Earliest Photograph of Register Full of Detail

The Register Building
Photo Courtesy Historic Mobile Preservation Society

Enlarged Balcony Section

Enlarged Sidewalk Section

This photo of the Mobile Register building at the southwest corner of Royal and St. Michael streets is probably the earliest image of the newspaper and is full of interesting detail. What’s most interesting, though, are the things that aren’t known about the photo.

The Mobile Register bought the building in 1872 and remained there until 1932. The building is believed to have been constructed in 1804, and that the city entertained the Marquis de Lafayette there on his visit to Mobile in 1825.

During its ownership by William R. Hallett in 1830s, the building was known as the Lafayette Hotel. In 1861, the title passed to Caroline Roper who changed the name of the building to the Roper House. The building continued as a hotel until purchased by the Mobile Register in July 1872.

Before the newspaper moved into the building, workmen gutted the building and then braced it with iron beams and pillars. On the first floor, accountants occupied the front rooms and the printing presses the rear. On the second floor were the offices of the publisher and editorial staff. Compositors, who sat at type cases 20 hours a day in shifts, occupied the entire third floor, one great room facing Royal Street. The news and telegraph room occupied a third-floor wing. The paper’s Agricultural Department worked in small rooms under the roof dormers.

A fire in January 1876 destroyed most of the block in which the Register was located. The Register and the Bank of Mobile were the only two buildings left standing in the block. The south wall of the Register cracked and buckled in the fire, leaving the newspaper with about $32,500 in damages. The Register removed the iron work and remodeled the exterior before 1920.

We don’t know who the photographer was, when the photo was taken, or what kind of photo process the cameraman used. The answers to those questions would help explain why the photo was taken and who the people in the photo are.

The photo appears to have been staged by the photographer. All of the men on the second-floor balcony, except for the man on the right with his back to the camera, are looking directly at the camera. They were aware that they were being photographed. The man with his back turned seems to be deliberately ignoring the camera, another indication the men knew they were being photographed. Also, if they had not remained still, their images would have been blurred like that of some of the men on the first floor. So they had been told to hold still.

Because the Register’s publisher, editors, and newsmen worked from offices on the second floor of the building, these men are probably the paper’s news managers. Of the seven men on the balcony all but two are wearing top hats.

The men outside the first floor of the building also are posing and looking at the camera. They may have worked in the accounting rooms behind them. The photo isn’t sharp enough to clearly make out the hat types. There seems to be a variety of styles, Cahill, low John Bull, and perhaps low derbies.

The workman with the wheeled dolly appears to be dropping off fresh packages of blank newsprint sheets for the presses. But it’s not clear why he’d stack them on the sidewalk rather than take them into the building. The Register probably also did job printing on smaller presses and these packages may have been for that service.

If those packages on the sidewalk are blank newsprint sheets, then that would indicate the Register was still using it double-cylinder, sheet-fed Hoe steam press. In December 1888, the Register installed a $10,000 Goss web-perfecting press. This press used rolls of newsprint rather than sheets and could print 20,000 four-page newspapers an hour. Newsprint sheets indicate the photo was made before December 1888.

The Register installed incandescent light bulbs in the building in February 1884. The paper had quickly converted to electric lights because the old gas lights were often blown out by a breeze from the open windows. The windows had to be kept open because more than 80 gas burners illuminated the building’s rooms, creating a great deal of heat and smoke.

The Register ran more than a mile of wire through the building, suspended a light bulb above each work area, installed its own eight-horsepower engine to run a dynamo and at 6 o’clock each night turned on the engine to light the building.

It’s impossible to tell whether the electric lights had been installed in this photo. The windows on the third floor, where the composition room was located, are closed, as are all the windows in the building except for one in the center of the second floor. The men may have climbed out on the balcony from that window. The closed windows may be an indication this photo was taken after 1884. Certainly, there are no power lines from outside going into the building, so this would be before there was a central power plant and poles carrying electric wires in Mobile.

In all likelihood, then, this photo was taken between 1884 and 1888.

A block of Mobile newspaper history

Enlarged view of newsies in front of the Van Antwerp Building.

Van Antwerp Building, Royal and Dauphin streets about 1900.

Though a viewer may not realize it, this photo from the Historic Mobile Preservation Society tells a lot about Mobile’s newspaper history.

Mobile photographer William E. Wilson took this photo of the G. Van Antwerp & Sons building and others at the southwest corner of Royal and Dauphin streets about 1900. Druggist Garrett Van Antwerp (1833-1911) had been in business on this corner since 1888. As can be seen from the painting and signs on the walls, Van Antwerp sold drugs, seeds, and sundries, an interesting mix of offerings. Van Antwerp became wealthy from his pharmacy businesses.

The east side of the Van Antwerp building faces Royal Street and the north side faces Dauphin Street. The block of buildings on Royal Street running south from Dauphin to Conti Street formed something of a newspaper row in the late 1800s.

During the Civil War, the Mobile Advertiser and Register, two separate newspapers that combined in 1861, occupied the corner building at 4 S. Royal. A few doors south in one of the buildings with the ironwork balconies at 12 S. Royal, the Mobile Register had offices before the war. After the war, a Yankee named E.O. Haile first took over the Register but then was forced to return it to owner John Forsyth. Haile then issued his own newspaper the Mobile Daily News from 12 S. Royal.

By the time Wilson took this photo, the News had moved to 59 St. Michael Street and in 1872 the Register had moved two blocks north to the southwest corner of Royal and St. Michael streets. Across Royal Street from the Register was the office of the Mobile Tribune.

But a bit of newspaper history is still visible in this photo. Standing on the sidewalk corner are eight boys all about the same age and similarly dressed. At least three of the boys, and maybe four, are clutching a bundle of newspapers. These boys are newsies, newspaper street sellers. Most associated with newsies is the flat cap, sometimes called a newsboy cap. The newsies in the early 1900s usually wore knee pants and knicker suits with black long stockings. Some of older boys wore long pants. All of those clothing styles can be seen in this photo.

The boys without newspapers may have sold out of their copies and were hanging out with their comrades. Or perhaps they sold different newspapers issued at a different time of day. At any rate, the intersection of the two streets where streetcar routes crossed and passengers loaded and unloaded was a good place to peddle papers.

Van Antwerp Building about 1908
Erik Overbey photo
Doy Leale McCall Rare Book and Manuscript Library
University of South Alabama

In a few short years, this entire scene changed drastically. In 1906, Van Antwerp demolished the building on the corner and the next couple of buildings with ironwork balconies on Royal Street. Then the company broke ground for a new Van Antwerp Building. At 11 stories, it was the city’s first skyscraper. Completed in 1908, the building, covered in gleaming white terra-cotta tiles, became an instant landmark.

In 1911, S.H. Kress & Co. announced it had bought L-shaped properties on Dauphin and Royal streets that abutted at the rear and would build a new structure for its retail store with frontage on both streets. The purchase included the Yeend & Potter building at 115 and 117 Dauphin Street and the property owned by Mrs. Harry Chapman at 18 and 20 Royal Street. Two more of Mobile’s 19^th century buildings gave way to modern construction.

In October 2014, newspapering returned to this Royal Street block. The Press Register moved to new offices in the renovated historic Kress building at 18 S. Royal Street, celebrating with a Mardi Gras-style party that included local seafood, wine, beer, and the sounds of the Excelsior Band.

Mobile Press Register, Alabama Media Group office
in the restored Kress building on Royal Street. In the
background is the restored Van Antwerp building. 

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