The Little Shop on Erie St.

The short gentleman at the lower left in the photo above is Mr. Stoopnagle (first name unknown, unless it was "Mr."). The taller fellow is the young Arthur J. Hallinan, Sr. — before he added the “Sr.” to his name. This appears to be the only surviving picture of Mr. S. At first glance, he looks like a garden-variety garden gnome. But far from being merely decorative landscape-candy, this gnome had a more complicated and utilitarian life: he was a working sprinkler head, with a hose attachment (presumably somewhere in his nether regions) and orifices that sprayed water for the refreshment of nearby plants. And, oh yes, Mr. S. had one remarkable gift in particular: he could talk. More about that in a bit, but first a little background.

Flowers of Quality ...

Mr. S. was employed by the horticultural firm of  “C.C. Hallinan — Flowers of Quality” in Painesville, Ohio.

While the business's public face identified the proprietor in the singular, the enterprise was in fact a literal mom-and-pop operation composed of the husband-and-wife team of Clarence Cornelius (C.C.) and Rose Jane (“Jennie") Laracy Hallinan. And from 1934 until the family permanently closed up shop in 1946, their younger son, the above-mentioned Arthur J. Hallinan, Sr., was also a partner in the venture.

Left: Jennie and C.C. Hallinan at their wedding in 1907. Right: C.C. and Jennie at home, most likely in the mid-1930s. C.C. was born in Erie, PA on January 3, 1875, the fourth child (third son) of James Augustus and Margaret (McNierney) Hallinan. Jennie was born in Painesville on December 8, 1876. She was the fifth child (out of ten total) of Michael and Helen (Morgan) Laracy.

The most visible (and longest lasting) part of the Hallinan business was the little retail flower shop at 579 E. Erie St., located next door to the Hallinan family home.

The Hallinan family in front of the flower shop, probably around 1920. (Left to right: Paul, C.C., Art, and Jennie.) The first Hallinan flower shop was opened in 1917 on North St. Clair St. in Painesville. Within a couple of years, the shop moved to its long-term location (shown here) next to the family home on Erie St.  Insurance maps suggest that the original Erie St. shop was converted from an existing garage.

The Erie St. location was undoubtedly convenient, cutting the owners' commuting time to zero. The new shop also had the advantage of increased visibility, since it was on the main road between Painesville and Erie, PA. As the business grew, so did the shop. This photo, probably from the 1930s, reflects the addition of increased floorspace and a street-facing front door.

The flower shop was only part of the business. The Hallinans also ran a greenhouse and a wholesale plant nursery. The greenhouse was immediately behind the shop. (It’s visible in the above pictures between the shop and the house.) The nursery, which opened a year before the flower shop, consisted of about 30 acres just north of the family home, on the other side the New York Central railroad tracks.

Above: three views of the grounds of the Hallinan nursery. The nursery was accessed from Elm St., around the corner from the Hallinan home and flower shop and across the street from the Laracy family home. The 30 or so acres that made up the nursery belonged originally to Jennie's father, Michael Laracy, who died in 1914. At the time the nursery business started, the land appears to have been owned by two of his daughters.

The bottom photo depicts three of Jennie's eight sisters standing on the Elm St. side of the nursery.  (The appearance of some individual Laracy sisters could shift radically from photo to photo, and I have no confidence about identifying these three.) The Laracys were a close-knit family, and the Laracy aunts were a constant loving (and doting) presence during Paul and Art Hallinan's childhoods and early adult lives.

The Hallinan nursery specialized in raising hardy perennials and rock-garden plants that the Hallinans offered for sale to landscapers and other dealers. The firm appears to have established a solid reputation, and national trade journals occasionally quoted C.C. about growing conditions or the state of the market.

(Source: Internet Archive.)

(Source: AJH archives.)

C.C. Hallinan nursery's display of rock-garden plants at a trade show (most probably the Cleveland Flower Show) at some time in the 1920s.

C.C. Hallinan's involvement in horticulture was hardly surprising: both his father, James Augustus Hallinan, and his grandfather, John F. Hallinan, were nurserymen. C.C. had originally tried other lines of work. But when he came to Painesville in 1903 at the age of 28, he returned to his roots (so to speak) and hired on as a greenhouse foreman at the Storrs & Harrison Co., which was then one of the largest commercial nurseries in the world.

(Image from wikipedia.)

Following the Roman Catholic custom for bishops, C.C. and Jennie's son Paul J. Hallinan adopted a personal coat of arms at the time of his episcopal ordination. As in the image to the right, the bishop's personal arms are displayed with the arms of the diocese — in this case the Archdiocese of Atlanta. The diocesan arms are on the left, and Archbishop Hallinan's personal arms are on the right.

Wait a minute! Does this have anything at all to do with the Hallinan flower shop and nursery? Of course it does. Be patient.

Archbishop Hallinan’s personal arms incorporated “the arms of the Irish Hallinan family”: “a silver field emblazoned with a green oak tree, its roots exposed, and bearing a golden crown in the middle of the foliage.” This was “differenced” (personalized) by the addition of a golden sword (to honor St. Paul), and by two red hearts (from the coat of arms of John Henry Cardinal Newman).

What about the flower shop and nursery? Ahem: As the heraldic description of Archbishop Hallinan's coat of arms points out, “The tree of the Hallinan arms has more than a passing interest inasmuch as the grandfather and father of the archbishop were both nurserymen.” (Not to be picky, but also the great-grandfather.)

