The following post originally titled “An Early Marion Barber Shop” was taken from a Glances at Life article written by Homer Butler in which he interviewed W.T. Hudspeth about his early barber shop business in Marion, Illinois. The date of the articles publication is May 4, 1951. It is an informative article about post turn-of-the-century business life on N. Market Street. W.T. Hudspeth passed away in January of 1981 and Homer Butler in May 1982.
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W.T. Hudspeth’s memories of a building site 12 ½ feet wide and 60 feet deep which he owns on North Market Street (106 N. Market) made up a panorama of a half century of Marion’s history.
The small plot of ground in the city’s business section which has been the site of a barber shop since 1902 will soon be the location of a lunch room (Pete’s Snack Shop). The change may not be big news except to the persons involved, but the story of that 12 ½ feet of North Market frontage is the record of a successful business career accompanying the growth of a modern community.
The first building, constructed on the space, which was once an alley behind the First National Bank (now Bank of Marion) and a hotel owned by James A. Bainbridge, the first of three generations in the local jewelry business. The elder Bainbridge, who gave his name to numerous additions to the city of Marion in the days of its rapid expansion, built the small structure as an investment. In addition to his jewelry business in another location, he decided to own a barber shop. That was in 1902, two years later he sold out to the young barber (Hudspeth) who has owned it ever since. Hudspeth operated the barber shop for 37 years, retiring 10 years ago.
“I was there.” Hudspeth recalled Thursday, “When Mark Duke ran a “rag” restaurant (a tent) and William Schrader had a tavern in a dwelling house across the street. Flem Gent had a merry-go-round on the vacant lot where Kimmell’s auto supply now stands (corner of W. Union and N. Market). I was there when mud was six inches deep on North Market Street.”
“People talk about boom times now, but they don’t compare with the days between 1912 and 1918. There were four barbers in my shop in those days, earning as high as $100 a week. Street cars from Herrin, Carterville and Energy- brought people into town and 600 and 800 people walked up North Market Street each day. Many of them came to my barbershop. They bought everything we had haircuts, shaves, shampoo and massage. We’d have as many as 10 customers a day who would spend S3 apiece.”
While the barber shop became a bonanza, other business houses on the street were also booming. In the early days, a saloon in the hotel building adjacent to the barber shop on the north had a back room which was the scene of the entertainment which appealed to free spenders of that era. Boxers were imported for bouts to entertain fight fans and pit dogs were brought in from St. Louis for dog fights, Hudspeth recalled. The merry-go-round and tent shows on the vacant lot on the east side of the street lent a carnival atmosphere to the boisterous thoroughfare.
The Peabody Coal Company which was developing its Mines 1, 2 and 3 in those days had its pay office in the rooms over the present A & P store location (110-112 W. Union, the former location of the Roland Theater), and the attractions on North Market Street offered the first opportunities for expenditure of coal mine wages.
Hudspeth replaced the original barber shop building with a brick structure which was destroyed in the fire of 1916 which razed the bank building and the building to the west of the bank on the Public Square, Hudspeth then built the present structure.
With the paving of the street and the construction of other buildings the block took on a more sedate appearance and finally the boom tapered off. But the invasion of barber shops by women gave a new impetus lo Hudspeth’s business. Coming of higher rents forced several other shops from ground floors to basement locations, but Hudspeth continued to occupy the site he had purchased for S1750 in 1904. And the women patronized his shop in droves. There were few beauty shops in those days, and hair cutting was exclusively within the province of barbers.
“When women began wearing their hair bobbed, barbers had a new kind of work,” the retired barber recalled “Cutting women’s hair was slower work, and we had to learn new methods. Thinning shears were new then, and we had to learn to use them to thin women’s hair so they could comb it back in pompadour style.”
When the town voted saloons out, a collection of buildings sprang up three miles north of Marion to become known as “halfway,” an oasis for the thirsty from Marion and Johnston City. Removal of the taverns boomed the taxi business, and Hudspeth became a cab driver after barber shop hours. He operated a taxi for many years. High point in the taxi driver’s year was the county fair. The traffic between the Public Square and the Fair Grounds was so heavy during fair week that taxi operators took the doors off their touring cars so passengers could get in and out faster.
When Hudspeth retired from his barber shop ten years ago he retained the small building which his banker once told him was “too small for any kind of business.” By that time he had invested part of his earnings in the two story building at the southeast corner of the square. The first building he bought on that location was destroyed in the Goodall Hotel fire (1941) and upon the site of the ruins he built the newest building on the Square (the Hudspeth building housed the Stylart Shoppe for decades).
(Glances at Life by Homer Butler as published in the Marion Daily Republican, May 4, 1951)