What prices were like in Bellevue in 1939

In the last cen­tury, 1939, to be exact, we scanned some of the prices the shop­per paid for groceries.

The A and P store, then located at 120 East Main St., offered these bar­gain prices — Pillsbury’s Best Flour, 24 ounce bag, 75 cents; Post Toasties or Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, two large pack­ages, 17 cents; peanut but­ter, Sul­tana, two pound jar, 23 cents; Jell-O, all fla­vors, three pack­ages, 14 cents; and a three pound bag of Eight O’Clock cof­fee, 39 cents.

Scherf’s Candy Store every­day low prices fea­tured their own home­made ice cream, a quart of fresh peach ice cream and one pint of sher­bet, both for 29 cents.

A.G. Kistler’s Food Mar­ket, 206 E. Main St., had the fol­low­ing — Fresh dressed native veal on sale; veal pocket (or roast), 14 cents per pound; veal chops, 25 cents per pound. Their spe­cial was one loaf bread, one pound but­ter and one quart milk, all for 44 cents.

A shop­per could pur­chase round steak for 29 cents per pound; ham­burger, 17 cents per pound; pork chops (cen­ter cut) for 27 cents per pound; and cube steak for 28 cents per pound at the Kroger Store.

Whitely’s offered this Tues­day spe­cial — Sir­loin, 29 cents per pound; veal shoul­der steak, 21 cents per pound; and smoked ham shanks at 15 cents per pound.

Tasty Bak­ery had this bar­gain for the shop­per — One loaf of bread, one cof­fee cake and one dozen cook­ies, all for 35 cents.

For enter­tain­ment the Ohio The­atre had a kid­die mati­nee spe­cial; with a coupon from The Belle­vue Gazette and 10 cents, two young­sters could see a dou­ble fea­ture star­ring John Wayne in Wyoming Out­law and Forged Pass­port plus “The Lone Ranger” ser­ial. The State Theatre’s dou­ble fea­ture was It’s a Won­der­ful Life and Mark Twain’s story The Adven­tures of Tom Sawyer at a pop­u­lar price of 15 cents.

This bar­gain of the year 1939 came when con­struc­tion began on Aug. 2, on Bellevue’s first model home built on a 50 by 150 lot by the Gor­don Lum­ber Co. for E.E. Englund and fam­ily. The house was con­structed for a total cost of $3,500. All the mate­ri­als used in its con­struc­tion were prod­ucts of nation­ally known man­u­fac­tur­ers to show how rea­son­able home build­ing was at that time.

The new home con­sisted of a liv­ing room, kitchen, two bed­rooms, bath­room, two linen clos­ets, two bed­room clos­ets, guest closet and a full base­ment. The din­ing room was elim­i­nated and in its place the kitchen was made larger to accom­mo­date a dinette or break­fast room set.

Prospec­tive buy­ers would note the large unfin­ished attic which could be used for stor­age space and is made acces­si­ble by way of a dis­ap­pear­ing stairway.

The house was mod­ern in every respect. Included in its fea­tures were — a recessed bath­tub, a Venet­ian type med­i­cine cab­i­net with long tubu­lar lights in the bath­room, ver­ti­cal grain fir floor­ing through­out the house, and a cement block foun­da­tion. The home fea­tured new type win­dows which oper­ated with­out the use of the old con­ven­tional weights. The win­dows were pre-fit and have a spring for a coun­ter­bal­ance instead of weights. They were stick-proof and oper­ate in a nar­row cas­ing elim­i­nat­ing the weight pocket.

The roof­ing was a new type of asphalt pro­duced by John Manville Co. It was a tex­tured mate­r­ial which was grooved to resem­ble wood shin­gles. A hot air, cool fired fur­nace was installed for heating.

The same house at that time could be com­pleted in 90 days. All the labor on the job was done by local men.

The car­pen­try work was done by Clay­ton Wolfe and Ray Moyer, the elec­tri­cal by E.C. Reitz, the masonry by Alex Scagnetti, the heat­ing and plumb­ing by C.W. Schug, paint­ing by Darl Fred­er­ick, the venet­ian blinds and car­pet­ing by H.G. Quellhorst’s Belle­vue Home Fur­nish­ing store, then located at 109 W. Main Street.

The home at 104 Fair­field Avenue was com­pleted and ready for occu­pancy on Nov. 17, 1939. A three-day open house brought out more than 1,000 peo­ple to inspect the cozy model home after Quell­horst com­pletely fur­nished it for the show­ing. The Englund fam­ily moved in on Nov. 21, in time to enjoy their Thanks­giv­ing dinner.

That same year (1939) city offi­cials announced, for the  first time in the city’s 124 year his­tory, the charg­ing for build­ing con­struc­tion and remod­el­ing per­mits upon the rec­om­men­da­tion of state examiners.

The per­mits were then issued by Gus Williams. The charges for the per­mits were — in fire zone (down­town busi­ness dis­trict) new build­ing, $5; remod­el­ing, $2; res­i­dence, $2; garage or sim­i­lar build­ing, $1, remod­el­ing of residence.

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Belle­vue His­to­rian Bill Oddo writes a weekly col­umn for The Belle­vue Gazette.

Posted by Becky Brooks on Feb 10 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.