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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The short, interesting life of the Mobile Times

Mobile Times November 11, 1932

The Mobile Times existed barely seven years, but it provides an interesting chapter in Mobile’s newspaper history.

Mobile Times paperboy

Erik Overbey photo, The Doy Leale McCall

Rare Book and Manuscript Library

The six-day-a-week afternoon Times hit the streets in late October 1932. That was an even worse year during the Great Depression to start a newspaper than 1929, when the competing afternoon Mobile Press began. Earlier in 1932, after four years of a costly war for readers and advertisers, the Press absorbed its rivals, the morning Mobile Register and its companion afternoon paper Mobile News-Item. The merged operations then consisted of the afternoon Press, the morning Register, and the Sunday Press Register. The victorious Press Register discontinued the News-Item.

Thomas Enoch Sharp served as the editor of the Times and probably was one of the principal investors. Born in Butte, Montana, in 1890, Sharp started his career as a reporter, but after 1921 he edited papers in El Paso, Memphis, and Buffalo before coming to Mobile.

Staffers at the Times included the legendary Chandler sisters, Miss Nettie and Miss Mary. The sisters, who were no relation to Ralph Chandler, publisher of the Press Register, began working on the Register when it was owned by John L. Rapier. The newly formed Press Register in 1932 didn’t pick up the sisters, who went to work for the Mobile Times when it began publication later that year. Nettie served as an editor in the society department with Mary as her assistant. One reporter said the sisters reminded her of Aunt Pittypat in Gone With the Wind.

Another reporter who went to work for the Times after the Press and Register merger was William “Bill” Gormley. For the Times he covered the 1931-32 sensational trial of the Dyson brothers for the murder of Henry M. Butler, Jr., a prominent Mobile Real estate agent, who had been carrying on an affair with the wife Raymond Dyson of Fairhope.

There was plenty of news to go around for all the newspapers. Reporting on prohibition, rumrunners, criminals, and trials was the bread and butter of newspapers around the country during the 1930s. Sensational front-page headlines and stories from around the nation lured readers in Mobile and elsewhere daily to the Times, Press, and Register.

While there was plenty of news, there wasn’t a lot of money. In September 1938, the Times got an infusion of much-needed cash from Texas newspaper magnate Charles E. Marsh, who bought the newspaper along with Sharp and Carl M. Smith, who had been an advertising executive of the Mobile Press Register. Marsh brought in W.S. Zschach (or Sohach) from his other operations to take charge of circulation while Sharp directed news operations and Smith ran the business and advertising departments and served as president of the company. The new owners announced retirement of a $35,000 bond issue.

Marsh and his business partner Ephraim Silas Fentress had become millionaires by buying and operating newspapers in Texas in the early 1900s. By 1930, Marsh owned newspapers in 15 Texas cities, including the capital of Austin, and a dozen more papers in other states. From 1930 to 1934, Marsh joined forces with Eugene Pulliam, to establish General Newspapers Incorporated. Together they bought 23 newspapers in seven states.

Author Robert A. Caro points out that Marsh, “Having made money, he liked to play the patron with it.” One of those he played patron to in the late 1930s was a young, rising Texas politician named Lyndon Baines Johnson. Both Marsh and Johnson were liberal Democrats and ardent supporters of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Marsh supplied the money to buy the support Roosevelt, Johnson, and other liberal Democrats needed to get and keep power. Whether investing in newspapers or politicians, what Marsh most wanted was for those he supported to appreciate and respect his views and submit to his wishes.

The Times styled itself as a Democrat newspaper while the Press Register listed itself as Independent. But Independent didn't mean non-partisan and both papers supported the Democrat Party.

Marsh’s money-making ways weren’t working in Mobile. In 1939, the Times had a circulation of just 12,275. The competing afternoon Press had a daily circulation of 24,604, the morning Register had 21,148, and the Sunday Press Register 42,229.

In January 1939, Frank S. Coffin, Frederick I. Thompson, who was the former publisher of the Register and News-Item and current publisher of the Alabama Journal in Montgomery, along with three other men advanced the Times $6,000. Still the Mobile Times couldn’t get the advertising and subscriptions it needed to be profitable and the newspaper suspended publication on April 3, 1940.

In the spring of 1941, Sharp bought the Prichard Printing Company and published and edited The Citizen. Incorporated only since 1925, Prichard was a town of 4,580 residents north of Mobile and the Citizen was a weekly with just 718 paid subscribers.

