Читать книгу Texas Confidential - Michael Varhola - Страница 13

FOR HALF A CENTURY, FROM 1902 until 1952, one of the best-known and most successful businesses in San Angelo, “the Oasis of West Texas,” was Miss Hattie’s Bordello. It was, in fact, the crown jewel in the local vice district known as the Concho, a neighborhood named for the river along which it was located.

Each of the girls who worked at Miss Hattie’s Bordello had an area like this one for entertaining customers. Today, the site has been restored and is operated as a museum.

In 1867, the U.S. Army established Fort Concho in west central Texas as part of a network of posts designed to protect frontier settlers against the resident Comanche, Apache, and bandits. Its garrison included units of infantry and cavalry soldiers, among them the black troopers referred to as “Buffalo Soldiers” by the Indians.

A settler named Bartholomew J. DeWitt established the village of Santa Angela just outside the fort, at the juncture of the north and south forks of the Concho River, naming it after his late wife, Carolina Angela. This name was eventually shortened to San Angela and, in 1883, changed altogether and masculinized to San Angelo at the insistence of the U.S. Postal Service, ostensibly because this made it grammatically correct.

“As an early frontier town, San Angelo was characterized by saloons, prostitution, and gambling,” says the Texas State Historical Association. “Officers of nearby Fort Concho would not leave the garrison after dark.” By any name, San Angelo was a rough place, and Miss Hattie’s was by no means the first brothel to be established in it.

Many people settled in the area, however, and after San Angelo became the seat of Tom Green County in 1882 and the railroad arrived in 1888, the community became a regional transportation hub and grew quickly. As tuberculosis swept the country around the turn of the century, the warm, dry climate of the Texas plains also made it one of the venues that people flocked to in search of cures from the “consumption.”

Around this time the woman who became known as Miss Hattie moved to San Angelo and married a local man named Mr. Hatton and the two of them purchased the building at 18 Concho Street. This beautiful structure had been built just a few years before, in 1896, and was located in what is now the historic heart of the downtown district of the city.

Their marital bliss was soon disrupted, however, when Mrs. Hatton discovered that she could not abide being married to a drinking man, and the two were soon divorced. As part of their settlement, Mr. Hatton received the lower level of the building they owned together, and the former Mrs. Hatton received the upper level, which could be accessed from a separate door at 18½ Concho Street.

It’s not clear how much this lady’s reputation was damaged by becoming a divorcee in this era or what options were available for supporting herself. What is certain, however, is that she tweaked her name to Miss Hattie and turned her part of the building on Concho Street into a high-end cathouse. It was, in fact, the first place in San Angelo to have running water.

Miss Hattie’s Brothel soon became a fashionable spot for local cowboys, ranchers, and businessmen to unwind and blow off a little steam. Tricks started at just 25 cents for a turn with a typical girl and ranged upward to $2 for a visit with the most popular ones. And, while she was not willing to tolerate drinking by her own husband—or by the prostitutes who worked for her—Miss Hattie had no problems with her customers imbibing while they waited their turn with a girl, played cards, or chatted amongst each other.

Other girls who worked at the place over the years included Miss Juanita, whose job it was to sing, dance with, and otherwise platonically entertain the men while they were waiting for a girl; Miss Blue, who had everything from her wardrobe to her sheets in her namesake color and had the best room in the house, the only one with direct access to the bathroom; Miss Mabel, who worked at the brothel to support her husband while he recovered from tuberculosis and then moved back to New Mexico with him and the child she conceived by a customer; Miss Kitty, who eventually retired to a ranch left to her by an appreciative customer in his will (and whose descendants live on it to this day); Miss Rosie, whose room had a catwalk that would get used as an escape route during raids; and Miss Goldie, who eventually entertained just one particular client on condition that he remember her in his will and who had to work at the place into her thirties when he did not, becoming a flower seller when she was too old to turn tricks and eventually dying penniless.

Miss Hattie’s establishment continued to thrive throughout the era of Prohibition, when it became linked to other brothels, speakeasies, and dens of ill repute through a network of subterranean tunnels that ran throughout the entire Concho district. And, during World War II, airmen and soldiers from nearby Goodfellow Field (now Goodfellow Air Force Base) spent their paychecks at the well-known whorehouse.

While Miss Hattie’s operation was obviously illegal, it was also clearly well connected, and, even though it was periodically raided, locals joked that the police would come in the front door and the county judge would run out the back. In 1952, however—some years after Miss Hattie herself had retired from the establishment—the decidedly unhumorous Texas Rangers finally raided the bordello and shut it down for good.

Miss Juanita once used this parlor to entertain visitors to the brothel with music, dancing, and socializing while they were waiting for their turns with the various working girls.

Even after it ceased to operate as brothel, and a new generation of residents forgot that it had even been one, 18 Concho Street continued to be known as “Miss Hattie’s Building.” In the decades after the girls left, it was variously empty, a sporting goods store, and an antique shop.

Then, in the early 1990s, its new owner discovered many of the original furnishings from Miss Hattie’s stored in the upper rooms of the building and, upon investigation, learned what the place had been used for. They put some considerable effort into researching the history of the place and its inhabitants, restored it as best as they were able to its original appearance, and then opened it as a museum (the lower level, in keeping with its tradition of being used for legitimate commerce, is today a jewelry store).

And so today, six decades after it was shut down, Miss Hattie’s is once again open to visitors—and, while they cannot enjoy the house in quite the same way as customers did back then, they can get a glimpse of what one of San Angelo’s most popular and prosperous businesses was like in its heyday.