you don’t want to be remembered for your 1978 Toyota Celica or your winged hair, give us something else by which to identify the picture!
\nThe following was less problematic than many of our pictures because, well, at least it’s a hospital, and it has some very good clues.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/library.tmc.edu\/mcgovern\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2011\/06\/blair-sanitarium-15001.jpg\" "\\"Blair")
<\/a>This is Blair’s Sanitarium, which was located just north of the downtown area in the early twentieth century. Miraculously, somebody left us these two pictures with . . . documentation!<\/p>\n It seems that the Sanitarium building had a colorful history as the former Natchez Hotel and Bell Tower Saloon.\u00a0 Phil Montgomery, the HRC archivist, and I agree that it looks more like a saloon, with that corner front door and the wide, gingerbread-trimmed, galleries, than a hospital.\u00a0 I couldn’t find any references to either of those establishments (I did find a Bell Tower Salon <\/em>in Reading, Pennsylvania, but I doubt they want to be confused with a former saloon). It’s difficult to tell because this is a photograph of a photograph, but the lapel pin appears to be a Masonic emblem.\u00a0 The collar on his shirt would have been detachable.\u00a0 It’s possible that this was taken around the time he came to work for the Houston Academy of Medicine, which would have made it more likely to find its way to us. by Alethea Drexler, archives assistant Marie Brannon, one of our volunteers, has been doing a great job sorting through some of our intimidating collection of photographs.\u00a0 What is the first lesson learned by projects such as this?\u00a0 Always document your pictures. I repeat: Always document your pictures. Few things are more frustrating than being confronted […]<\/p>\n
\nThere are three things that I want you to notice in this picture.\u00a0 One is that there are two buggies and a car on the street to the right; the car is important.\u00a0 Second: Notice the locations of the electrical and telephone poles.\u00a0 Last: Take a good look at the neighboring buildings.\u00a0 The grocery store and hotel across the street has distinctive Italianate trim, and there is a low, Romanesque-style building on the next block, to the right in the photo.\u00a0 It has an archway over the door.
\nI found a reference to Dr. Blair in a Standard Blue Book, Texas Edition, 1920<\/a>[1], posted online by the Internet Archive:
\n“Blair, John M., Houston ; Physician and Surgeon. Propr. of Blair’s Sanitarium. 1212 to 1220 Liberty Avenue ; phone Preston 9876. Home address, 1220% Liberty Avenue. Born in Indiana. February 4, 1859. Educated at Rush College, Medical Department. Chicago University; degree. M. D. Member of Masonic Blue Lodge and Scottish Rite, and Caledonian Society. Ancestry, >*< -i i Teh. Served during the war in the Reserve Corps. Member of Indiana Legislature, year 1892-93. “<\/em>
\nDr. Blair is entry #1760 in the McGovern Research Center’s Gazetteer[2]<\/a>.\u00a0 It supports the assertion that he bought the building in 1900.\u00a0 It was still listed as Blair’s Sanitarium in the 1930 census<\/a>[3], so it was apparently a comparatively long-lived institution.
\nHere is another shot.\u00a0 It’s not legible at this resolution, but the street number above the door is 1212.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>
\nThis must have been an established part of town even a hundred years ago.\u00a0 None of these were new buildings.\u00a0 We know that the Sanitarium had at least two past lives, and Italianate and Romanesque are architectural styles that peaked in the third quarter and last quarter of the nineteenth century, respectively.\u00a0 It’s interesting, too, to see both buggies and cars on the street: The state of transportation was in transition.
\nDocumentation can be tricky, even when it’s helpful.\u00a0 The given address of 1301 Nance doesn’t fit with the 1212 that is clearly visible above the building’s door in the original photograph, and the estimated photograph date of 1900 is too early.\u00a0 How do we know it’s too early?
\nThe car.\u00a0 Any car in a picture would have been rare in 1900.\u00a0 Houston was probably a big enough city to have had some cars in 1900, but the car in the picture is closer to a 1910 model, so this was likely taken in the early ‘Teens.
\nLuckily, we do know that Dr. Blair practiced at the corner of Liberty and Nance Streets.\u00a0 Google Maps sends us on a wild goose chase when we search for “1212 Liberty”, which suggests that the street no longer exists.\u00a0 A search on “1301 Nance”, however, takes us to a location in the shadow of I-10<\/a>[4] East, near the Last Concert Caf\u00e9 and the St. Arnold’s Brewing Company.\u00a0 (The red inverted teardrop indicates 1301 Nance.)
\nIf we zoom in, we’ll see that Liberty Street is now Rothwell Street, which explains why the first search didn’t work.\u00a0 “1212 Rothwell”, though, moves us west one block to that narrow sliver[5]<\/a> of ground across the street from “M Architects”.
\nThings get really fun when we switch to Google Maps’ street view<\/a>[6].\u00a0 The Sanitarium is gone, replaced by a support pillar for an exit ramp for I-10.
\n(Google Maps, it seems, refuses to play nicely with the street view.\u00a0 To see it, look at the street address listed on the left side if your screen.\u00a0 You’ll see options “Directions”, “Search nearby”, “Save to map”, and “More”.\u00a0 Click on “More” and select “Street view” from the pull-down menu.\u00a0 Use the arrows within the circle in the upper left corner of the street view to rotate the image so you can see all 360 degrees.)<\/strong>
\nHowever, the Brooklyn Hotel is still there, though in a drastically altered state, and the Romanesque building is still visible in the background.\u00a0 Oh, and the telephone poles are in more or less the same locations!
\nThe Gazetteer entry also tells us that he was the president of the Houston Academy of Medicine in 1915, and that he served at some point as editor for the journal Southwestern Medicine.
\nIt also tells us that he’s P-2484 in the McGovern photo collection[7]:<\/p>\n<\/a>
\n[1] Standard Blue Book, Texas Edition, 1920<\/a>, online through the Internet Archive<\/a>.
\n[2] Houston Academy of Medicine-Texas Medical Center Library<\/a>, John P. McGovern Historical Research Center, Gazetteer of Texas Physicians<\/a> on the digital commons<\/a>.
\n[3] 1930 Census<\/a>, Harris County, Texas, Enumeration District 101-66, online at us-census.org<\/a>.
\n[4], [5], [6] Google Maps<\/a>.
\n[7] Houston Academy of Medicine-Texas Medical Center Library<\/a>, John P. McGovern Historical Research Center<\/a> photograph collection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"