Category Archives: Kingsport TN ephemera

Wings Over Kingsport

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Both of these soft-cover books (8 1/2″ x 11″ each) are quite interesting. “Wings Over Kingsport: Tennessee’s Planned City And Its Industries As Viewed From The Sky” by Richard H. Alvey was published in 1938 and “Wings Over Kingsport No 2: Tennessee’s Planned City & Its Industries As Viewed From The Sky In 1938 and 1963” came out in 1963. The 1938 edition has 63 pages; the 1963 one, 98.

I have a better copy of the 1963 edition, but this is the one that Mr. Alvey gave me after I interviewed him in 1976. (Yes, I can see where I live from here)
These are great fun to look through.

50 Minute Cleaners

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“50” Minute Cleaners or Fifty Minute Cleaners, 900 Lynn Garden Drive (it’s now the low, red-roofed building next to the log house). As far as I can tell from available sources, it was in business from the late 60s to the very early 70s. It faced heavy competition from One Hour Martinizing with seven locations around town.
These are fake poufs for the left outpocket on a sport coat. You could also, I suppose, stash one in the back pocket of your jeans…

Holston Pharmacy/DeWitt’s

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Well, 200 years from 1776 to 1976. Health above all! By using DeWitt nostrums, of course.
Anyway, Holston Pharmacy opened its Boone Street location in November, 1926, in the Bandy-Price Building (now Two Dad’s Restaurant) at Five Points (that’s now considered an old designation. It’s the intersection of Charlemont, Boone, East and West Sullivan and Cherokee Streets). The location was advertised as having a bright, all-glass store front with entrances facing Five Points, Sullivan and Charlemont. The owner/operator was Pharmacist W.D. Westmoreland. Holston Pharmacy then had locations on Broad Street, on the Bristol Highway and in Surgoinsville. I saw that at one time later on, the Pharmacy had a sales event featuring a special price on razor blades for Gillette razors…with a free styptic pencil. And, if you ever shaved with a Gillette razor, you darn sure needed a styptic pencil!
(note: a styptic pencil was a pencil-shaped stick of aluminum salts…it helped clot the blood when you nicked yourself with that terrible razor) (and you would…)

Cherokee Ice House

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Cherokee Ice House was a long-time supplier of ice to homes and businesses in Kingsport. This is, I think (it is in a frame and I’m reluctant to take it apart), a wrapper for a bag of ice. A gallon of water weighs a little over 8 pounds, so this represents a gallon of ice, maybe. I don’t know from weighing ice…
This is what Cherokee Ice House looked like in 1977:

This drawing got me started on representing some of the buildings in and around downtown Kingsport. I did them in pencil, which gained me the comment, from a local art gallery, “Don’t you do anything in color?”.
Yes, I do, but I like doing buildings in black-and-white. Monochrome me.

I did a bit of research on this company. It appears to have been in business as early as 1922 (Kingsport Coal & Ice – they also made ice cream – began in 1917 on Main Street).
It was also known as “Cherokee Ice Plant, Old Kingsport”. Ice in the 1940’s was 60 cents per 100 pounds, 50 cents for commercial interests. There was a huge ice shortage in July of 1946. Ice had to be shipped in from as far away as Kentucky. Scott Roller owned Cherokee Ice in that year.

Wexler Bend Pilot Plant

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Fifty hand-picked married men with at least one child Tennessee Eastman employees worked feverishly to develop the world’s most powerful explosive – RDX. The result was the large-scale production at Holston Defense (see The Secret History of RDX Colin F. Baxter, University Press of Kentucky 2018)
There is also a detailed history of this plant and the other plant at Horse Creek

Click to access ADA315291.pdf

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