Interestingly enough, Sharp bought the Citizen from John Maurice Will and his partner Floyd H. Powell. After selling the Citizen, Will joined the staff of the Press Register and became one of its most esteemed reporters, best known for his coverage of religion and education.

Glimpse at an 1898 newspaper street vendor

Alabama. Department of Archives and History photo

The one-legged man with the big smile on the left in the above photo is a newspaper street vendor. This 1898 photo from the Alabama Department of Archives and History doesn’t identify the man or which newspaper he is selling. It’s likely he’s hawking the Mobile Register, but it could have been the Mobile Daily Item or another newspaper.

The man is resting the stump of his right leg on the steps of the U.S. Customs House at the southwest corner of Royal and St. Francis streets. He appears to be carrying on a lively conversation with the well-dressed older man wearing the derby. Judging from a number of photos of the Customs House, this area was a popular place for men to gather and talk.

Glennon Building

Alabama. Department of Archives and History photo

In the background is the office building of the James K. Glennon Real Estate and Insurance Company, located at 51 N. Royal St, the northwest corner of Royal at St. Francis streets. One of two wooden utility poles interrupts the view of the front edge of the Glennon building. 

Besides being a highly successful and wealthy businessman, Glennon was part owner of the Register, another reason to believe the vendor was selling that newspaper. In fact, the Register itself sat at the opposite end of the block from the Glennon building at the southwest corner of Royal and St. Michael streets.

Mobile Register

Promoting the newspaper with a 'postcard selfie'

About 100 years before the selfie image became a part of the social media culture in the early 2000s, the way you told friends and family where you were (this was before long-distance phone calling, too) was to send a postcard.

The above Mobile Register postcard promotion from 1907 is an example of turning such a "postcard selfie" into a marketing campaign. You just filled in your name on this side to let the receiver know where you were. You filled out the delivery address on the other side and applied a one-cent stamp. It's not known if this H.S. Worsham was related to the Press Register’s copyeditor Cliff Worsham.

The post card is from the Wade Hall Postcard Collection, Troy University Library, Special Collections

Press Reporter in the First Nieman Fellows Class

Nieman Fellows Class of 1939

First row: Osburn Zuber, Edwin W. Fuller Jr., Edwin Lahey, Archibald MacLeish (Curator), Herbert Lyons Jr., Frank Hopkins. Second row: Arthur Wild (Director of Harvard Public Relations), Irving Dilliard, John Clark, Edwin Paxton, Louis Lyons.

Hilary Herbert Lyons Jr. had cherished a desire for journalism as a student at Mobile’s elite, private University Military School, but his father opposed his son going into newspaper work.

Rather than discourage his son directly, the elder Lyons went to Press Publisher Ralph B. Chandler and asked the publisher to hire his son and work him so hard that he would never want to work for a newspaper again. The scheme, however, had an effect opposite from that intended by the senior Lyons and the young Herbert began a distinguished career as a journalist.

After graduating from University Military School in 1927, Lyons attended journalism school at Columbia University in New York. During the summers after his second year, he worked at the Press as a replacement reporter for vacationing staffers and became a regular reporter after earning his degree.

When the Nieman Foundation awarded its first journalism fellowships in 1938, the selection committee named Lyons as one of nine recipients. After studying economics at Harvard University for nine months, Lyons returned to Mobile to write editorials for the Press. But his ambitions were greater than the opportunities Mobile offered, and he left the Port City to join the staff of The New York Times.

Bob Hope thanks Sports editor for hospitality

Back in the early years of the Senior Bowl, Bob Hope visited Mobile and attended the game. 

Afterward he sent this publicity photo to the Press Register's sports editor as a thank you for his hospitality.

For many years this photo hung on a wall in the Sports Department of the Government Street building. During the early 1990s, a new management started knocking down walls and the photo was tossed into a dumpster, from which I rescued it.

Cutting edge of digital communications in 1980

In 1980, the MPR was on cutting edge of digital communications with its use of Teleram portable computers.

A later article than the one above explained that "with Teleram, a story is composed on the remote terminal screen. When it is in the form desired by the reporter, he calls a telephone number which goes directly into the MPR’s main computer. When the phone answers, the reporter puts his phone receiver into a special cradle, the Teleram talks to the main computer and story is filed into the newspaper’s front-end system in seconds.

"With Teleram, a story can be written, filed, edited, set into type and printed on the presses in minimal time."

Five years after this article appeared in the employee newsletter Pressing Matters, Teleram Communications Corp. went bankrupt. Although Teleram had been a pioneer in the portable computer business, analysts said it could not keep up with bigger companies with more market strength and cheaper, better computers.