Candy from the prostitutes

Wow, Kadizzle just confirmed something he always wondered about. See this picture.

This is Echo Manor.  It was near where Kadizzle grew up.  Now hold on for the next picture. 

This is the back of Echo Manor.  Now for the story. If you look at the very bottom of the back porch picture you will see a little vaulted trellis.  When Kadizzle was a little boy of maybe nine or ten the gang would go in that basement.  Sitting in that basement in skimpy underwear were prostitutes.  They would give our gang candy.  Forever Kadizzle has wondered if his memory was correct and these women were really whores.  Well this morning Kadizzle was reading some history of Wheeling and found out indeed they were.  Kadizzle does not know how he came to find this candy patch, but does remember as kids we could sniff out candy.   As little kids we had no idea why these women were sitting around a table smoking cigarettes in their underwear, but now the truth be known.  Another peculiar thing about this house is that the top used to be used as an antique store.  It was probably a front for the other business.  Kadizzle remembers going to auctions there.  Older brothers and sisters somehow were enlisted to make false bids on sale items to get the price up. It was a very strange world back then in a very strange town.  Kadizzle's grandfather was mayor.  The tales grandpa could tell if he was with us. If you want the full story where Kadizzle discovered the history go to a blog called Weelunk. It is a blog about my hometown of Wheeling, West Virginia.

Another common story about Echo Manor is that it was a brothel run by the mistress of famed Wheeling racketeer Bill Lias. She drove a white Cadillac, the stories say, and it was often parked in the driveway. Some Wheeling historians disbelieve the story while others are quite certain it’s true.

Alma Mae Henderson was Wheeling’s famous madam. She did have a white Cadillac. And research indicates that while Henderson and Lias did not have a romantic relationship, Echo Manor was indeed a brothel. From time to time, visitors to the building offer nuggets of history: a delivery man once recalled that “the women entertained downstairs and lived upstairs.”

This is the mention of the information in the history of the house: