Negatives Become a Positive for Local History Lovers

A 1950s photo of road work near Sixth and Jefferson Streets in downtown Washington shows the back of the old Grammar School and the circular slide fire escape that so many former students have told stories about. It looks like a pipe, but there was a slide inside. This photo, taken by Frank Nouss of FAN Photo, is the first the Washington Historical Society Museum has showing the back of the school and the fire escape/slide.

FAN Photo Negatives From Mid-1950s Reveal Historic Details of Washington, Serve as Time Capsule of Sorts

By Karen Cernich Dickhut

For years, Marc Houseman has heard stories about a circular slide fire escape attached to the back of the old Grammar School that once stood near the corner of Fifth and Jefferson streets in downtown Washington. But he had never seen a photo of it and figured he never would.

All photos of the striking two-story structure seemed to have been taken from the front, he said.

But a few weeks ago as Houseman, director of the Washington Historical Society Museum, was looking through a collection of more than 700 digital photos that had recently been developed from negatives taken out of the old FAN Photo studio once located on Main Street, there it was! The back of the Grammar School and that circular slide he had heard so much about.

The photo was centered on some road work being done at the corner of Sixth and Jefferson streets, but the back of the Grammar School was clear.

As a historian, Houseman was beside himself with excitement. Even looking at the photo now gives him goosebumps.

This is exactly the kind of thing he hoped would be found when the museum asked Bill Stewart, a volunteer with tech experience, to look into having the negatives developed.

Many of the photos are mundane, but others are rich with details, and as a collection they serve as a sort of time capsule, said Houseman. As best he and volunteers can tell, all of the photos are from a five-year span between 1952 and ’57.

“They are just really fabulous,” Houseman said. “The fact that they don’t span a wide period of time makes them even more interesting.

“To have access to these photos, this collection from those few years, showcasing the businesses and the people is so great, and they are quality images with lots of valuable details.”

Some of the photos may never have been seen before, although others likely were taken for The Washington Missourian and The Citizen, since Frank Nouss, who owned FAN Photo, took photos for both newspapers.

“There are photos in here of kids who are now retirees,” Houseman said. “It’s fun to see those.

“You kind of get lost in these photos. It feels like I just stepped back 65 years. All of the sudden it’s 1955, and the cars are so neat looking, most of the men wore neckties, and people were dressed up most of the time.”

On the Shelves for More Than 20 Years

Nouss opened FAN Photo on Second Street near Oak (in a building that has since been torn down) in the late 1930s. He later moved to Main Street in the building where B&J Printing is located today, Houseman said.

Washington Schools Superintendent CJ Burger and members of the Washington School Board scout the location for the new (current) Washington High School in the 1950s. You can see the old Grammar School and St. Peter’s United Church of Christ (at right) in the background.

He named the studio using his initials after John Feltmann, father of Jim Feltmann Sr., suggested it one morning over breakfast.

“Supposedly (Nouss) walked into a downtown eatery for breakfast and told the local guys who were sitting around, ‘I don’t know what to call my business,’ ” Houseman said. “They were all making suggestions, and John Feltmann apparently said, ‘What are your initials? . . . How about FAN Photo?’ ”

Nouss only had one child, a daughter, Renee, who took over the photo studio after her father retired in the early ’70s. She closed the studio sometime after he passed away in 1977, Houseman said.

When Renee died in the mid- to late 1990s, she had no immediate family, and there were a tremendous number of items of a historical nature in the old Nouss house on West Main Street.

“The person who handled Renee’s estate, realizing she had been very active in the historical society and the genealogy society, called to invite us to come look through the items and take what we wanted for the museum,” Houseman said. “We took lots of photos, lots of reel to reel film, and we got a ton of photo negatives. But what do we do with them? This was in the late 1990s.”

With no easy or affordable way to develop the 700-plus negatives into photos, they were simply put on a shelf. Years passed into decades.  

Enter volunteer Bill Stewart. Last year, he approached Houseman asking if there were any projects he could help with. Houseman pointed him toward the old negatives, which were packed tightly into two shoeboxes.

Using a photo scanner, Stewart was able to create digital photos from the negatives, and right away Houseman could tell the photos were something special.

“There are things in here that I’ve never seen before,” he said. “They are sort of like mini mysteries. One photo will puzzle us for hours or longer.”

