JFG Special Coffee – Knoxville, TN – Featured Artist – Vance Bass
Frank, here’s a shot I took recently in Knoxville TN. The JFG Coffee building is on the right, and the huge sign on the left is apparently situated to be visible from the railroad tracks to passing passengers.
Vance Bass
200 WEST JACKSON AVENUE
JFG Coffee Company was founded in Morristown in 1882 by James Franklin Goodson as a wholesale grocery company. JFG was one of the best-known regional roasters and marketers of ground coffee, tea, mayonnaise, and peanut butter. JFG was acquired by Louisiana’s Reily Foods Company (maker of Luzianne Tea) in 1965, closed this location in 2005, and moved its roasting facility near Sutherland Avenue.
Originally the home of Bowman Moore Hat Company, this five-story structure built in 1924, with its six-bay façade and elaborate cornices, has for most of its history served as a roasting plant for JFG coffee beans. The building became JFG’s roasting plant and headquarters in 1926.
The building’s Romanesque influences were typical of buildings involved in the jobbing trade that developed during the latter part of the 19th century. The building was converted into residences in 2009.
Knoxville Heritage dot org
Mark Hellinger’s Brute Force Ad – James Dean pic by Dean Stock- by way of Louis Pizzitola
This photo of James Dean was new to me. Probably not widely published because Dean is a bit out of focus. But I love it. It’s by the photographer Dean Stock, who made so many iconic pictures of Dean. Like most photographers I’ve had the good fortune to host (we did a panel of Magnum luminaries), Stock was a quiet unassuming man, even somewhat uncomfortable in the position of being the subject. Of course I wanted to ask Stock every question he’s been asked before about Dean, but I restrained myself.
Louis Pizzitola – (Facebook posting) Lou curated author appearances at Barne’s & Noble from 2000 – 2001 at the Union Square location and then on the Upper West Side for until 2013.
Metropolitan Tobacco Co. – East Williamburg, Brooklyn – Bennett Cerf Interview
© Frank H. Jump
LH
Interview #1
Interviewee: Bennett Cerf
Interviewer: Mary R. Hawkins
New York City
Sept. 20, 1967
Q:
Mr. Cerf, you were born in New York–you’re a born New Yorker–in 1898. Would you like to say anything about that?
Cerf:
I think I’m rather an unusual specimen in that all four of my grandparents and both my parents, as well as myself, were all born right on the island of Manhattan. My father’s family is Alsatian in extraction, and my mother’s family is German. My mother’s family were named Wise. Now, the background of the family is shrouded in some mystery. I’ve never bothered investigating very much my antecedents, except that I do know that my father’s father, Marcel Cerf, was a jeweler, and my mother’s father was in the tobacco business.
The Cerf family was always loaded with charm but not much money. The Wise family didn’t have nearly as much charm but a lot more money. My grandfather, Nathan Wise, built up in New York a very big tobacco company called the Metropolitan Tobacco Company. At one time a young man came to him and suggested a partnership that my conservative grandfather didn’t think was very good. The man’s name was Duke, and he became the great tobacco magnate. My grandfather thought he was a wild young fellow, which indeed he was. But at that, my grand-father when he died had amassed a million dollars for himself. In those days that was a great deal of money.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/digital/collections/nny/cerfb/
transcripts/cerfb_1_1_1.html
Bennett Alfred Cerf was an American publisher, one of the founders of American publishing firm Random House. Cerf was also known for his own compilations of jokes and puns, for regular personal appearances lecturing across the United States, and for his television appearances in the panel game show What’s My Line? – Wikipedia
