So I guess Turner couldn't out-bid Coca Cola for the prime barn real estate and had to settle for the fence.
Perhaps he is the innovator that inspired later fence advertisers at CMU
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~akj/stuff/...
Okay, first things first... Someone has chalked the warning: "JOHN TURNER'S BLANKETS WILL KILL YOU" onto the fence!
I want to believe this is a young boy's prank on a friend, or maybe a typical neighborly dispute. But I'm concerned that it might be an early example of consumer advocacy in a time when blankets could indeed kill you...
And found that Seely Street was one of several streets located in the flat area south of Butler St (then Beechwood or Washington Blvd) that now makes up the Zoo parking lot and part of Highland Park, and lo and behold, there's F.G. Houston's property!
http://images.library.pitt.edu/cgi-...
Not positive about which structure this is, but there's only one place to be looking at the property and downhill toward Butler Street.
Just to round out the discussion, there is a John E. Turner listed in the same directory with a dry goods store at 5211 Stanton Ave... Very macabre... http://digital.library.pitt.edu/cgi...
Whew! That's a load off of my mind! I couldn't make any sense of the last word and though it was just marks...
I'm glad to have found that Mr. Houston was merely willing to rent out every inch of barn and fence for advertisements, and not at involved in blanket-related death intrigue!
I take back all posthumous aspersions cast on the good Mr. Turner.
I still read it both ways, and "WARM" has certainly been rubbed out, so I suspec my original theory might be correct, and some long-dead twelve-year-old just put one over on me!
Thanks Jonathan!
So I guess Turner couldn't out-bid Coca Cola for the prime barn real estate and had to settle for the fence.
Perhaps he is the innovator that inspired later fence advertisers at CMU
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~akj/stuff/...
Okay, first things first... Someone has chalked the warning: "JOHN TURNER'S BLANKETS WILL KILL YOU" onto the fence!
I want to believe this is a young boy's prank on a friend, or maybe a typical neighborly dispute. But I'm concerned that it might be an early example of consumer advocacy in a time when blankets could indeed kill you...
alright, that aside, I found Felix G. Houston listed as a Carpenter living at 7500 Seely St in 1908, here: http://digital.library.pitt.edu/cgi...
And found that Seely Street was one of several streets located in the flat area south of Butler St (then Beechwood or Washington Blvd) that now makes up the Zoo parking lot and part of Highland Park, and lo and behold, there's F.G. Houston's property!
http://images.library.pitt.edu/cgi-...
Not positive about which structure this is, but there's only one place to be looking at the property and downhill toward Butler Street.
Just to round out the discussion, there is a John E. Turner listed in the same directory with a dry goods store at 5211 Stanton Ave... Very macabre... http://digital.library.pitt.edu/cgi...
If you click on the image for an enlarged version, a more 'normal' looking "JOHN TURNER'S BLANKETS WILL KEEP YOU WARM"!
appears.
Whew! That's a load off of my mind! I couldn't make any sense of the last word and though it was just marks...
I'm glad to have found that Mr. Houston was merely willing to rent out every inch of barn and fence for advertisements, and not at involved in blanket-related death intrigue!
I take back all posthumous aspersions cast on the good Mr. Turner.
I still read it both ways, and "WARM" has certainly been rubbed out, so I suspec my original theory might be correct, and some long-dead twelve-year-old just put one over on me!
Thanks Jonathan!
here's that map link now -
http://images.library.pitt.edu/cgi-...
and here's a photo of Seely Street and the Sharpsburg Bridge from the hillside of the zoo property http://images.library.pitt.edu/cgi-...