Charles W. Chesnutt to Samuel S. Rosenthal, Inc., 4 October 1932
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Cleveland, Ohio,
October 4, 1932
Samuel S. Rosenthal, Inc.,1
11810 Superior Avenue,
Cleveland, Ohio
To CHARLES W. CHESNUTT, Dr.2
1646 Union Trust Building
Cleveland, Ohio
1 9 3 2
| May to Oct., inc. |
To rent for sign privilege on building at 11900 Superior Avenue: | |
| 6 months @ $2.00 | $12.00 |
Correspondent: Samuel S. Rosenthal (1885–1957) was a prominent Jewish businessman and philanthropist. Born in Austria, he came to Cleveland, Ohio, in 1914 via the Northeast and founded the Cleveland Overall Company, which specialized in making, repairing, and cleaning rented work clothes and later also military uniforms. He was involved in a number of other business ventures, including an automotive company, in Cleveland.
1. Samuel S. Rosenthal, Inc. was incorporated in 1930 as an automotive company. In 1931, Chesnutt agreed to have an advertisment for one of its dealerships, located at 11810 Superior Ave., painted on the façade of his immediately adjacent rental property at 11900–11902 Superior. This proximity is the likely reason that, in one of his three 1932 letters to Rosenthal about tardy payments, Chesnutt mistakenly uses the street number of his own building in Rosenthal's address. [back]
2. Charles Chesnutt received an honorary LL.D. (Doctor of Law) degree from Wilberforce University in 1913 (Helen Chesnutt, Charles Waddell Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color Line [Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1952], 259). He only used the title sporadically in his correspondence. [back]
