Volume 15 , Issue 7

1911 - Alva's Downtown Square (Okla.)

[This is an Alva postcard view of 4th & Barnes, 27 May 1911, found in Glimpse of the Past (an early postcard view of Alva), street scene between 4th & Barnes showing flooding after a hard rain. During 1910 thru 1911 they were paving College Avenue, and the streets around the downtown square; constructing City Hall.]

Back in 2002, Vol. IV, of the OkieLegacy ezine, while we were researching the 1910 alledged murder of Mabel Oakes, we found the following description of the Alva, Woods county, Oklahoma, downtown square in the Defense Attorney's Opening Statement:

"The city of Alva is built around the government square. We will let this side here represent the rows of buildings, and this inside here represent the street. Now here are two blocks on the north separated by a street eighty feet wide. In each of these blocks there are sixteen lots twenty-five feet lots, making four hundred feet as the length of each of these blocks, and here is another block of the same dimensions: sixteen lots each block four hundred feet. Then here is a street on the west that is eighty feet wide, this being the west end of the square there is a block consisting of thirteen lots twenty-five feet each and here is the street coming up here. It does not pass through the square, however. Then here again is a block of sixteen lots twenty-five feet wide and an eighty foot street, and here is the east side of the square consisting of thirteen lots of twenty-five feet each. Now the Office of this defendant, as I recollect, it is on the east block, south side, and next to the corner lot. One lot west of the corner lot."

There was a frame building on the west corner of 4th & Barnes Avenue, southside and SE corner of the square. That frame building was the Ketchen's Veterinary Hospital. It also shows a barn like building to the left (catty-corner from veterinary hospital) that said it was the Nicholson-Noel Livery Stable.

It was in Ketchen's testimony of the 1911 Old Opera Murder Trial that Ketchen mentioned that Miller's Old Opera House and office was east of the veterinary hospital with four feet open space between the two buildings. The Old Opera House was just east and Miller's office was west of that.

It was also testified to that the Noel Livery Stable was catty-corner from the Old Opera House. Through testimony and the Defenses Attorney's opening statement, the Old Opera House Murder site is now pinned down to the southeast corner of the downtown square in the east end of the 400 Block of Barnes Avenue., southside of the square.

1908 - Alva Post office, Flynn St. between College & 7th Street. As to the post office, I found a copy of a postcard street scene of Alva, Oklahoma, Flynn Avenue, dated May 31, 1908. It was a view of Flynn Avenue in mid-block between College Avenue & 7th Street, showing a Memorial Day parade in progress. The Alva National Bank (where Central National Bank is today) is on the NW corner of the square, College & Flynn Avenue, with the Alva Townsite Company upstairs. Across a narrow alley to the left (West) of the bank building is the Post Office in one of its early locations before it was built on the North-South Government Street around the 1936.

Next to the post office to the West is the Gamet & Jones Groceries with the Old Soldiers Club Room located upstairs in the grocery store building. Just west of the Gamet & Jones Groceries was the New Opera House built in 1906 and finished in 1907 (on the corner where Higginbotham building is today).

1908 - Woods County Union Bank, Kletke bldg, SE corner of 5th & Flynn, Alva, Oklahoma. You know where Old Surety Insurance building once occupied the NE corner of 5th & Flynn on the northside of the square. That was where the Woods County Union (Citizens) Bank was located and owned by Gottlieb Kletke. In Miller's testimony, I believe he mentioned something about going to the Republican headquarters that was above the Woods County Bank and then to the pool hall across to the west.

We give you these clues to help with a visual to the past scenes in downtown Alva during the 1910-11 and give you a perspective of things during Alva's First Murder, 9 November 1910.

On the 9th of September 1911, 9:00 o'clock A.M., Judge L. T. Wilson, counsel for the defendant, made his opening statement to the jury. L. T. Wilson's Opening Statement to read more about the description of Alva's Downtown square and the check out the Cast of Characters to review some of the Defense witnesses testimonies.   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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