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Reviewed for the Mark Twain Forum by:

David Thomson

Copyright (c) 2002 Mark Twain Forum. This review may not be published or
redistributed in any medium without permission.

Chou, Steve.  _Hannibal, Missouri: Bluff City Memories_.  Arcadia
Publishing, 2002.  Pp. 128.  Softcover.  $19.99.  ISBN 0-7385-2018-7.

Steve Chou has been a serious collector of Hannibal ephemera for the last 20
years. In 1994 he privately published a collection of his vintage Hannibal
photographs and this year Arcadia Publishing invited him to contribute to
their marvelous series "Images of America" which has given the same
professional treatment to over a hundred communities in the last several
years. The book is entitled _Hannibal Missouri: Bluff City Memories_. The
nickname "Bluff City" was incorporated into the name of the Bluff City Shoe
Factory (founded in 1904).

With a selection of 233 photographs spanning over ninety years from the
mid-1860's to 1959, Chou gives glimpses of much that has vanished from
Hannibal all together or has changed to a lesser or greater degree in the
last century.  Mark Twain enthusiasts will find sufficient scenes along the
way to make it worth their while.

The first section, "Beginnings and Growth: 1819-1889," begins with the
earliest known photographs of the town taken from hilltop vantage points.
These images lack the clarity of later photographs but provide an idea of
how the town looked when young Sam Clemens left it. The Clemens family was
living with Dr. Grant and his family in the second floor of the Pilaster
House when John Marshall Clemens died in 1847. A photo of the Pilaster House
circa 1885 shows it with a front porch rather than the balcony it sports
today.  The last picture in the first section shows the old entrance to Dr.
McDowell's cave immortalized by Mark Twain as "McDougal's Cave" in _The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer_ and would later be called "Hannibal Cave" and
today "Mark Twain Cave." To see this old entrance with its tantalizing
glimpse of the interior reawakens that old feeling of mystery and intrigue
that makes one want to go on in and explore.

Section two, "Hannibal's Heyday: 1890-1929," depicts the prosperity of the
riverfront and steamboats, the frequent floods, Central Park, schools and
streetcars. On page 26 a winter scene shows ice skaters in the 1890s on
frozen Bear Creek, where Sam Clemens and Laura Hawkins had skated forty or
so years earlier. An 1899 photo shows the Victorian style Federal Building
which was built in 1888, four stories high with a tower on the corner, it
still stands today as a landmark that evokes that era splendidly.  Diverse
photos by local photographer Anna Schnitzlein captured steam locomotives
passing local landmarks and familiar landscapes containing buildings that
have long since gone.   Schnitzlein's view of Riverview Park the year of its
dedication in 1909 shows it before the growth of trees that make it
resplendent today.

Two photos of individual homes with Mark Twain connections include C. R.
Martin's 1900 photo of the Clemens family Hill Street home on page 33 that
the photographer would use to create the earliest post cards of what we now
know as the Mark Twain Boyhood Home.  On page 67 is a photo taken during
the1920s by the Frazer Studios of the home where artist Carroll Beckwith was
born in 1852, this house is only a block and a half west from the Clemens
home. The year after Beckwith was born Clemens left Hannibal.  Thirty-eight
years later the two fellow Hannibalians would meet at a resort in Onteora,
New York and Beckwith would paint a colorful portrait of Mark Twain with a
corncob pipe clenched in his mouth that would be featured on the cover of
_Harper's Weekly_ September 26, 1891.

Section three, "Hard Times and War Times: 1930-1945," gives us a fine view
of the dedication of the Burlington train that was christened The Mark Twain
Zephyr in 1935. Mark Twain's grand daughter Nina Gabrilowitsch is on hand
with a remarkably credible Tom, Huck and Becky who make the costuming of
their contemporary counterparts in Hannibal today look generic and one
dimensional by comparison.  The waning years of the landmark railroad
station Union Depot, including interior shots, are shown including the
reduction of its once high tower to its abandonment then demolition in 1953.

Section four, "Just Yesterday: 1946 - Present," is evocative of Ron Powers'
_White Town Drowsing_ and provides a pictorial accompaniment to Powers'
memoirs. Chou's book concludes with a 1959 photo of the Douglas High School
band. Douglas was an all-black school that was closed that same year, which
marked the end of segregation in Hannibal. The photo preceding that is an
unusual one of Hal Holbrook in full Mark Twain makeup riding in the back of
a Chevy convertible in the 1957 Tom Sawyer Days Parade. Holbrook was a young
and slender 32-year-old under the white wig and mustache and hadn't evolved
into the actor who is now seven years older than the 70-year-old Mark Twain
he portrays.

Throughout the book business and manufacturing are well represented with
stores and shopkeepers; factories and laborers.  Disasters are documented
including train wrecks from 1883 and 1915, a 1919 plane crash and a 1949
tornado. Stately homes and modest homes, churches, theaters and hotels are
all represented and plenty of groups of people at work and play.   Pictures
of the early Autumn Festivals show the temporary wooden arches spanning Main
Street that eventually were illuminated with electric bulbs to create a
night time tunnel of lights stretching north to the foot of Cardiff Hill.
The wrap-around cover of the book uses a large image of one of these tunnels
of arches and makes one wish that the format of the book were a bit larger.
The average image size is about 3 ½ X 5 inches and makes one long to see 8 X
10s of them.

Chou includes a paragraph of acknowledgments, an introduction, and
relatively brief captions under each photo. For those interested in more
detailed histories of the individual buildings -- such as who built them and
occupied them and when, they can be found in the pages of the rare out of
print books written on Hannibal history by the late Hurley Hagood (deceased
Nov. 16, 2002 at the age of 90) and his wife Roberta.  The Hagoods' titles
include _The Story of Hannibal_ (1976), _Hannibal, Too_ (1986) and _Hannibal
Yesterdays_ (1992).  Steve Chou graciously acknowledged the Hagoods as his
principal inspiration and greatest influence.