Henderson history: Riverfront once lined with tobacco warehouses

Like most of the Henderson riverfront, the site of Rockhouse on the River was once occupied by tobacco warehouses. The Rockhouse site, however, was cleared by fire and explosion.

Unintentionally.

The southern half of the property originally was known as Woodruff Hall and was built by William B. Woodruff. It was destroyed by fire, according to The Gleaner of Sept. 8, 1940.

The building on the northern half of the lot exploded after H. Emerson Githens attempted to light a gas stove, according to The Gleaner of Dec. 5, 1948.

Githens, 48, had recently installed a new gas stove in his upper floor apartment at 216 N. Water St., but apparently had not made the connections tight enough. He got up about 5 o'clock to go to work at the Austin Williams Planing Mill and struck a match to light the stove.

That was about the last thing he ever did. The kitchen had filled with gas during the night. The resulting explosion blew out the wall of the brick building and threw Githens into an alley about 50 feet away. He suffered burns over two-thirds of his body and died 20 hours later at Methodist Hospital.

The explosion "felt like an earthquake," according to the desk clerk at the Soaper Hotel, which was a block and a half away. An International Harvester dealership downstairs in the building sustained about $45,000 damage to its machinery, and bricks from the wall fell on adjoining machinery in an outside lot, causing about another $10,000 damage.

And the bricks didn't just slide to the ground − they were hurled. "One large chunk of bricks and mortar was found about 85 feet from the explosion site," The Gleaner reported.

The building, which The Gleaner said was erected sometime before 1850, was a total loss, according to owner Jesse Craig. It reportedly had been used as a military hospital during the Civil War.

Githens, a native of Sugar Grove in Butler County, was not the only person in the building at the time of the explosion, but he was the only casualty. The other occupants were all in bed and were unhurt. They included the widow, Emily Githens, Mr. and Mrs. W.L. Snody, and Isaac T. and Pearl Hollowell, the parents of then-city commissioner T.C. Hollowell.

The building was two stories along Water Street, although it was only one story in the rear, according to Sanborn fire insurance maps. The 1885 map shows the ground floor space was occupied by two saloons and a billiard hall. The rear was a vacant ice house.

There were apartments upstairs by the 1892 map, and the saloons had been replaced by a “patent fence” maker. By 1897 the entire building was used for marketing and storing hides, tallows, and furs. Those uses remained through the 1901 map.

The 1906 map shows hides and junk were in the corner next to the alleyway that still exists, although a button factory was located in one of the storefront sites. Hides were kept in the basement and the main floor held bags and paper.

The 1913 map shows storage and sale of hides, junk and bags continued to be the building’s use. By 1923, however, it appears the entire building was being used as a rag and paper warehouse, which continued through 1931. By 1948, as I mentioned earlier, there was a farm implement store on the ground floor and apartments upstairs.

The destroyed building joined the heap of rubble that had been sitting next door since the Sept. 7, 1940, fire. The riverfront had a sort of gap-toothed appearance until the state decided to erect new offices there in 1953-54.The history of Woodruff Hall was a little more illustrious. William B. Woodruff and John Funk built it sometime between mid-1860, when the final piece of land was bought, and early 1862, when Woodruff sold his share to Funk and the deed indicated a large store had been erected.

It was three stories tall, although from Water Street it appeared to be two separate buildings. That was an illusion. There was a dividing wall on the first floor but there were large open rooms on the second and third floors.

Notices in the Henderson Reporter showed the building was used for dances, lectures, and dancing lessons in the early 1860s. The Reporter of Nov. 12, 1863, however, had this to say: “Woodruff Hall will be fitted up the ensuing week for the reception of tobacco, the proceeds from shows, theatres, and ‘sich like’ not being sufficient to justify the proprietor in allowing it to stand without being put to use.”

Graffiti scratched into its interior walls by Confederate prisoners indicate it was a military prison during part of the Civil War, apparently about 1864.

The 1885 Sanborn fire insurance map shows the second floor was used as some type of meeting hall, while the rest was used as warehouse space and offices. By 1892 the building was a tenement and used for junk storage.

The Jarvis Tobacco Co. occupied it, according to the 1897, 1901 and 1906 Sanborn maps, while by 1913 it was a hardware concern. The Gleaner of Nov. 26, 1922, announced it was going to house the Roby Cigar factory.

The cigar factory opened for business Jan. 8, 1923, and the plan for the Barnesville, Ohio, company was it was going to use the Henderson factory to spearhead a push into the Southern market. The Gleaner of April 1, 1923, carried an advertisement showing that the company marketed its cigars under the “Sunset Trail” and “Smo-Ko” brands, which were available at 64 locations throughout the county.

The company’s stockholders met March 1, 1924, and ousted the company president and general manager; they replaced them with Henderson men. Charles Argue became president and W.W. Winstead became general manager.

Their plans to rejuvenate the company failed, however, and the riverfront building was vacant, according to the 1931 Sanborn map. Sometime during the 1930s the building housed the state highway department garage.

The building’s next occupant was the McKee Button Co., according to The Gleaner of Sept. 26, 1936. The firm made blanks out of Ohio River mussel shells that were turned into buttons elsewhere. But that business also wasn’t particularly successful because the building was vacant when it was consumed by a “spectacular” fire, according to The Gleaner of Sept. 8, 1940.

“At the height of the blaze, a column of thick, oily smoke rose probably a mile high, then spread out above the business district to obscure the sun.”

The building was a roaring inferno by the time firefighters arrived. Hundreds of spectators scurried to safety as the thick walls collapsed, spilling bricks into Water Street and badly damaging a small building formerly used as offices by the Dixie Bee Ferry Co.

The state obtained an option to buy the site, according to The Gleaner of Dec. 5, 1952, and moved in at the end of June 1954. That building went into private hands at the beginning of 2018 and was converted into Rockhouse on the River later that year.

100 YEARS AGO

The newly elected city Board of Education met after the old board took its last actions and immediately changed the name of the high school for Blacks, according to The Gleaner of Dec. 4, 1923.

Several weeks earlier the old board had changed the name of Douglass High School, namesake of noted Black abolitionist Frederick Douglass, to honor the Rev. Paul H. Kennedy, a leader of Henderson’s Black community who had died April 9, 1921.

The new board changed the name back to Douglass High School.

50 YEARS AGO

Local officials decided to band together to convince the state Highway Department to widen 2.1 miles of outer Second Street from Carlisle Street to a point just east of Adams Lane, according to The Gleaner of Dec. 4, 1973.

County Judge John S. Hoffman told Henderson Fiscal Court the project had “ground to a half because of the controversy over the overpass.” The Highway Department had held a public hearing here in 1971 and unveiled plans for a 30-foot dirt fill overpass of the L&N Railroad tracks and four lanes, which would displace at least 16 homes and businesses. That displeased business owners in the vicinity.

Hoffman said the only way to get the project back on track was for fiscal court to join forces with the county school board and the city of Henderson.

The Second Street overpass didn’t open to traffic until Dec. 18, 1981.

25 YEARS AGO

The Hugh Edward Sandefur Training Center had almost entirely transferred its workforce to new quarters in Henderson Corporate Park, and expected to complete the process within a week, according to The Gleaner of Dec. 2, 1998.

The center had been in an old tobacco warehouse for two decades before moving. However, The Gleaner of March 5, 2015, announced it was selling the building to the city of Henderson to get out from under high overhead costs.

The city currently uses the building as its public works building.

Readers of The Gleaner can reach Frank Boyett at YesNews42@yahoo.com.

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Henderson history: Riverfront once lined with tobacco warehouses