A plaque remaining from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem.

Above, a 1934 plaque from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem. Discarded as trash in 2006. Now a Popeyes fast food restaurant on Google Maps.

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Entry from August 22, 2007
Tee-Pee & “Time and Patience” (Texas and Pacific Railway Company nicknames)

The Texas and Pacific Railway Company was nicknamed “Time and Patience” (it was slow) and “Tee-Pee.”
 
 
Wikipedia: Texas and Pacific Railway
The Texas and Pacific Railway Company (known as the T&P) was created by federal charter in 1871 with the purpose of building a southern transcontinental railroad between Marshall, Texas, and San Diego, California.
 
The T&P had a significant foothold in Texas by the mid 1880s. Construction difficulties delayed westward progress, until American financier Jay Gould acquired an interest in the railroad in 1879.
 
The T&P never reached San Diego. Instead, it met the Southern Pacific at Sierra Blanca, Texas, in 1881.
 
The Missouri Pacific Railroad, also controlled by Gould, leased the T&P from 1881 to 1885 and continued a cooperative relationship with the T&P after the lease ended. Missouri Pacific gained majority ownership of the Texas and Pacific Railway’s stock in 1928 but allowed it to continue operation as a separate entity until they were eventually merged on October 15, 1976.
 
Several reminders of the Texas and Pacific remain to this day, mainly two towering buildings which help define the southern side of Fort Worth’s skyline—the original station and office tower (pictured below) and a warehouse located immediately to the west. In 2001, the passenger platforms at the T&P station were put into use for the first time in decades as the westernmost terminus for the Trinity Railway Express, a commuter rail line connecting Fort Worth with Dallas. The warehouse will be converted soon into apartments, condos, and street level retail. The Passenger Terminal and its Corporate Offices are being converted into luxury condominiums.
 
Railroad Nicknames
Texas and Pacific
Time and Patience
 
27 October 1932, Terril (Iowa) Record, pg. 8, col. 3:
...says Tee-Pee Flashes, Texas and Pacific Railway company organ, in part, in a historical account of ornamentation.
 
6 April 1959, Big Spring (TX) Daily Herald, pg. 2B, col. 2:
Another Russian city, Odessa, has namesakes in nine American states, of which the most important is Odessa, Texas. The Handbook says it was named by the Texas & Pacific because of the resemblance of the prairies thereabouts to the Russian Steppes.
   
A more likely story is that the town was named for the daughter of one of the section hands.
 
There is, however, another resemblance or checkpoint. Odessa is in the heart of the Permian Basin, and Permian is a geological formation named for the Russian province of Perm, where the formation exists. Perm is now called Molotov, for you-probably-know-who, or it is whom?
   
Chances are the TeePee wasn’t dreaming of oil when it named Odessa, Texas. It probably wasn’t thinking of Russia, either.

Posted by Barry Popik
Texas (Lone Star State Dictionary) • Wednesday, August 22, 2007 • Permalink


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