While I've been sheltering at home — and I certainly hope you've been doing the same — I've started looking through boxes of correspondence from readers, wondering: Why didn't I answer these?
Perhaps because it's just gotten so overwhelming. I recently checked my email and discovered that I had more than a thousand queries from readers, each of them demanding that Vance Lauderdale answer their question right away. And so, I do what I can, but sometimes I put the letters (or emails) aside, along with other oddities people send me — photographs, postcards, bottles of unusual potions and liniments, matchbooks, menus, — all of them pretty much asking the same thing: "Vance, whatever happened to this place?"
And so I found this old photograph, sent to me and wondering where this handsome building was located in Memphis.
It is indeed an interesting building, with a big sign out front announcing this is the home of The Commercial News, a publication I didn't recall. And there's certainly a lot going on here. As you can see, the building is just slathered with all sorts of centennial banners: A sign across the top announces "A Century of Service" and then you have the dates 1866 and 1966 — twice.
If that wasn't clear enough, another sign helpfully explains "One Hundred Years."
At first, I was puzzled by the odd assortment of vehicles parked out front. After all, if this photo was taken in 1966, then the subscribers visiting the newspaper offices certainly drove older model cars around town. Even a buggy!
But my reader didn't want to know WHAT the building was, he wanted to know WHERE it was, and so I searched for clues. I didn't recognize the structure, and I could see no street number or street name. Next door was the Deluxe Restaurant, but good grief, that could be anywhere. And the newspaper building was also home to a radio station, because the newspaper sign out front also announced WDAN 1490 ON YOUR DIAL.
(I was always amused by that "on your dial" part of radio and TV marketing. Where else would you search for 1490? On the telephone?)
Well, it quickly dawned on me that there was nothing here that actually proved this building, newspaper, radio station, or restaurant were actually in Memphis. And there was no clue on the back of the old photo.
In the old pre-internet days, this meant I had to hop in the Daimler-Benz, hitting the highways and byways of America, photo in hand, trying to match this image up with the buildings that I passed along my journey.
But thanks to the Internet, it took only a minute of my valuable time to learn that The Commercial News — AND radio station WDAN 1460 — weren't located in Memphis. They weren't even located in Tennessee.
Instead, the fine building you see here, celebrating "A Century of Service," was — and still is — located in Danville, Illinois (about an hour south of Chicago). More specifically, it's located at 17 West North Street (a rather confusing address, if you ask me) in the heart of downtown.
The newspaper itself is still in business and going strong, which is always a pleasant surprise to discover, when so many newspapers are struggling. The building (below) has little changed since that older photo was taken in 1966. And that's a bit surprising considering the publication's motto or mission statement — then and now carved in the stone above the entrance — was the somewhat less-than-inspiring "THE NEWSPAPER THAT DOES THINGS." Well, one of the things they did was stay in business for more than 150 years, so they must be doing something right. Based on a visit to their website, The Commercial News certainly seems to be covering the Danville community quite well.
Radio station WDAN (that "DAN" now obviously standing for Danville) is also still on the air, with the slogan "Vermillion County First." I guess that's better than "The Radio Station That Does Things." It's now a news/talk format, but I couldn't pick it up "on the dial" of the old Zenith receiver in the Lauderdale Mansion.
And the Deluxe Restaurant next door? It's still in business too, now called Ray's Deluxe, offering seafood, steaks, and pasta. The building has been modernized a bit, but looks pretty much the same.
Okay, I think I've told you enough about a newspaper, radio station, and restaurant located in Danville, Illinois. For my next post, I may actually tackle a subject that involves Memphis. But it just depends on what I find in all these boxes.
The Commercial News building as it looks today. Photo courtesy Google.
