In what was likely the biggest street party in Waco history, some 4,000 of the municipal movers and shakers of a century ago dined on oysters and imbibed Dr Pepper to celebrate the dawning of a new era.

Guests of the gala — as well as mere spectators who crammed the sidewalks to watch the proceedings — wanted to bear witness to the grand occasion marking the anticipated completion of Waco’s first skyscraper, the Amicable Life Insurance Company, and the arrival in Waco of other industry.

The Prosperity Banquet, as it was known, took place on April 10, 1911, in the streets of downtown Waco. Three blocks of Fifth Street, between Washington and Mary avenues, were roped off for the revelers.

At one time, this was the most famous photograph of an outdoor night event in American history. This Fred A. Glidersleeve image of the Prosperity Banquet of April 10, 1911, was a highlight of Waco’s past as it spoke to the young city’s hopes for a thriving future.
The Texas Collection at Baylor University photo

The celebration was organized by the Young Men’s Business League of Waco to toast the advances of the progressive age. The league was founded in 1909 and considered the great-grandfather of today’s Greater Waco Chamber of Commerce.

The 20th century was still young and the sky was the limit, Waco’s leaders crowed. So a spectacle was planned the likes of which townspeople had never known.

Long wooden tables and hundreds of chairs were set up in the middle of the street, topped with linen sheets and formal dinner settings. Lights were strung and flags hung from the upper floors of structures to serve as a festive backdrop.

Even the menu captured the theme of brimming optimism and community boosterism, and included “oyster cocktail a la Prosperity, mixed pickles a la Santa Fe, celery a la Cotton-Belt, fruit salad a la Cotton Palace and consommé a la Amicable.”

The feast included roast turkey, “Saratoga (potato) Chips,” Neapolitan ice cream, assorted cakes and mints, “followed by cigars and Dr Pepper.”

‘Magic lantern’ views

Around the banquet venue itself at strategic screens were projected large “magic lantern” displays of Waco sights, featuring views of venerable Baylor University, the Milton Scott-designed First Baptist Church sanctuary, the re-built Cotton Palace Exposition, the newly-completed Cameron Park, the five-year-old Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Works (Dr Pepper bottling plant) and the Amicable itself.

The banquet commemorated not only the insurance tower, but the Santa Fe train connection and the extension of the Cotton Belt railway. The Amicable would draw folks in from miles around, railroad additions only made it easier for visitors to get here.

One Waco newspaper instructed guests to: “be on time, don’t push, keep up with your individual hat, etc.” The paper also warned participants not be startled by the use of flash photography.

Gildersleeve’s triumph

Indeed, Waco’s most famous “flash photographer,” the peripatetic Fred A. Gildersleeve, was commissioned to document the grand affair. With the help of assistants, he rigged flash powder charges above doorways along the block of Fifth Street between Austin and Franklin avenues, synchronized to ignite simultaneously.

The illumination of thousands of faces in that instant at the height of the festivities made for the most sensational night photograph taken to that time in this country.

The Amicable building was as much an emblem of Waco’s prosperous future as the Waco Suspension Bridge over the Brazos was a symbol of its rugged past. The high-rise building, which would one day become the Alico headquarters, is seen in the distance in this shot of the banquet being set up for April 10, 1911.
The Texas Collection at Baylor University photo

The image — one he considered among his personal best — was reproduced in publications all around the country. Gildy belatedly got it copyrighted, but the photo gave him a name across America as a most ingenious artist with the camera.

The Weekly Underwriter, an insurance industry publication, in its issue of April 29, 1911, reported that Amicable’s founding father, Artemas R. Roberts, “read a stirring paper titled ‘Life Insurance — Essential to Permanent Prosperity,’ in which he boomed Texas as the biggest thing in the future of American things. Especially did he boom the Amicable brand of life insurance.”

Speeches were delivered by local officeholders and various influential citizens on the topic of economic well-being and the engines of success, talks that bubbled over with confidence in Waco’s future among the great cities of the Lone Star State if not the entire South.

At the event’s conclusion, guests and observers sang “The Song of Prosperity,” which included an ode to metropolis and lyrics saluting railroads, skyscrapers and a statement of hope for things to come.

A visit from Hope

The Prosperity Banquet was re-staged in April 1985, for the 100th anniversary celebration of the invention of Dr Pepper.

About 2,000 people attended the event, which featured comedian Bob Hope, who alluded to the urban legend that the soft drink’s ingredients include prune juice.

Wilton Lanning, founding president of the Dr Pepper Museum in Waco, recalled the comedian’s quip: “Hope said, ‘I don’t know whether (it is) or not, but if you watch those people who are drinking it at 10, 2 and 4 —— where are they at 11, 3 and 5?’ ”

Additional sources: The Texas Collection at Baylor University, Waco Tribune-Herald files and “Images of America: Waco,” by Eric S. Ames.

tjryan@wacotrib.com

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