TheGlen

No, I went down to the street and had a brickmaker look at the bricks themselves. There are a few records here and there, but incomplete at best. There are receipts and reports from the city as well as maps. The brickmaker however was a definitive source of information. He was able to give the age, location and type of the bricks involved. The street itself is a horrific Frankenstein patchwork of paving, but it's dominated primarily by the red slate bricks. There are some concrete bricks but those are at the earliest only twenty years old. The most common bricks were the Coffeyville bricks, which are apparently very high quality but had a relatively short run. The red/burgundy/wine colored bricks were the dead giveaway that they were from Kansas, not Texas.

City records were destroyed in 1935 because of the Magnolia Brewery Flood, and again in 1972 when the archives were full and the city just threw them away. One reason researching Houston's history tends to be a fool's errand.

My editor. She wants a story on the bricks, she gets a story on the bricks.

The more I research this the less sense it seems to make. Tradition says the red bricks on Andrews was handmade by freed slaves locally for $1 each and those are the bricks that are still there. The bricks were made from the mud of Buffalo Bayou either right after the Civil War or the Great Hurricane. The problem with the story is that no brick cost $1 in either 1865 or 1904. The bricks there are Kansas red slate, not Texas mud or clay. The company that made the bricks was Pullum Brick, but the maker's marks on the bricks there are from Coffeyville Brick and Tile (in business 1893-1920). The city and local community organizers are going at each other on this topic, but none of the evidence matches up with the story presented.

From what I've discovered so far, Club Matinee was THE place for blues in the south. I've found mentions of him in biographies for Cab Calloway, James Brown, Ray Charles, pretty much everyone that was any one. Texas Room had very little on him except mentions in social pages. The African studies library had two lines in their file on the club, they actually copied MY notes to add to theirs. The Blues museum is being built right where the club stood, but it's not open yet. Talked to some gentlemen around the area and they gave me a bit of history on the place. One of them found a friend that worked for Dickerson back in the 60's and 70's. If what the man said was true, he was quite the powerhouse in local politics. Dickerson, along with a gentleman named David Robey controlled the Fifth ward for decades. Dickerson owned the Crystal White cab company (this is confirmed), the El Dorado night club, and half the businesses. Robey ran Peacock records rather ruthlessly according to sources. One source even mentioned how he laundered his money from the casinos, but I have no way of verifying that.

My magazine has decided to start a Lost Houston History column, one of the topics I was given was Louis Dickerson, owner of Club Matinee, the Crystal Hotel, Checkered Cab (name unverified), and two of the largest underground casinos in Houston. I'm looking for any information on Club Matinee and Dickerson himself (Texas Monthly had his name as Dixon). Matinee was apparently one of the greatest blues clubs ever, rivalling the legendary Cotton Club. Dickerson according to some was the man that ran the 5th Ward, even having the police chief on his payroll according to some cops. I can't find anything hard or fast, being Houston kind of expect that, so I'm searching around. Are there any pictures of Club Matinee's famous Anchor Room, I've got a huge list of top names in blues that performed but no further information. Also looking to see if he was the godfather of the fifth ward or was that fanciful elaboration from witnesses. His death and the downspiral of the 5th Ward seem to be linked, but that could just be coincidence as well.