Early Americana

Canada's Sam the Record Man, not to be confused with U.S.-bases Sam Goody, was founded in 1937 by Sam Sniderman. Originally it was the phonograph records department of his parents store on Yonge St. in Toronto. It grew to become the country's largest music...

The Providence Reds (also known as the Rhode Island Reds) started in the Canadian-American Hockey League in 1926. They continued with that circuit when it became the American Hockey League in 1936. In 1976, the became the Rhode Island Reds, before moving to Binghamton,...

KZEW, "The Zoo," debuted in the fall of 1973 after changing its call letters from WFAA, which first went on the air in 1947. Throughout the rest of the 70s and two the end of the 80s, KZEW was??the??rock & roll station in Dallas....

Hills was a discount retail department store that was founded in Youngstown, Ohio in 1957. It started as full-fledged department store before moving into the discount arena some years after its founding. In the late '80s it bought a number of stores out of...

First appearing in 1926, Reddy Kilowatt??is a cartoon character that served as a mascot for??various??electric utilities across the United States, and a few other??countries for over,70 years.

Waxie Maxie's was a chain of record stores in the DC area founded in 1938 by Max Silverman. At its peak in the 90s, it had nearly 40 stores. The end came at the turn of the century as the end of the CD...

Big Bear was a supermarket chain that operated in Central Ohio and West Virginia. Not to be confused with the chain of the same name in San Diego. The first Big Bear opened in 1933 on West Lane Avenue in Columbus near the campus...

"The World's Most Famous Clown," as he is sometimes called, got his start in 1946. He made is TV debut in 1949, just as that medium was getting started. He??was the creation of created by Alan W. Livingston and first played by Pinto Colvig. He was played...

The Miami Seahawks were charter members of the All-America Football Conference in 1946. The city's first pro sports franchise, they only lasted one season. Miami's then small population, combined with underfunded ownership doomed the team's stay in South Florida. In 1947 they moved to...

Al Green's drive-in restaurant opened on the east side of Indianapolis in 1947. Boosted by the post-war car craze, Al Green's was a happening spot through the 1970s. It closed in 1992, and the building has since been demolished.??

Sunset Bowl opened in 1957 in Ballard and soon became a local hotspot. Sunset It closed in 2008 and was demolished in 2010.

The building that housed the Off Ramp Cafe was built in 1908 and was home to a variety of shops until the 1950s when a successive string of muisc clubs occupied the space. In 1986 it began booking alternative rock acts as the Off...

The St. Louis Arena opened in 1929 and was home to?? the city's many pro hockey, pro basketball, and pro soccer teams. It also hosted college sports, concerts, conventions, and more. From 1977 to 1983, it was known as the Checkerdome as Ralston Purina...

Americana opened in Middletown as LeSourdsville Lake??in 1922. One of the park's founder's, Edgar Streifthau, opened Fantasy Farm, geared toward young children, right next door in 1963. In 1977, LeSourdsville Lake became Americana. It closed in 1999, reopened in 2002, only to close again...

The Chubby and Tubby variety store began in 1947 in a metal hut. It grew into a South Seattle institution but closed in 2003.

A Pittsburgh institution, Chiodo's Tavern opened at the end of the Homestead High-Level Bridge (now the Homestead Grays Bridge) in 1947. Famous for its Mystery Sandwich, memorabilia-covered walls, and friendly owner, it became a popular gathering spot. It closed in 2005.

The Ottawa Rough Riders were established in 1876 and were one of the longest running professional sports teams in North America. They adopted the Rough Riders nickname in 1931, they were charter members of the Canadian Football League (CFL) formed in 1958. The club...

The Phoenix Giants were a AAA baseball team that played in The Pacific Coast League (PCL) in 1958 and 1959 and then from 1966 to 1997, when the National League Arizona Diamondbacks began play. They were the long-time farm team of the San Francisco...

The??Washington Black Senators??were a baseball team that played in the (second) Negro National League in 1938. The team was established when the Washington Elite Giants moved up the road to Baltimore.?? *Design is officially licensed from the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum

Many Cincinnati breweries went out of business during prohibition. However, when the Eighteenth Amendment was repealed in 1933, making the sale of alcohol legal once again, new brewers sprang up including Schoenling which opened its doors on Good Friday, 1934. Most famous for its...

"The World's Most Famous Clown," as he is sometimes called, got his start in 1946. He made is TV debut in 1949, just as that medium was getting started. He??was the creation of created by??Alan W. Livingston??and first played by Pinto Colvig. He was played...

In the early 1950s, between 20,000-60,000 people a year were becoming afflicted with polio. Jonas Salk and his team at the University of Pittsburgh developed a polio vaccine in 1952. By 1955 a campaign to vaccinate children in the U.S. was launched. ALbert Sabin...

Organized baseball in the African American community dates back to the end of the Civil War. Starting in 1920, with establishment of the Negro National League, there was finally some stability and structure that helped better showcase these extraordinary players. READ MORE ???*Design is...

The Negro leagues were professional baseball leagues comprising teams predominantly made up of African Americans and, to a lesser extent, Latin Americans. The term may be used broadly to include professional black teams outside the leagues and it may be used narrowly for the...

The Baltimore Black Sox were a professional Negro League baseball team based in Baltimore, Maryland from 1916 to 1933. In their final season, they played in the Negro National League with the Baltimore Elite Giants.

The New York Cubans were a Negro league baseball team based in Paterson, NJ that played from 1931 to 1950. The team was unique in that it occasionally had Hispanic players, who were also restricted from Major League Baseball, on it roster. In 1947,...

Inspired by a drawing of King Arthur's court eating pizza, Round Table Pizza was a restaurant founded in 1959. It went out of business in 2011 but in 2019, was reborn as Royalty Pizza.

GrandPa Pidgeon's, also known as simply GrandPa's, was founded in 1954 by Tom and Mildred Pidgeon.??Over the next decade, several more GrandPa Pidgeon's stores opened in the St. Louis metropolitan area. At its peak in the early 1990s, the chain had a total of...

Chippewa Lake Park was an amusement park in Medina County near the junction of US 224 and I-71. Named for the lake by which it was built, the park was open from 1875 to 1978. Many of the old rides still sit abandoned at...

Edgewater Park was a 20-acre amusement park at Grand River and Seven Mile Rd on Detroit's West Side that opened in 1927. For over 50 years its visitors enjoyed such attractions as the Wild Beast roller coaster, the 110-foot Ferris wheel, and the Hall...