WVU Libraries

Blog post by Michael Ridderbusch, Associate Curator, WVRHC.

The West Virginia and Regional History Center is continuing to digitize the negatives of the Gravely and Moore collection in order to enhance their accessibility to researchers.  A previous installment of this blog highlighted Gravely and Moore photos of a busy World War II era bus depot in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.  In this installment we show images recently “discovered” of businesses in Charleston, West Virginia. 

Vehicle of the National Beverage Company of Charleston, West Virginia.
(Click picture for enlargement.)

Shot in May of 1935, this image documents the resumption of the legal trade of alcohol in the United States after the passage of the Twenty-First Amendment, repealing prohibition, on December 5, 1933.  West Virginia ratified the Amendment on July 25, 1933.  (A previous blog discusses recent research into prohibition in West Virginia.)

A legal shipment of beer by the National Beverage Company in May of 1935, Charleston, West Virginia.
(Click picture for enlargement.)

Camp Drug Company, Prescription Department, Charleston, West Virginia, ca. 1930s.
(Click picture for enlargement.)

Terrace Restaurant, Charleston, West Virginia, 1947.
(Click picture for enlargement.)

In 1947 the Terrace Restaurant received a recommendation from Duncan Hines, a pioneer of restaurant ratings.  His name later became associated with a line of food products.  Another photograph of this restaurant shows a poster in a dining room announcing the radio show “Tea Time at the Terrace” with Bob Provence of radio station WKNA.

Electronics repair at the Galperin Music Company, Charleston, West Virginia, March, 1947.
(Click picture for enlargement.)

The Galperin Music store advertised itself in old business directories as a source of “records, pianos, music and musical instruments, radios, radio-phonograph combinations,” and “electrical refrigerators, etc.”  One technology seen in this photograph was on the brink of extinction as a center of home entertainment — the radio.  (A large Philco radio, for example, is in evidence in the lower right of the photo.)  It would be superseded by television in the 1950s.

Hugh Stewart Motors, Charleston, West Virginia, June 29, 1955.
(Click picture for enlargement.)

The West Virginia and Regional History Center will continue to digitize, preserve, and make accessible the photographs in the Gravely and Moore collection for future researchers.  In the process, we look forward to uncovering additional material of historical value.