By Morris and Lynn Walker | Posted: Saturday, June 21, 2008 12:00 am
Editor's note: Morris and Lynn Walker are working to make "150 Years in the Heart of the Valley," a documentary film about Corvallis' first 150 years. In this feature, which appears on Saturdays in the Gazette-Times, they share tidbits around Corvallis that they've uncovered during their work. You can contact the Walkers at heartofthevalley@yahoo.com or by calling 609-0107.
A ubiquitous logo in the 1920s spotlighted Nipper, a mixed-breed terrier with black floppy ears. He sat close to a Victor talking machine, the Edison Bell, as if mesmerized by the sounds emitted by the megaphone type speaker. The quote beneath the logo was "His master's voice." Starting in 1901, the Victor record player became one of the leading phonograph players in the world by 1929. Alice Ingalls' record player was her pride and joy.
Eleanor and Claude Ingalls loved their darling daughter, Alice, but Claude's work kept him so busy that what little time he had for her and her brother, Bob, was limited. "C.E.," as folks knew him, was the publisher of the Gazette-Times from 1915 until he turned the operation over to his son, Bob, shortly after World War II.
In 1926, C.E. was especially busy and gratified, as he watched the fabulous new brick Gazette-Times building rising at the corner of Third Street and Jefferson Avenue. For some time, the newspaper had been operating out of the old 1870s-era opera house. That building was next to Leading Floral on Madison Avenue, which has been in the same location for 90 years now.
At the same time, 15-year-old Alice was in love with life. She danced around in fantasies. She was enchanted (as were all her peers), with the music of the day. She would save up and buy a record and play it again and again. She dreamed of dancing on a vast wooden floor, like the movie stars in the films of the day. But Corvallis did not have such a ballroom.
When the Gazette-Times' building nearly was finished, Alice walked in with her father. When she saw the enormous wooden floor, it was as though it had been built from her dreams. All the presses would print out the daily news in the basement below that floor, and soon the wooden expanse would be covered by cubicles and desks.
But for that first moment, Alice just had her father if she could invite her girl friends over for a dance on the perfect new surface. C.E. leaned down and looked seriously into his daughter's face and said, "Yes, on one condition. You can't dance the Black Bottom!" (It was the most popular dance of the day, but risque for the time.)
"I love you, Daddy!" She ran to her friends' house, and they wasted no time in gathering together at the G-T building. C.E. let them in and left them alone as they cranked up the gramophone. Alice Ingalls was in Wonderland as she and her friends danced the night away, but not the Black Bottom, or so the story goes.
The G-T building went through many changes in the decades that followed. Another section was added on the south side. It now is the location of the Red Horse Coffee Company, which sells gourmet coffee drinks, among other treats. The Gazette-Times moved to its current location at 600 S.W. Jefferson Ave. in 1971.
Kristen and Nick Arzner opened a brewpub in the main portion of the building in 2008. They commemorated founder J.C. Avery's Marysville by naming their new restaurant BLOCK 15, which was the location's first official designation. In addition to burgers and salads, its speciality is site-brewed beers - even root beer. Or what Alice Ingalls might have called Sarsaparilla in the 1920s.