Time travel with me, the KC Matchgirl, as we head down I-70 east to St. Louis to check-in at Stouffer's Riverfront Inn.
If you're thinking "Would that be the same Stouffer's that makes frozen entrees like I have in my refrigerator freezer?", then you would be correct! While the St. Louis location for this Stouffer's Motor Inn wasn't built until 1968, the Stouffer family began their first restaurant operation in 1922. By 1924, a young Vernon Stouffer joined his parents at their small Cleveland business and grew it into a corporation by 1929. Customers loved the meals so much they began asking for frozen versions to take home in 1946. By the 1950's factories took over the packaging of the meals, making them available at grocer's instead of only the restaurants. Stouffer entered the hospitality business in 1960 when he purchased a motel in Florida. By the time this matchbook was printed, the motel chain had nine locations, all featuring Stouffer's fine-dining restaurants. Stouffer sold all his holdings to the Nestle Corporation in 1973, including the well-recognized Stouffer name.
The Stouffer's Motor Inn in downtown St. Louis featured a 28-story tower with impressive views of both Busch Stadium and the Gateway Arch. In 1974, Nestle added an 11-story tower to the building and renamed it the Riverfront Towers. When Nestle sold the hotel division, it was renamed the Regal Riverfront. In 1999, it became the popular Millennium Hotel and remains so today. The revolving restaurant on the 28th floor has retained the name given to it by Vernon Stouffer, the Top of the Riverfront.
Location: 200 S. 4th Street, St. Louis, Missouri
Matchbook Timeframe: early 1970's
And he used wax matches. Which are tiny (1 1/8 inches) and made (in this case) in Italy, and not like the typical wooden matchbox matches we use in America. You see, the splints (sticks) are made of wax blended with tissue paper, which makes them damp-proof and thus more useful than wooden matches.
This seemingly boring-looking box is actually quite interesting. Following the clues, we find the box itself is made in America- New York to be exact- then filled with the Italian wax matches. There were 60 at one time, and they lay in the box vertically. A typical matchbox of this size holds 32 wooden matches laying horizontally.
Additionally, this box has a mechanism, which was broken when I recently got it- it's just a cardboard box and these things do happen! But this is how it would work if it did: pull the tab of the inside box, as it slides out, a rubber band attached to the outside cover opens a flap to reveal the matches. The flap closes as the inner box is pushed back in.
The Butler logo is indeed the same company that manufactures the popular metal buildings that are commonly called "Butler Buildings". The company started in 1901 when Charles Butler wanted to invest in a galvanized stock tank created by Emanuel Norquist. They added grain bins in 1907 and metal buildings in 1909. In 2004, the company was purchased by an Australian firm, Blue Scope Steel.
The small print above the logo reads, "Celebrating 60 Years". Doing the simple math using the year 1901 + 60 years, the date for this matchbox would be 1961. And despite the box's appearance, the matches look brand new, and still light with a single strike on the worn striker.
That's such a great line from the movie "Apollo 13". I just had to use it for this NASA matchbook, from the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
Since its creation in 1959, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has used 3 logos. The first one, which is round and very detailed with space-related icons has come to be known as the "meatball". The next, a Logotype of stylized letters, is the one we find on this matchbook. Designed in 1975 by the graphic-design team of Dunne & Blackburn, it was recognized with an "Award of Design Excellence", a Presidential Design Award, in 1984. (The awards were created by President Ronald Reagan in 1983, thus the time difference between the creation of logo and the subsequent award.) Due to the smooth lines that depict the letters, this design has been referred to as "the worm".
Despite winning an award, the use of the worm logo only lasted 17 years and was replaced by...the original meatball, in 1992. This was to invoke memories of the successful Apollo missions, when we landed on the moon- except for Apollo 13.
Whew! It would seem that there's still a problem- the KC Matchgirl, for one, was not really aware that NASA had been switching logos back and forth.
But it does give some good clues for dating this matchbook. Newer than 1975, but older than 1992, which puts the date vaguely into the 1980's.
The space center itself was built in 1963 as the Manned Spacecraft Center and was renamed the Johnson Space Center in 1973, for President Lyndon B. Johnson. Most likely this matchbook would have been available at a visitor's center or gift shop, not from the pocket of an actual astronaut.
