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In many ways, Roanoke in 1917 was a city coming into its own—with improvements in public safety and employment for women leading the way. But in other contexts, the city was on the edge of peril, both locally and internationally.
The Historical Society of Western Virginia; The Virginia Room, Roanoke Public Libraries
Roanoke in 1917 was half the size it is today. Much of today’s Roanoke had not yet been annexed. Raleigh Court, Virginia Heights, Wasena, Mill Mountain, Washington Heights, Monterey and much of Northwest were suburbs of the city. However, other neighborhoods were being developed within the city. In Rugby, lots were advertised for $2 down and $2 per week and in Morningside lots were $10 down and $10 per month.
Roanoke was dry due to the voters of Virginia voting in state-wide Prohibition in the fall of 1916, three years ahead of national Prohibition. Thus, Salem Avenue—long a venue for saloons, clubs, and dance halls—was mostly boarded up and abandoned. The city government in 1917 was under the control of “reformers” led by Mayor Charles Braun.
Having ridden into office on the wave of Prohibition sentiment the previous year, Braun and his allies strictly enforced Prohibition, forced businesses to conform to Sunday closing laws, and established the position of the Commissioner of Public Morals. The annual Roanoke Fair was closely scrutinized by what were derisively called the “Blue Noses” to determine if any vendors present were violating current laws. Mayor Braun began screening movies at local theatres, and even banned a few from being shown.
Roanoke in 1917 was continuing to live up to its Magic City moniker, a term used to describe its rapid growth. The Hampton Hotel opened in the Henry Street section and would a few years later be re-named the Dumas Hotel. The Dumas would anchor the artistic and cultural life of Roanoke’s African-American community for decades. The Isis Theatre opened on Campbell Avenue. Christ Episcopal Church laid its cornerstone; Melrose Baptist Church erected its first building on Melrose Avenue inclusive of a 900-seat auditorium; and Belmont Methodist Church began construction on its new sanctuary. Organized labor considered a strike at the railway, but this was averted when the U.S. Supreme Court narrowly ruled (5-4) that the 8-hour work day was Constitutional.
Roanoke City Mills built its facility, including five-story high silos, on Jefferson Street, and the N&W Railway completed its new freight depot (now the Virginia Museum of Transportation). The city council began consideration of transitioning to a city manager form of local government, something that Staunton had pioneered a few years earlier.
In short, Roanoke in 1917 was energetic in its progress, conservative in its public mores, and responsive to the national call for patriotism, service and civic philanthropy in light of the European conflict that would bring America into the First World War.
To better understand Roanoke in 1917, let us focus on certain key events.
Preparing for War
In early March, Company F, Second Virginia Infantry, returned home to Roanoke, arriving by train from Richmond. The company was greeted by a committee of 25 citizens and the mayor, the Virginia Military Institute band, and a squad of policemen. From the train station, the entourage marched in a cold drizzling rain to the municipal building where they were recognized and thanked for their military service and then dismissed to go to their homes.
A crowd of several hundred was on hand to witness the ceremony honoring the khaki-clad soldiers who had spent eight months stationed in Brownsville, Texas. Company F had been in Texas as part of the federal government’s effort to counter the activities of Mexican revolutionary Poncho Villa. Villa had led a raid into U.S. territory when he and his men had done a hit-and-run on the small town of Columbus, New Mexico, on March 9, 1916, killing 16 U.S. citizens. This became known as the “Columbus Raid.”
President Woodrow Wilson directed the U.S. Army to pursue Villa, which they did without success. However, the Roanoke’s Company F was part of a military contingent sent to secure the border. Their homecoming was short-lived, for two weeks after returning from Texas Company F was re-activated due to America’s entrance into the World War I.
Following months of additional training, this time for certain combat, the Second Virginia Regiment left Roanoke to the cheers of hundreds as they boarded a train at sunset on August 17th for Anniston, Alabama. Some 2,000 men crowded the Virginian Railway passenger station surrounded by family and friends. The Roanoke Times described the scene as follows:
Roanokers witnessed scenes they will never forget. Mothers clasped their loved ones and wept upon their shoulders. Some bade farewell and hastily left the scene. One mother who appeared to be sixty years of age placed a Bible in her son’s hands, whispered a few words of encouragement to him, and immediately boarded a street car nearby. She wept in silence. Men passengers on the car almost wept at the sad spectacle afforded them…Soldiers whose families were here to see them off broke down and sobbed like little children.
