Hamburger Row
A charred window inside the house on Hamburger Row. A minor fire occurred there some years ago. Photo by News-Times photographer Larry Singer.
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Following is the article I wrote for the Thursday, March 12, 2009, edition of the El Dorado News-Times entitled “Hidden ‘Hamburger Row’ house exposed.”
By JOHN WORTHEN
News-Times Staff
It isn’t much to look at. The walls are worn and gray, the inside is gutted and the floors are nearly dilapidated.
Still, the two-story house that seemed to appear out of thin air recently on South Washington Avenue has become an architectural celebrity in El Dorado.
The demolition of buildings in the 300 block of South Washington, a necessary step in order to build the city’s new conference center there, revealed the house in late February — it had been sandwiched between two brick buildings and was hidden behind another building’s facade.
The creaky old structure sat cloaked for nearly nine decades.
Before modern buildings were constructed in the early 1920s, the house was part of the famed Hamburger Row, a stretch of South Washington between Locust Street and Hillsboro known for raucous parties, boozing, prostitution and, well, a pretty good hamburger, according to historians.
Wooden shacks sprouted up there after the oil boom, and the area became known as “Hamburger Row” because of make-shift restaurants that supplied food to oil field workers.
A 1921 ordinance by the El Dorado City Council ordered the food shacks torn down just six months after they were erected; they were deemed unsanitary, the city’s sanitation director deemed.
And when the old house is torn down, the last piece of Hamburger Row will officially be gone.
“It’s really a shame that it has to go,” said El Dorado Alderman Vertis Mason, who led a failed effort this week to try and save the house. “This is the last structure from ‘Hamburger Row,’ but it’s just so far gone, and it would cost so much to refurbish it. It just can’t be saved.”
Architects charged with building the conference center told El Dorado Mayor Mike Dumas Wednesday that the house — built sometime in the late 19th or very early 20th century — isn’t sound enough to be restored. It will likely be demolished later this week.
And for El Dorado resident Ester Gammill, 84, demolition day will be a somber one.
“I was in Hot Springs when a friend of mine showed me a picture of the house on the Internet,” Gammill said, referring to a photo of the home published on the News-Times blog Between Editions.
“I was shocked. I couldn’t believe my eyes. My dad owned that house and the building next to it. I worked there, and I just couldn’t believe it when I saw it.”
Gammill’s father, Max Shilling, built the three-story structure next door to the house and operated his furniture business there for decades. He later bought the house, which had been retrofitted into the facade of a brick structure, and used both structures as offices, she said.
A drapery business that spun off from the furniture store also operated there for several years, and Burbank Furniture Co. later set up in the building next to the house.
Gammill said she wasn’t exactly sure when her father sold the house and its surrounding buildings, but contrary to salacious gossip that’s been spreading throughout town about the home, she assured that it’s never been used as a brothel.
“Oh my, no,” Gammill said with a gasp. “When I heard that people had been saying that, I wanted to let them know that my father owned that house and it was used as his office and for storing records. It was never used for prostitution.”
As for the building next door… .
“There were some, how do you want to say it, activities going on there,” Gammill said with a wry laugh. “I worked in the upstairs part of the house and building attached to it, and our stairwell was parallel to the other building’s stairwell.
“People often confused the two, and I saw very confused and inebriated men just about everyday. They’d stumble up the stairs into our office thinking they were in the building next to us. You can imagine the look of surprise on their faces when I told them they were mistaken.”
Over the years, the buildings between Locust and the small alleyway next to the former Shilling’s Furniture store have represented a number of businesses.
Among them: Burbank Furniture, the Hood Hotel, Central Hotel, Andrews Ready to Wear, Leader Store Groceries, Frank M. Wexman Liquor, Pass-Time Billard Parlor, People’s Store, Taylor’s Barber Shop, Bargain Store and Jones Rooms.
Few people in El Dorado can recall more than one or two of the above establishments, but Gammill hopes that a little publicity will educate citizens about the rich history of South Washington.
“It’s important to remember things from the past, and I want to tell people so they will know what was there,” Gammill said. “Progress is wonderful, but remembering our history is just as important.”
Author’s note:
Before Gammill’s father owned the home, and before the brick structures confined it, it was part of the famed Hamburger Row, as mentioned in the above article.
How the home was used during that time is up for debate, which is why I didn’t include information about this time period in my article.
I went on first-hand information provided to me by Gammill.
That said, El Dorado businessman and local historian Richard Mason is sure that during the time of the oil boom, when the original Hamburger Row structures stood on South Washington, the house was used as as a brothel.
Following is Mason’s account:
In El Dorado, Arkansas an 18 million dollar conference center is under construction. To clear the area for the building, six 1920s era buildings are being taken down. During the demolition, behind the store front of one of the buildings, an intact — circa 1870s house suddenly appeared (Pictured above in a photo taken by News-Times photographer Jim Lemon).
