100 years ago today, the following ad for Dr. A. L. Zell’s dental office appeared in the Leader Tribune newspaper in Laverne, Oklahoma. I would direct you to note Dr. Zell’s office address in the lower left of his ad to understand why I bring up a dentist today:
Hmm. There’s a dentist’s office in a photography studio?!
Well … not exactly. May Berry, aka Mrs. Berry, had indeed had a photo studio in Laverne, OK in the early 1920s, but by 1924 “Mrs. Berry’s Photo Studio” was long out of business.
So, how, then, to explain Dr. Zell’s ad?
I could guess that perhaps Mrs. Berry’s studio had been so very popular when it was open that people just still remembered where her popular studio had been.
Or … I could guess that Mrs. Berry’s studio’s name remained clearly visible on the outside of the building even after her studio closed, providing a reasonable way to reference the building’s location — and making that a good shorthand to use for the dental office’s address.
I think this explanation is the more likely one. As dentists come and go in that location over the following years, the reference to “Mrs. Berry’s Photo Studio” as a dentist office’s address remains the same.
For example, here’s a notice from 1926 for dentist who replaced Dr. Zell in that location:
Mrs. Berry and her husband, Fred, wind up moving to California in the late 1920s. Fred L. Berry dies there, and when a 1960 obit for him is published back in the Laverne, Oklahoma newspaper, apparently people in the town still reference Mrs. Berry’s photo studio as the site of a doctor’s office:
Curious, eh?
P.S. I have NO actual evidence that Mrs. Berry’s name was actually on the building where she had her photo studio from 1920-1923, as I have found no photos of Laverne that show any building like that. But Chris and I have definitely seen buildings built in this time period (in other towns) where there were business names on the buildings and where those business names never get taken off the building even after the businesses close.
So, maybe Mrs. Berry’s studio name was on the building that is later used by medical professionals in Laverne. If you have happen to have any old photos of Laverne that show a building with Mrs. Berry’s name on it, please let me know – I didn’t find anything online. At least not yet… 😉
P.P.S. Late breaking update: Chris ran across a fascinating side-story to this post: it turns out that Dr. Zell was actually stripped of his dental license in the summer of 1924, before his ads for his dental practice in Laverne, OK start running in The Leader Tribune. Dr. Zell’s ads run in the Leader Tribune weekly until the end of December 1924.
In September 1926, Dr. Zell is arrested in another town for working as a dentist without a license, which I guess technically he’d been doing all along in Laverne, or at least for the months between losing his license in 1924 and leaving town in 1926.
In any case, I guess Dr. Zell’s problems are an example of how newpaper clippings that mention early women photographers can lead to interesting but unrelated stories in general, eh? 😉