Before going to the train station, the olive drab men had been encamped at the Roanoke Fair Grounds (site of the former Victory Stadium). At 3:00 p.m., the men broke camp and marched to the railway station where military equipment was loaded onto freight cars. The men were divided into four sections and the last section finally left for Camp McClellan at 7:00 p.m. Each passenger train paused briefly near the Norfolk & Western Railway station for final goodbyes.
Acting Brigadier-General A.F. Leedy paid tribute to the Magic City and its citizens. “I deeply regret that we are ordered away from your city. On behalf of the Second Virginia Regiment I wish to express their hearty appreciation of the many kindnesses that have been bestowed upon them. You people have just been lovely to us…Every man in the regiment regrets his departure from Roanoke. Each is positively enthusiastic about this city. I cannot find words with which to express the deep enjoyment and satisfaction we soldiers have had since being with you.”
With the day being a multi-sequenced event of decampment, marches and train-station farewells and departures, there was humor. Five mules behaved badly and let their masters know they had no intention of boarding their caged car. The mules broke free, sending soldiers over the car rails, and it took an hour for the mules to be caught and secured for transport.
Two inmates were being escorted from the city jail for train travel. Wading through a shoulder-to-shoulder sea of humanity by deputies, they took advantage and made their escape.
Two bull dog mascots of Army companies got into a literal dog fight, such that several soldiers were required to pull them apart.
Banners read “Berlin or Bust” and men sang songs, kissed girls they knew (whether romantically involved with them or not), and gambled. One soldier perched himself on a lumber pile at the Exchange Lumber Company and played ragtime on his guitar much to the delight of a large crowd.
Eventually, quiet settled over the Magic City as the last of the trains pulled away. The Roanoke paper reported, “The city looked distressingly deserted. In the downtown section and in the parks, not a soldier was to be seen.”
In addition to the Second Virginia Regiment, there was Roanoke’s Coast Artillery Company (First Company) that entrained on Easter Sunday for Fort Monroe, later to New Jersey, and then ultimately to the war front in France. Niney-eight Roanoke men were part of this company. Besides these two companies already in uniform, some 2,500 Roanokers enlisted in 1917, including 450 black men who found themselves part of a segregated military that refused to allow them to move up in rank. For those that did not qualify for the service, usually due to age, there were four local companies of the Virginia National Guard. These men guarded the rail lines and depots of the Virginian and N&W during the war’s duration.
The Roanoke Chapter of the American Red Cross, formed in 1916, opened its first headquarters in 1917 in the Hammond Building located on South Jefferson Street. The rent-free space allowed the chapter to initiate much work in raising relief funds for Belgian, Armenian and Syrian war victims. In 1917, the chapter adopted a French orphan, providing funds for the child’s care and transport to the United States. The chapter established knitting units to make garments for the men overseas, formed Mothers’ Clubs to raise funds, and opened a canteen near the Hotel Roanoke and N&W Passenger station to provide soldiers heading to the East Coast with coffee, sandwiches, cigarettes, magazines, candy and other items of appreciation. The canteen was under the watchful eye of Miss Lucinda Terry. One soldier coming through stepped from the train and sang in a booming tenor voice famed opera selections. Only after he boarded the train to continue his journey did a fellow soldier inform the canteen ladies that the tenor had just completed a season as the lead tenor at The Metropolitan Opera in New York City.
The women at the canteen would often escort ill soldiers to nearby hospitals or doctor offices. This became especially critical during the flu epidemic in 1918.
Preparing for Prosperity
The opening of the Viscose Mill in Southeast Roanoke was rather subdued. The Viscose Corporation held no grand ribbon-cutting ceremony, no media event, and no celebration to mark the beginning of its largest plant. In fact, company executives refused interviews and made it difficult to gain information. Nonetheless, The Roanoke Times garnered what information it could and announced in its July 29, 1917, issue “Big Viscose Mill Begins Operation.” The front-page news was somewhat dated as the mill had been operating for several days.
Some 400 persons were initially employed by Viscose in the summer of 1917, and that would eventually grow to around 1,000 by year’s end. (At it height, Viscose employed over 5,000 at its Roanoke plant.) To enter the plant, one had to check-in with a guard at the front gate located at the bridge that crossed the tracks of the Virginian Railway. The guard would then relay your message to a telephone operator who, in turn, would contact the employee or department to be seen.
The concrete-and-steel plant was deemed fire-proof by the standards of the day with electric power supplied by the Roanoke Railway and Electric Company. Ventilation was provided by large industrial fans that moved outside air through a filter apparatus that the company claimed provided purified air to its employees.
