I came across this nice photograph, taken in 1933, showing a Cotton Carnival children's parade as the boys and girls marched southward down Main Street.
Gosh, look at the crowds! The view is looking north, towards the intersection of Main and Madison. You can make out the distinctive facade of the Kress Building, with its large vertical sign, on the left side of the street. In the far distance, also on the west side of the street, the tallest building must be the old Claridge Hotel.
On top of the Kress Building is a huge sign for D.A. Fisher Insurance, with their slogan, "Suppose You Have a Fire Tonight," which always sounded a bit threatening to me. Kind of like when a mobster walks into your business and says, "Yep, mighty nice place you've got here. Sure would be a shame if anything happened to it."
Other signs visible along the right (or east) side of Main include Mulford's Jewelers, Stevens Sandwich Shop, and (hard to read) Petakee Jewelers.
The large building just in front here, where you can see people sitting at their desks, is the old Bank of Commerce Building, which later became the Commerce Title Building. It's still standing today, converted to apartments, with Cafe Keogh located in the original bank lobby.
But here's the mystery. Where was the photographer standing when he (or she) took this high shot? Judging from the other buildings, he was at least on the sixth or seventh floor, or hanging from a seventh-floor window.
But if you go to this exact location today, as I have done, all the buildings to the south of the Bank of Commerce Building are flush with the sidewalk -- in other words, they are also flush with the front of that building. And yet, this photograph seems to have been taken from a building with a setback from the street. How else to explain why you can see two rows of windows all the way up the side of the bank building?
Also, the structures along the street today are only three stories tall. The former Wm. Len Hotel does stand considerably taller, but it's a bit farther away, and it doesn't have windows on the north side. It DOES have a single balcony (odd, that there's only one) on the front of the building, but it's a bit higher than this photo would seem to indicate, AND as I have said, it is flush with the front of the bank building.
All I can think is that sometime in the 1930s, a seven-story (or higher) building was standing about two doors down from the old Bank of Commerce Building, and our photographer stood on the roof, or some kind of overhang, to take this great shot.
Have you ever seen so many people on Main Street? And I hope you notice that, then and now, trolley tracks ran down the street.
