A few days after my second trip to Warsaw, I went South to see Terre Haute. Dreiser, in his chapters concerning his visit, lists several different street intersections where the family lived during their stays in this city, so I sought these out. As with my trips to Warsaw, I wondered if any of the houses the Dreiser family resided in were still extant.
Since leaving Carmel, Indiana, Booth's home town, they had a new man behind the wheel of the Pathfinder name of Bert, and the three made for Terre Haute via Indianapolis.
" . . . this city of my birth was identified with so much struggle on the part of my parents, so many dramas and tragedies in connection with relatives and friends, that by now it seemed quite wonderful as the scene of almost an epic . . . from the time the mill burned until after various futile attempts to right ourselves, at Sullivan and Evansville, we finally left this part of the country for good, it was one unbroken stretch of privation and misery."
"In the 1870s and 1880s, the town completed its shuddering metamorphosis into a city. The heady gas of boosterism filled the air, but old-timers felt that something had been lost in the rush to industrialize -- a spirit of fellowship, egalitarianism, cooperation."
That "shuddering" and "boosterism" would be part of Theodore's whole life, though for Theodore, even in his earliest days, that headiness was seen from the perspective of an outsider. While many would see their fortunes rise in the post-Civil War expansion, many others would see their fortunes wane, even disappear. Born in 1871, Theodore's boyhood years coincided with what Lingeman refers to as the Dreiser family's " . . fall from [the] grace . . . of middle class respectability."
His father Paul Sr., an ardent Catholic, found getting a decent position ever more difficult, while his mother, Sarah, whom Theodore referred to as "dreamy, poetic," and "impractical" held her children close and would try mightily to find other ways to keep the family solvent.
The childhood experiences that so color all of our lives began for Theodore in this small city on the Wabash River.
Franklin Booth's sketch of the industrial Terre Haute in 1915.
As with most cities large and small, or somewhere in between, the changing economics of the last 100 years have altered the landscape of Terre Haute. Where Dreiser and Booth saw an industrialized waterfront on the Wabash, there is now a large city park along the river. Between the waterfront mills and the rest of the city, I imagine there once stood warehouses and smaller businesses; today that intermediate area is "zoned commercial" street front, which reminded me of Vestal, New York - and many other places I've visited:
Dreiser, in ...Holiday, recounts that he was born in a house near 9th and Chestnut, and later the family resided in the vicinity of 12th and Walnut - " . . . where the first few years of my life were spent -- say from one to five . . . " - but also remembered being ill in a house on 13th, spending time on a swing in the basement of a house near 7th and Chestnut, and lastly living on 14th. While he spent some enjoyable times on his own, these were also lean years of collecting coal on the railroad tracks and having little money for food.
Lingeman, though, states: "Theodore would spend his first six years in the large house his father had purchased on Twelfth and Walnut . . . "
The house at 12th and Walnut? Note that Booth included the smokestacks of
Terre Haute's industry in the background. From ...Holiday.
So at the least, there is agreement that there had been a Dreiser residence near this intersection, and initially guided by Dreiser's text, 12th and Walnut was one of the locales I found out. As had been the case in Warsaw, however, the neighborhood had been rebuilt with smaller houses long before I arrived:
View along Walnut Street toward the East, with 12th Street crossing.
If Terre Haute was platted like other cities, then the lots along these streets are probably 25 or 30 feet wide by 60 or 100 feet deep, but the first owners likely bought several lots together with only a single large house built there-on. Later generations of real estate developers and agents would eventually have those large houses demolished, and the land would be sold-off piecemeal in the smaller, single-lot size.
At the time of my trip, though, I had only Dreiser's recollection to go by, and so chased around intersections of Chestnut Street. What I found, instead of an old neighborhood, was the campus of Indiana State University. It was pretty plain that ISU had absorbed a fair amount of land into its precincts in the last couple of decades, and any resemblance to "old" Terre Haute here was long since over-worked.
