THE PRINCESS SKATING RINK was located on Third Street, now known as the Sportsman, put a lot of new life in that section of the city in 1903…The big building was erected by T. H. B. Jones, owner of the Ironton House, the leading hotel of the city…
William Weller, a young man whose parents resided on Center St, now the building occupied by Neekamp shoe store and Drs. Conkle & Milleson, was manager of the new amusement fad vanished during the Gay 90s when everybody rode a bicycle.
There are many readers today who will recall the Princess Skating Rink and the music of the hurdy-gurdy when the tune “In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree” was popular…Skirts were long, and the girls were very graceful…
There’s an old joke about the best-dressed belle whom all the young bachelors skated with who fell on the floor under the bright lights…Her skirts went up around her waist and on the seat of her unspeakable, which was made of old flour sacks, were the printed words “Pillsbury’s Best.”…I think I can name two people here today who will swear that’s a true story.
The Princess Skating Rink floor was great for dancing…Private and public dances attracted jolly crowds…A group of young businessmen organized as the Agwa Club and their holiday matinee dances was the talk of the Tri-State…
A Columbus orchestra of three colored entertainers, advertised as the Wright Trio attracted great crowds…The couples came by train and streetcar from Portsmouth, Huntington, Catlettsburg, and Ashland…Many stayed all night at the hotels or took early morning trains at 4 a. m…The leader of the orchestra looked like today’s Louis Armstrong, only he played the saxophone.
The first pro basketball games in town were played at the Princess Skating Rink…Among the players, today to talk about the games are Tom Hudson, Johnny Frecka, and Emerson Marting…Others recalled were Art Hayes and Frank Wieteki remembered as bankers at the First National…The big building became the Princess Armory in 1917 shortly before WWII…In 1920 it was converted into an auto sales room where the Buick was displayed and then it was revamped as the Orpheum vaudeville theatre.
During the year, just before the 1913 flood, the Agwa Club held indoor fairs to raise money and the brass band attracted great crowds…It was at the Princess that the first split skirt to the knee was worn by a Portsmouth girl…Known as the new style Harem skirt, men stood in line to get inside a tent in the rink, where the attractive miss sat on a platform with one leg covered with silk stocking exposed to the knee…Taking a walk on Third Street today seeing the knock-kneed kneecaps and legs it is hard to believe that men once paid a dime just to see one.
WHEN IRONTON FLOATED – The city of Ironton was named by its founders in 1849 and the first newspaper was printed in the new town in 1850, but the name “Ironton” spread up and down the Ohio Valley like wildfire…The population of the new town in 1851 was published at 903…The issue of the newspaper on May 17, 1851, announced that Capt. A. Mitchell had named his new steamboat “Ironton”…The schedule of the boat was to leave this city on Wednesdays and Saturdays for Cincinnati and to return to this city on Mondays and Thursdays, two round trips a week.
Although we printed a column about the packet “City of Ironton” a long time ago, we were reminded of the boat just last week when Kenneth (Pucker) Unrue left a copy on our desk of the Ohio River edition, dated October 1929, of the National Waterways Magazine, published at Pittsburgh, which printed three pictures of the old two-deck wharf boats and many other pictures of boats at the local wharf during the era when the river boats carried the daily mail…A picture of the packet named “Ironton” is in the magazine.
It is my recollection of reading other later stories about boats named for this city among them the C&O steam ferry operating between Russell and this city…As Lawrence County talks about a sesquicentennial later this year, it is timely to remind readers what an important town this city was once upon a time…Ben Butterfield came to town in 1851 and established the first wharf boat, which was the most important thing for many years as all newcomers come to town on boats as did the mail and all provisions, and it was the depot for all out-going freight manufactured in the new town.
Our town in 1851 had four busy industries, an iron foundry, a sawmill, a plow factory, and an apple drying process factory…A big new stove foundry, Campbell, Ellison & Co., was under construction at Second and Etna streets…That foundry burned in July…formed a partnership to open the first drug store in town, Moxley & Barber…Many of today’s senior readers will remember Nat Moxley, Jr., a popular doctor living on Buckhorn Street with his sisters, Misses Emily and Lucy, as late as 1924.
In later years Dr. Linn Gooch established a medicine factory on Second St., now the location of Ironton Home Supply Co. and for several years Gooch medicines were one the biggest advertiser business firms in the Tri-State….A hardware store, Duke & Kingsbury, started a business that year…Mr. Kingsbury became the first superintendent of schools and a school building honors his name today…Henry S. Neal a lawyer came to town…He was the first man from Lawrence County elected to Congress.
Written by Charles Collett
Huntington Newspaper – September 3, 1966
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