Among the novel features of the plant were a restaurant and first-aid hospital. In the restaurant, dinners were provided to the labor force under the direction of a company dietician on an a la carte plan such that an entire meal could be purchased for between 15 and 30 cents.
The first-aid hospital was overseen by a company-trained nurse who kept health records on every employee. The Times stated: This nurse, upon finding that a girl is not strong enough for the kind of work that she is doing, will find a place for her in another department with work that is better suited to her physical abilities. Besides this, she will prescribe a certain diet for the employee or, if she thinks the trouble serious enough, will recommend that a physician be consulted.
The secret nature of Viscose plant’s opening was likely due to the well-guarded process used by the company for producing its silk, which was made from wood pulp taken from the Norway pine. The pine was ground into a fine pulp and then reduced to a liquid form from which was spun all the strands of silk. Those strands, being extremely fragile, were then woven into larger cords containing approximately twenty strands of silk each. The cords were then shipped to other factories where they were woven into fine silk.
The Viscose Roanoke plant’s original employees were all from its sister plant in Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania. Only after some months did Viscose begin employing Roanokers who had been trained by the Pennsylvanians. Once a fully-trained force was in place, the workers from Marcus Hook returned home.
For Roanoke, the arrival of Viscose marked the beginning of the larger development of Southeast Roanoke. The Roanoke Railway and Electric Company extended a streetcar line to Ninth Street to serve the plant, while the local gas and telephone companies began installing their infrastructure into the area surrounding the mill in anticipation of residential development.
The importance of the Viscose plant to Roanoke’s history cannot be understated. By the end of its first decade, Roanoke’s Viscose mill was the largest of its kind in the world. It covered some 60 acres and contained its own electrical power plant, women’s dormitory, athletic fields, shower facilities and a laundry. Forty percent of its workforce was female (this at a time when the Norfolk & Western Railway refused to employee females). Its total production by 1927 was nearly 20 million pounds of rayon annually.
Preparing for Public Safety
Another Roanoke happening in 1917 was the needed modernization of the city’s fire department. During the turn of the century, Roanoke had been plagued by devastating fires. The Hotel Roanoke, Virginia College, the Norfolk & Western Railway office building and several other downtown structures had become rubble due to fires. City leaders had been sluggish to respond to the extent that the Norfolk & Western took the lead in anteing up $15,000 for the modernization of the municipal fire department. Other businesses followed the railway’s lead, and by the end of 1917 firemen were arriving at fire scenes in fire trucks and not horse-drawn wagons.
By the close of 1917, Roanoke was experiencing change and unease. The war in Europe raged and thousands of the Magic City’s men were overseas or in training camps. But the war forced change that might otherwise have been delayed in arriving. Women were brought into the workplace in great numbers, rose to positions of civic leadership, and gained their voice in Roanoke’s public arena.
The N&W Railway expanded its shops while surrendering its operations (as did all railroads) to federal control for purposes of coordinating the transportation of war personnel and material. Roanokers began to adjust to war rationing, coal shortages, and “lightless nights” to save fuel. They bought war bonds that exceeded goals.
In 1917, Roanoke grew up. It began to shift away from the rowdy, bawdy days of being a railroad town dominated by young men squandering pay checks on Salem Avenue to a city drawn into meeting the necessities of war, recognizing the civic emergence of women, growing in prosperity, and laying the groundwork for the great progress Roanoke would see in the 1920s.
Yet Roanoke was far from perfect. In 1917, children, some as young as five, spun cotton at the mill in Norwich six days a week, ten hours a day. Syrians, Jews and blacks were prohibited through deed restrictions from buying property and homes in South Roanoke, Raleigh Court, and Wasena. Economic disparity was great, as Roanoke’s aristocracy built mansions along Patterson Avenue in Roanoke’s West End section, while just blocks away the working class lived in tenement, shot-gun housing.
On April 15, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson declared, “The supreme test of the nation has come. We must all speak, act and serve together!” Wilson’s vision for national unity, cemented by a common cause, was in many ways reflected in the events of Roanoke that year. Roanokers, black and white, waved farewell to sons, brothers, and fathers headed to war; women of all socio-economic backgrounds, whose paths might otherwise have never crossed, came together to knit, nurse, and fundraise; and business executives and labor united to equip and enlarge the production of Roanoke’s railways, mills, and shops to respond to a nation in the crucible of war.
In 1917, the issues that consumed both national and local attention might prompt a bit of déjà vu. Securing the border with Mexico, foreign aggression, income disparity, morality in a pluralistic democracy, creating middle-class employment, and human equality are still with us today.
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