I’ve put a little research into the old house that was uncovered, and for a short answer it’s El Dorado’s last whorehouse.
From my old maps, I have determined the first railroad came into El Dorado around 1876. I have a map that shows the first railroad under construction at that date. In looking at the house and comparing it to the Mason House on North Jackson — which is 1875 circa — the mystery house on South Washington Avenue looks to have been built sometime between 1876 and 1880, right across from the railroad station.
I walked through all parts of the house, except the attic, and, from the layout of the rooms, it looks as if it were built as a boarding house or hotel, probably right after the first railroad came to El Dorado.
When the 1920s oil boom started it was probably the only substantial structure on South Washington Avenue. Within a year rough clapboard buildings where thrown up and South Washington became the lawless Hamburger Row.
There is no doubt in my mind, after listening to and reading the oral and written histories of the area, that this house was then used as a barrelhouse — saloon, gambling, and prostitution.
In the early to mid 1920s most of the clapboard buildings were torn down and brick building were constructed. However, this house must have still been a substantial structure, so the builder of the store front built around it, keeping a concealed entrance through what later became the kitchen at Joe’s Place.
Worth Camp — in an e-mail, said the 1929 city directory listed 324 ½ South Washington as “Jones Rooms”. Worth notes “it may have had a reputation for prostitution”.
I interviewed the desk clerk of the Garrett Hotel who manned the front desk from late the late 1940s to the early 1950s. He confirmed the house—as well as at least five additional buildings—including the Randolph Hotel were used for prostitution as late at the early 1950s.
I hate to see this house disappear, but the mindset around here is that old historic buildings are worthless and need to be torn down.
Say goodbye to the last piece of Hamburger Row.
A lot of my research comes from the manuscript of my novel The Queen of Hamburger Row.
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A postcard depicting the original Hamburger Row.
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Clara Ayres:
“Well, I had a brother over here that was working for Rock Island. He was older than I was and I came over here. The biggest impression was, of course, so many people milling up and down South Washington Street, especially, mostly men, not many women.
“It was more like a carnival. Down on South Washington Street they had what they called Hamburger Row and there were so many people that never even went in restaurants to eat much. They would just waltz up to one of those hamburger stands and get a big, fat hamburger for ten cents.”
Robert Vernon:
“When the people came here, we only had one or two small cafes and the city leased the land. The streets were not paved. We had cinders from the square down to as far as the Rock Island Railroad track. They hauled cinders up there. There was no curbs but there was a sidewalk on either side of the street on South Washington.
“There was about a six foot space between what you would call where the curb should be and where the sidewalk was. That land was rented or leased to individuals to put a little eating joint along there.
“Some of them were maybe six foot wide and some of them were 20 foot long. Of course, couldn’t many people turn around or work inside so most of them had a platform built out, a deck built out.
“You’d carry your food and you’d stand there and eat or you’d get a hamburger or your soup or your chili or whatever it was. They all sold drinks of some kind.”
John Brown
“That was a thing you would have to see to believe. It was impossible to picture as many of them as there were and the size and conditions that they were operating under was amazing because the sidewalk was lined with them that would be no bigger than this office [the library in the education building of South Arkansas Community College] and they were selling hamburgers as fast as they could make them.
“Sloppy Joe’s were their name and some of them didn’t have a name. The whole row, the whole street from what was then the Rock Island Railroad and the courthouse square from about Cedar Street on down, was lined with hamburger joints.”
Mildred Langston
“Oh, Lord, yes, that was the best smelling street [South Washington]. We never had — I never had eat a hamburger in my life, never heard of a hamburger till 1921. I never had eaten any ground beef. We had sausage but we never had eat hamburger ground up.
“Oh, that was the best smelling onions and pickles and mustard. I can still smell it. My mouth waters.
“They were a dime a piece during the boom there. I mean they were just thick between the sidewalks and curb on the street, just little old shacks, little old bitty things but they had that grill and them hamburgers a-frying.
“I think they just used mustard and pickles on them then and onions, you know, didn’t dress them up like we do now. But they sure did smell good and they tasted good, too.”
E. E. Dendy
“It was little old shacks built on the side of the walk from Hillsboro on down. It was just a dirt walk built up there and they had planks laid up there on it and mud was sloshing all over the sides of those buildings.
“Them little old places they built a hamburger joint and just big enough to come in back and have these hot plates and things to cook on and served it out of doors that they would brace up.
“They had a little shelf build here that served out that door. You’d walk up there and buy hamburgers and things like that, something to eat. At night they’d close them down and lock them up. Well, they had police walking and taking care of it in the middle of the night after they closed.
“When I left, stuff stayed up 24 hours a day because the oil field then didn’t shut then and they was hauling stuff.”
The preceding accounts of life on Hamburger Row were taken verbatim, unedited, from files at the Museum of Natural Resources in Smackover.
