Ella Hunter Building - Ardmore, OK - People-Named Places on Waymarking.com

While Butch Bridges's newsletters (see Related Web address) are a great source of information, he gets the year of construction wrong, indicating 1933 instead of 1939. He does provide a few details about Mrs. Hunter, though. Ella Hunter was a widow from Indiana -- a note from the 1910 census on her Findagrave page lists her as the head of the household by then -- with three children, and she had a knack for acquiring property with spare cash, reaching as far as Houston. She was an early day businesswoman in Ardmore, owning a boarding house and a small cigar stand in the corner of the Whittington Hotel at Caddo and Main (SW corner). There may be a glimpse of her in Charlsie Foust Allen's "Ardmore" in Arcadia's Images of America series, as a photo shows the lobby of the Whittington Hotel, noting a female clerk seated at the cigar counter.

The Place

This building is a contributing building to the Ardmore Historic Commercial District on the National Register of Historic Places. While the National Register's Registration Form lists this and other properties at A St NE, today, the street is noted as "Caddo St NE" on signs. The Registration Form dates the building to "c. 1939", so noted on the west elevation, and provides some background:

This one-story, stone, flat-roofed building has two small storefronts separated by double windows which have been boarded. The storefronts are centrally located and both contain a single door with wood filling the remainder of the area. The southern storefront has a painted, wood, glazed, paneled door sheltered by a metal awning. The northern storefront has a painted, wood, slab door. There are single windows on the outside of the storefronts. All of the windows have been covered. Centrally located along the curved parapet, in white stone, is a name plate which reads "Ella Hunter" with "1939" in white stone above this. The windows and door on the south elevation have been covered with wood paneling. This is a unique building within the Ardmore Historic Commercial District. There is one metal siding-covered outbuilding associated with this property.

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The boards have since been removed from the windows, and they're open for business, doing quite well.

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