At left is the intersection of 7th and Chestnut, and the area around 9th and Chestnut is below:
Above, from the left:
commercial building at the South-West corner of 9th and Chestnut; the view along Chestnut toward the U of I campus; and the North-East corner of the intersection, where sits The Ballyhoo Tavern, claiming existence since 1834 - a "campus country club," which I suppose is euphemistic for "Students drink here!"
In Dreiser's memorializing of these houses (perhaps embellished, perhaps not) he also recounts the environ round-about:
" . . . [at] Seventh and Chestnut Streets . . . was the swing in the basement where I used to swing, the sunlight pouring through a low cellar window . . . Outside was a great yard or garden with trees, and close at hand a large lumber yard -- it seemed immense to me at the time . . . And beyond that was a train yard full of engines and cars and old broken down cabooses and a repair shop. When I was most adventurous I used to wander . . . staring at all I saw, and risking no doubt my young life more than once . . . It all seemed so amazing to me. Engineers, firemen, brakemen, yard men -- how astonishing they all seemed -- the whole clangorous, jangling compact called life."
Since there were no old houses - of any vintage - to look on at those locations, I started looping about looking for something that might resemble a train yard. Highlighted in the Google satellite image below is what I believe was a least a portion of that train yard, and is now a light industrial area:
This triangle of land is still bounded by a curve of usable railroad track (I don't know how active it is) along 10 1/2 Street (yes, that's Tenth-and-One-Half Street). Other tracks transited the area some time in the past: some of the "humps" where tracks once crossed streets still exist, and scrutiny of the satellite view shows the old rights-of-way between buildings and trees.
With only Dreiser's words to judge from, I would guess that the rail yard probably ran East-West between Tippecanoe Street and Sycamore Street, and again that land is now under the University. It makes sense to me that if Dreiser had wandered through lumber and rail yards as a boy, it would have been more likely he went Northward and away from Chestnut, probably out through the "great yard," rather than walking along Chestnut Street and crossing 8th and 9th Streets. The lumber yard could have occupied the opposite side of the block from the house, perhaps fronting on Sycamore, with the rail yard beyond.
(The image quality of the satellite view here is fairly high, and is suited to "zooming in" with your browser if you've a mind to take a closer look.)
Having a university surely puts some money in pockets, and Terre Haute is also still the home of the Clabber Girl Corporation, manufacturer of Clabber Girl and Rumford brands of baking powder. Other light industrial concerns are scattered about, as well. I'd hazard that the city is doing O.K. - but I didn't really get a "feel" for the place as I did for other municipalities that I've passed through.
Looping though what are probably the older, even the oldest, parts of town, I do have to wonder if Terre Haute has experienced economic migration and segregation as other industrial or Rust Belt cities have. The downtown area, just off campus, looked as if it would do well conducting normal business and getting student foot traffic during the academic year. Along Wabash Street, as in the photo at right, were small store-front shops, as well as banks and a Holiday Inn.
But those old neighborhoods, where the Dreisers' house, or houses, would have stood, seem a little down-and-out, as if ignored or forgotten as the middle classes moved East into new sub-divisions.
I didn't get out beyond 13th Street - I think it was 13th where I shot the house pictured at left - so I don't know what that "other half" of town looks like, or "feels" like, but that's my surmise.
After looking for the old homes of his youth, Dreiser assayed to find the location of a woolen mill where his father had been foreman in the 1850's, when the family's fortunes were in the upswing.
He notes, however, that " . . . even in my father's lifetime the woolen industry in this region had fallen on hard lines . . . " - that is, after the boom of Civil War commerce and coupled with competition in New England and the Mid-Atlantic, woolens in the MidWest were failing. This was the major factor in the family's decline: "Paul had been caught in a business reverse, and had neither the capital nor the financial acumen to recover."
