Description
A handwritten note on the back of the picture identifies this as "Crazy Hotel Pavilion 1940 Cigar Stand and Shine Stand." Please notice Leon Cross, the "Shoe-shine boy", who operated the stand for years, in the white shirt to the left of the Shine Stand. This pavilion is off the hotel lobby, behind and west of the elevators of the second Crazy Hotel. A fire started March 15, 1925, in the drugstore next to the bath house of the first Crazy Hotel which adjoined the Crazy Flats (second Crazy Pavilion). The fire destroyed all the businesses in this city block. The second Crazy Hotel opened in 1927, and incorporated all of the previous enterprises into one building covering the entire city block. The drinking bar, from which Boyce Ditto served mineral water for many years, is at the opposite end of the pavilion, left of the shoe-shine and Cigar Stand, with its striped awning. In its heyday during the health-spa era of the "City built on Water," the bar served four different strengths of mineral water. The bar is still in existence today although inactive. The mezzanine around the drinking pavilion was lined with offices, primarily those of doctors.
Image
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