2023.03.09 THROW BACK THURSDAY - TWO SISTERS, TWO HOUSES, ONE DEPARTMENT STORE

THROW BACK THURSDAY - TWO SISTERS, TWO HOUSES, ONE DEPARTMENT STORE

Another piece of history written by Jim Pfeifer with input from Bick Satterfield, Hammond's brother.

Ed Stebbins, you're going to love this!

“Our family situation was very simple - we stabbed each other in the back during the day and socialized in the evenings.” Raida Cohn Pfeifer

Raida and Mimi Cohn were teenagers in 1926 when their father suddenly died and they and their mother became the heirs to one of the three largest department stores in Arkansas, the M. M. Cohn Company. Their grandfather Mark M. Cohn had founded the store in 1874 in Arkadelphia, and in 1883 he relocated to Little Rock to “find a wider sphere in which to advance himself” according to the Arkansas Gazette. The newspaper reported that he studied the Little Rock market and found his niche after determining that “few of his competitors carried anything but the lowest priced articles, and that those who desired to be well-dressed had to send to St. Louis, Memphis or other cities to obtain the class of goods they desired.”

For almost 100 years following the Civil War, Main Street in downtown Little Rock was the retail center of Arkansas. There were shoulder to shoulder crowds walking from store to store on Saturdays, when people would drive from all over Arkansas to buy merchandise. The largest stores were the Gus Blass Company (which had the first escalator), Pfeifer’s of Arkansas (famous for its bargain basement), and the M. M. Cohn Company (which was known for its upscale brands). They were all fierce competitors.

By 1930, both of the M. M. Cohn granddaughters had married - Mimi to Arthur Phillips who worked for the Gus Blass Company and Raida to Harry Pfeifer Jr. the grandson of the founder of Pfeifer’s of Arkansas. Arthur Phillips soon took over leadership of M.M. Cohn Company and competed with his former employer. Harry Pfeifer Jr. joined Phillips in the Cohn Company leadership, competing with his father and uncles! Despite this, the various store owners remained socially very friendly and worked together on civic causes.

Raida’s two grandfathers, M.M. Cohn and Charles Stifft, were early owners of the Arkansas diamond mine at Murfreesboro, and she wore a family ring which held the largest diamond found there to date. Unfortunately it was later lost in a heist of the Cohn company vault.

The sisters and their families remained very close, and by the mid 1930s, they were living next door to each other in the homes pictured here on Edgehill Road. They built and shared one of the city’s earliest private swimming pools on the Phillips property. At first they planned to straddle the pool on the property line, but realized it might be hard to sell a house with half a pool. Raida’s son Don recalled that the families often ate dinner together, and the kids might scout each kitchen and end up at the house serving their favorite food.

The Phillips house was designed by Theo Sanders, of the Thompson, Sanders and Ginocchio firm. It features unusual textured brick walls with “clinker” bricks in a pattern. Clinkers have a blackened appearance caused by excessive heat during the firing process and are often misshaped.

Initially discarded as rejects, clinkers were eventually noticed by architects who decided they added a distinctive appearance to their projects.

Appreciation is due to the current owners of both homes for preserving their handsome houses.

The two sisters, Raida Cohn Pfeifer and Mimi Cohn Phillips, continued to join their children (store executives Dan and Tad Phillips and Don Pfeifer)

in major decisions at the family store. M. M. Cohn Company marketed the quality merchandise envisioned by their grandfather until the store's sale in 1989. The sisters and their families also generously promoted community causes. Raida was a founding board member of the Arkansas

Arts Center and helped form Planned Parenthood in Arkansas; and both sisters worked for the Women’s Emergency Committee to rescue the schools from the grips of segregationists during the 1957 school crisis.

Appreciation for photos and research is due to Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, and to Bick Satterfield and his Encyclopedia of Arkansas entry.

Photo captions:

Photo 1: Raida and Mimi Cohn 1916.

Photo 2: Edgehill Home of Mimi Cohn Phillips and Arthur

Photo 3: Edgehill home of Raida Cohn Pfeifer and Harry Pfeifer

**********************************************************************************************************************************

The first man married a woman from Ohio . He told her that she was to do the dishes and house cleaning. It took a couple of days, but on the third day, he came home to see a clean house and dishes washed and put away.

The second man married a woman from Michigan . He gave his wife orders that she was to do all the cleaning, dishes and the cooking. The first day he didn't see any results, but the next day he saw it was better. By the third day, he saw his house was clean, the dishes were done and there was a huge dinner on the table.

The third man married a girl from Arkansas. He ordered her to keep the house cleaned, dishes washed, lawn mowed, laundry washed, and hot meals on the table for every meal. He said the first day he didn't see anything, the second day he didn't see anything but by the third day, some of the swelling had gone down and he could see a little out of his left eye, and his arm was healed enough that he could fix himself a sandwich and load the dishwasher. He still has some difficulty when he goes to the bathroom.

ML