C.C. and Jennie were married in 1907. Their first child, Robert, died in childbirth in 1909. The second, Paul Edward (who later changed his middle name to "John"), was born April 8, 1911. Then, in 1916, with their third child, Arthur Joseph, on the way, C.C. and Jennie decided to go into business for themselves. Art was born on December 20, 1916.

At the wedding of C.C. Hallinan and Jennie Laracy, September 3, 1907, in Painesville. The happy couple are on the right in the very back row. Jennie's parents, Michael and Ellen (Morgan) Laracy, are the couple dressed in dark clothing seated at the far left of the front row. C.C.'s parents, James Augustus and Margaret (McNierney) Hallinan are seated in the center of the front row (immediately behind the kid who apparently couldn't hold still even for just five doggone seconds).

C.C's and Jennie's parents were all natives of Ireland. James and Margaret were probably from County Clare. They came to the U.S. separately in the late 1850s and settled in Erie. Michael was from County Louth, and Ellen was from County Armagh. They arrived in the U.S. around 1864, also separately (although Ellen was in the company of her parents), and came to rest in Painesville.

Jennie, who was a graduate of the Euclid Business College in Cleveland, managed the books and the office, and also supervised the finishing touches on floral arrangements. C.C. did the growing and flower arranging and, along with hired help, manned the counter in the flower shop. It was a point of pride to the owners that, as the Painesville Telegraph once reported, “not one order ever left the shop without its first being inspected by a member of the firm.”

C.C. creating a floral arrangment.

Jennie at the nursery, harvesting flowers for the shop, probably in the mid-1930s.

Wonderland ...

One of the more endearing aspects of C.C.’s character was his sense of humor. He was a devoted fan of the deliriously exaggerated tall tales attributed to Baron Munchausen, and he delighted in reading excerpts of the Baron's fictional Adventures to his grandchildren (and probably to his children before that). Although the flower shop and nursery were business operations, for kids they were — with C.C.'s (and apparently Jennie's) full approval and encouragement — a kind of wonderland.

The photographic evidence suggests that when C.C. and Jennie's own kids (Art and Paul) were young the nursery grounds were a regular setting for playful (and possibly over-the-top) productions like the Hallinan-Rhodes Circus and other theatrical endeavors such as the one depicted in the second picture below, which includes the future archbishop's very first appearance in clerical garb.

The Hallinan-Rhodes Big Top Circus was a recurring event. The Rhodes family lived next door to the Hallinans on Erie St. Art Hallinan is in the center. It's unknown which of the other two performers was Rhodes.

Although there are several photos of this theatrical production, the script has not survived. The cast includes Paul Hallinan (far left) as the clergyman and Art Hallinan (second from left) as the groom. The bridesmaids are sisters Agnes ("Sis") Lynch on the far right, and Clare Lynch (later McIvor) second from right. It's not certain, but the bride may be the oldest of the Lynch sisters, Eleanor. The Lynches were the Hallinan brothers' first-cousins, the daughters of Jennie's sister Agnes Laracy Lynch. The five cousins were close friends and constant companions throughout their childhood and into early adulthood.

The nursery and flower shop remained places of fun and wonder in later years. The older grandchildren recall C.C. shepherding them through the nursery in search of Indian arrowheads and other exotic artifacts. Incredibly, the search was always successful. (For at least one of the grandkids, more than 30 years passed before it dawned on him that the whole thing was staged and that Grandpa had salted the place with arrowheads shortly before the artifact-hunters arrived.)

Which brings us back to ...

Mr. Stoopnagle.

One summer day in the mid to late 1940s, Art Sr. and his preschool-aged sons Art Jr. and John paid a visit to C.C. and Jennie in Painesville. By that time, the elder Hallinans had closed the flower shop and retired, but the shop building remained, along with much of the nursery's plantings and infrastructure. After visiting a bit, C.C. gave his son Art Sr. a wink, announced that he had some work to do, and disappeared. Art Sr. then took the boys out for a walk in the gardens.

As they were strolling past the ever-vigilant Mr. Stoopnagle, a voice called out from the gnome himself: “Hello, young men! What are your names?” Shocked at first, then intrigued, and soon delighted, the boys introduced themselves and launched into an extended discussion with the little fellow. What followed was a frank exchange of views about favorite toys, the weather, the relative merits of being a kid versus being a gnome, the likelihood of catching fish in the nearby pond, and heaven knows what else. (In truth, there was no contemporaneous recording of the initial greeting or of the discussion that ensued, so we are forced to imagine such details. This approach is, of course, fully in keeping with the values of both C.C. Hallinan and Baron Munchausen.)

In their excitement, the boys didn't seem to notice that Stoopnagle's voice had a striking similarity to their grandfather's. Nor did they notice the garden hose, which had one end attached to Mr. S.'s backside and which ran from there across the lawn and into the window of a nearby shed. Inside the shed, C.C. sat chatting into the hose's other end, happily contributing to his grandsons' budding new friendship with a cast-iron and ceramic lawn sprinkler.

It is to the credit of Art Jr. and John that it took them less than 30 years to figure out the truth.

But wait! There's more!

In retirement, C.C. and Jennie kept on gardening. C.C. also took the time to write down some of his thoughts about and experiences in the flower business, a work that he entitled Episodes in Ye Life of Ye Florist. But that — and other aspects of the flower business — are topics for another post, which can be found here.