Take a good, long look at this week’s aerial postcard, read Thomas Barnes’ post “The Edgewater Gulf Hotel, Queen of the Coast,” and be sure to check back in next Friday to see this same aerial view from a different era.
Dated April 9, 1938. “Greetings from The “Deep South” in attendance at The Mutual Benefit Life Insurance Co.’s National Convention of Company Leaders.
Preservation in Mississippi 
Used to go here when I was a boy in the late 1960’s. I watched the so called implosion on WWL TV and remembered the failed demolition attempt. I really never understood why this wonderful hotel was demolished, what a wonderful place it would be today if only they decided to restore it.
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I stayed there with my family several times in the mid to late 50s. I still have the most vivid memories of the place, and in great detail. For a boy from north Mississippi, I might as well have been on the French Riviera. Now, hurricanes aside, there is nothing on the coast (or anywhere much else in the U.S.) to evoke memories or dreams. Architects once rigorously and inventively were dream manufacturers. No more. Now they are busy with other things. We have lost much more than the Edgewater.
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I was a bellhop during the summers of 1950 and 1951. I was having a milkshake in the employees canteen when the radio announced that Korean War began. Back then elevators had operators, who were young women. When they needed break a couple (there were two elevators) of bellboys would relieve them and if it was at night we would have elevator races. Tips were pretty good.
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My grandmother and her sisters used to meet there for vacation in the late 1950’s thru the 1970’s. They lived far and wide, but always spent a week at the Edgewater every summer. My grandmother used to tell me great stories about their antics. Once in the mid 60’s, my great aunt Eva was sitting in the lobby bar waiting for the others to arrive. She was reading and having a cocktail and started conversing with a man at the bar. Eva said she thought he looked familiar, but thought he may have been the manager or someone her husband did business with. He had asked Eva if she wanted him to sign something for her. She thought he was “getting fresh” and said no. When my grandmother arrived, she saw who Eva was talking to and literally almost fainted…………my aunt Eva had been carrying on a conversation with Dean Martin!!! My granny used to tease Eva saying that had she just followed Hollywood and the movies a bit closer, she could have been part of the Rat Pack!!!
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