‘Hey, That’s My Dad!’

The Washington Historical Society has been posting many of the photos to its Facebook page, and the community feedback has been both helpful and fun.

“Last week we put up a photo of an unknown man with a dead deer in his car, probably taken for the newspaper, and we called it ‘Unknown Deer Hunter,’ ” said Houseman.

Pretty quickly he received a phone call from a good friend saying, “Hey, that’s my dad!” At the same time, another relative messaged the group on Facebook to identify the hunter as Kenny Klemm.

Pet Parade from Fifth Street to the Fairgrounds.

More pets on parade.

Photos of a pet parade had numerous people who remember participating in those as children leaving comments on the Facebook page: “I was in one of those!” Carrying their pets or sometimes pushing them in baby carriages, children would march from Fifth Street to the Fairgrounds, Houseman said. Photos show the pets included more than just dogs. There were birds, hamsters and more. There were even judges for the parade.

Several weeks ago, Houseman organized a photo viewing and reminiscing session specifically for some of the Washington Historical Society’s older members. A couple of volunteers served as stenographers, taking notes on what the members said.

Nancy Wood provided detaisl on that old circular slide fire escape at the Grammar School. From the outside it looked like a big pipe, but inside there was a circular slide, she explained.

“They would let us use it once or twice a year from the upper level. Kind of a fire drill, I suppose,” Wood recalled. “Many people tell stories of ‘breaking in’ and using it in the summertime . . . Don’t see many pictures of it. This picture makes it look skinny. It wasn’t.”

The viewing session was so successful, providing great details and names of people seen in the photos, that Houseman said they plan to hold more in the future.

The photos include several businesses, like Kruel’s Dime Store, Shorty’s Restaurant, Missouri Meerschaum, International Shoe Factory, Zero Manufacturing, Droege’s supermarket, IGA, JCPenney’s when it was downtown and the old flour mill before it was destroyed in a fire. There is a photo of a car parked outside of the Ford dealership once located at Fifth and Elm streets, and Jim Feltmann Sr. provided the story behind the photo:

Jinx Sida had bought a new Ford there, but it was lemon and since the dealership refused to fix it or replace it, Sida parked the car outside the dealership with a sign, “I Bought a Lemon.”

There’s a photo of Washington Superintendent CJ Burger and a group of school board members looking at the site where the current Washington High School would be built. There are shots of Madison Avenue looking south from Fifth Street and shots of downtown streets covered in snow. There are photos of car wrecks, an ad for a membership drive at the Washington Chamber of Commerce and houses that have long since been torn down.

“We think this is the beginning of Lions Lake, which was created in 1955,” Houseman said.

“And this is when Eisenhower came to Washington. Look at the crowd of people surrounding the campaign train car. Here’s Eisenhower, Mamie, his wife, and here’s Louis Eckelkamp, who was big in the Republican party.”

Recognizing faces and putting names to others provides a lot of fun for Houseman and the volunteers. It’s rewarding too to hear the stories people tell after seeing the photos and recognizing a family member.

When Peggy Otto recognized a photo of her dad on a horse, she shared how he had bought the horse just to ride in parades with the Masonic Lodge and other organizations.

Houseman said they are interested in putting names to as many faces as possible.

“It’s fun to recognize people from 70 years ago,” he remarked.

There are photos of Henry Hartbauer (founder of the Washington United Fund that evolved into the Franklin County Area United Way), Monsignor Hildner, Buck Sincox, Robert Vossbrink . . .  

“Some of these photos you could stare at for hours noticing details,” Houseman said.

In a photo he had already seen several times, he suddenly noticed the face of Don Means, who recently passed away.

Looking at the old FAN Photos makes you wonder what will happen to all of the digital photos people take today; how will they be kept and archived? And what will people 50 or more years from now be nostalgic for?

Looking back, Houseman said he’s really grateful to the person who called the Museum after Renee Nouss died and also grateful that they decided to take the negatives.

“These photos are a treasure, but had that person not called us to come look, and had we decided that negatives were useless and not kept them, we wouldn’t have these,” he said.

To see more of the FAN Photos from this collection, visit the Washington Historical Society’s Facebook page or contact the Museum at 636-239-0280. The Museum is located at 113 E. Fourth St. in downtown Washington. Hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and noon to 4 p.m. on Sunday. Visit washmohistorical.org for more details.