Dreiser writes in ...Holiday that the mill had been owned by an Adam Shattuck and an un-named brother, and looked up this Mr. Shattuck in the 'phone directory and found him a feed store owner. Lingeman has Paul Sr.'s employer being George Ellis, and George's son, Edwin, was the feed store owner. Under which-ever name, Dreiser approached the man in his feed store and exchanged pleasantries, and asked where he might find the mill where Paul Sr. had worked.
The feed store, according to Dreiser, was listed as being at 230 S. Fourth Street. Well, that seemed to me like a location I might find, and again it was no surprise that it had been over worked - perhaps numerous times in the intervening century. At the corner of South Fourth and Poplar Streets I found this:
I'm going to presume that the street address numbers haven't been adjusted so much that the 200 block has moved entirely across a street, so the feed store was either where the parking lot is, or where the bland office building now stands. I'm leaning toward where the office building now stands, as Mr. Shattuck or Mr. Ellis (take your pick) comments to Dreiser that the mill stands "Right at the foot of the street here."
I dithered for a minute at the direction: " . . . the foot of the street? Which way is that? Foot of which street?" From a McDonald's parking lot I could see down Fourth, and down Poplar. Which? Then I considered that Poplar led toward the Wabash, which was a better site for a water-driven mill, so down Poplar Street I went. Again, no surprise that there wasn't anything left of a mill site. Instead there was a car dealership and a parking lot for a telecom company or some such. I did drive about a bit and discovered the park.
In the Google satellite image below, are highlighted the intersection of Fourth and Poplar, and what I'm guessing was the location of the mill, now part of the park. Curiously, there is an old foundation visible, which makes me wonder if that's the spot. Could be. At some point I'll return to Terre Haute and investigate this.
Having only begun at the time to do anything remotely resembling research, I took this photo of "Paul Dresser's boyhood home" at the entrance to the park - because it was neat old house. Later, of course, I found that Paul Dresser was in fact Paul Dreiser, Jr., the oldest of Theodore's nine siblings. A song writer of fame in the late 19th Century, his perhaps most lasting tune is Along The Banks Of The Wabash, a paean to small town life and motherhood, which is, naturally, the Indiana State Song.
The park road where I stopped to take the picture is Dresser Drive.
Over the Wabash River at Attica, IN, is the Paul Dresser Memorial Bridge.
There is supposedly a Theodore Dreiser Memorial Bridge here at Terre Haute that crosses the Wabash, but my rather superficial web search only returns results related to photos on stock photograph sites. Curious --
Looks like I'll need to make another trip!
When Dreiser and Booth made their way South from Terre Haute for Sullivan and Evansville - both towns where the Dreiser family had lived, Theodore described his childhood reaction to the natural world:
"The territory into which we were now passing . . . of all places that I ever lived in my youth [this was] the most pleasing to me and full of the most colorful and poetic of memories. Infancy and its complete non-understanding had just gone. For me, adolescence . . . had not yet arrived. This was the region of the wonder period of youth, when trees, clouds, the sky, the progression of the days, the sun, the rains, the grass all filled me with delight, an overpowering sense of beauty, charm, mystery . . . How I loved to sit and gaze just drinking it all in, the sensory feel and glory of it."
This shot is from North and a little East of Terre Haute, instead of South, but I do understand the sensation Dreiser relates about "drinking it all in" when I look over landscapes like this:
I don't recall much of my life up to around age seven - but I do know that so then and so now I, too, like when possible to pause and enjoy the sky, the clouds, the varied lands that I've had opportunity to view, to visit.
And at some point, I'll get down to Sullivan and Evansville.
"We are all such pathetic victims of chance, anyhow. We are born, we struggle we plan, and chance blows all our dreams away. If, therefore, one country, one state dares to dream the impossible, why cast it down before its ultimate hour? Why not dream with it? It is so gloriously, so truly a poetic land. We were conceived in ecstasy and born in dreams.
And so, for now, is the end of this. More will be added later, and surely as much or more in - well, less than a year from now. Until then, happy journeys, and safe ones.