THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, August 12, 1996 TAG: 9608100039
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ALEX MARSHALL, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 132 lines
DOWNTOWN USED to be a place where a young woman could start a life from a boardinghouse room. A place of sailors, beer and bars. A place where working-class families lived over avenues mixed with cars and horse-drawn wagons.
Urban renewal in the 1950s and '60s swept away all this, as did changing economies and social mores.
One big change: Few sailors walk Granby or other downtown streets now. It's as if they've been banished to East Little Creek Road or Hampton Boulevard. The city's heart no longer so easily reveals it is a Navy town.
Now, as the city prepares to turn much of its downtown into a huge shopping mall, here are a few remembrances of the way things used to be: Living at the Y
Marjorie Nassef, 65, came to Norfolk in 1953 and got her first job here. She lived in a boardinghouse, something which was not unusual then. Two years later, she was married with her first child. She now lives in Chesapeake.
``I worked at the Royster Building and lived in the YWCA. I used to go to dances on the second floor of the old City Market building.
``The dances were for servicemen, and the girls at the Y used to go there and dance with them. It was just a place to go and have fun, without actually going out on a date.
``We had to be in at the Y by midnight, or else they would lock the door and not let you in.
``I started out in the mailroom within the Royster Building, and then I moved up to a secretarial position. At lunchtime, I used to go for a walk and look in all the windows. I'd dream about the things I couldn't afford to buy.
``Sometimes, I would go in at lunch to the Epworth Methodist and sit down quietly for a while. The doors were always open. I got married in that church.
``It was not too nice living at the Y. It was run by two elderly women, and they were very strict.
``If you had a date, he had to wait down in the parlor. You shared a room with another girl, and you shared bathrooms.
``But it was cheap. I had no car, so it was the best place for me.
``I came down to Norfolk from Maryland with a friend for a weekend, and I never went back. I loved it here. The people were so friendly. I came down, got a job, a place to stay, and I never went back. '' Haircuts and Hookers
George H. Bergmann, 69, became intimately familiar with teeming street life of downtown Norfolk in the early 1950s when he worked as a bartender, cab driver and a barber while still a full-time sailor. He first came to Norfolk in 1944 as a 16-year-old underage sailor. He returned after World War II, after fighting in the Pacific and watching the surrender of Japan in Tokyo Bay. He lives now in Virginia Beach.
``I used to be a barber in the Monticello hotel. We had 12 chairs and 12 barbers, and I was the only non-Italian.
``We had a shoeshine boy and two manicurists. Tony was the owner. He wouldn't let us sit in the barber chairs
when we didn't have any customers.
``All our customers were lawyers, judges, doctors and professional people.
``In them days, we shaved people; that was our main thing.
``A shave cost 35 cents. I would have maybe 10 shaves in the morning, before I got my first haircut.
``I took great pride in working there. It said you were a damn good barber.
``We'd give facials with towels from the old-fashioned steam ovens. We had to use tongs to lift the towels out to put them on people's faces. A lot of customers had their own shaving mugs.
``All the barbers sat in the back there and honed their straight razors.
``On weekends, I used to bartend at Murray's Tavern at Atlantic and City Hall Avenue, next to the Byrd Theater. Beer was 10 cents a glass, and Murray let sailors run a tab.
``We had a pool table in the back. In them days, it wasn't just drinking beer. Girls, or `B-girls' as they were called, would talk you into buying them a drink, or using the jukebox, because they got a kickback. They would work for a bar like Murray's and try to talk sailors into spending money.
``We would dance with them, even though it was against the law.
``My job was also to keep the fights and the cussing down. Only a few of the B-girls were actually prostitutes. Sometimes though, to get a place to sleep, they would promise a sailor sex in exchange for a hotel room or a road house.
``Driving a cab, I knew the cheapest hotels, and I would drive couples there. They were all on Military Highway, which was nothing but a dirt road.
``Next to the burlesque theaters downtown, however, there were some real houses of ill repute. One hotel would open up after the burlesque show at the Gaiety. It was $2 for a quickie. The girls would chew gum or read the newspaper while they were doing their thing.
``The city had a vice squad led by Mr. Robinette. (A 1954 news article described Patrolman William Robinette, who had been named Policeman of the Year, as having ``the far-seeing eye of an Indian, the memory of an elephant, and the nose of a bloodhound'' for those engaged in illicit activities.) He was a big showoff. He always wore a 10-gallon hat.
``He arrested me a couple of times for being with girls at the hotel. What his men would do, they would watch certain girls that they knew were prostitutes. And whoever left with the girls at the bars, they followed to the hotel.
``They would wait about five minutes, the time it takes an average person to take off their clothes, and then bang on their door. They knew me by my first name. They would say, `We know you're in there, George.'
``They would take you downtown and book you. It cost $12.50 to get out. Most of us sailors didn't have $12.50, so we spent the night in jail. That was what East Main and City Hall Avenue were about.''
It was much more interesting than it is now,'' said Carol Stevenson, 54, who now lives in Chesapeake. ``It was more like the large cities whose downtowns have not been demolished.
``We lived in the 1950s at the corner of Bank Street, across from the Freemason Street Baptist Church, in the Hartford Apartments. It was typical working class. There were row houses, storefronts, people lived over them.
``But it was bustling, because it was right in the heart of town.
``I remember Saul's Pharmacy on the corner of Bank and Market streets. It had a fountain, and they did sodas and milkshakes. There were two pharmacists, Dr. Saul and Dr. Simpson.'' ILLUSTRATION: FILE PHOTOs<
Coleman's Tattoo Parlor on East Main Street had a reputation among
sailors as being one of the best in the world.
Before Norfolk's "urban renewal" in the 1950s and '60s, the taverans
of Granby Street attracted many sailors to the downtown area; now,
the city's identity as a Navy town is less obvious.
During World War II, the streets of downtown Norfolk were often
teeming with city life; the corner of Granby Street and City Hall
Avenue was right at the heart of the city in the 1940s.
Color photo
Nassef today
< Color photo
Bergmann today by CNB