Robert Mullen
Catalog Number: 2021.009.01
Remember looking at all of those old black and white photos that were in Grandma’s photo album? You know, the pictures with a white border around them and maybe a fancy deckled edge?
Most families have some of these old photos stored away. They date from the 1920s through the 1970s, and were taken with an inexpensive camera that held a roll of film. When grandma finished the roll of film, she sent it out to be processed at a photo finishing plant.
La Crosse was fortunate enough to have a lot of photo processors in those days. Photographers from all over the Midwest mailed their rolls of film to one of the La Crosse firms. Within a week, they received an envelope like the one shown here and had their negatives and prints in hand.
This envelope, from the 1950s, was from Ray’s Photo Service, one of the most successful photo finishing companies in the city, and one of the first in the country.
Ray’s was the brainchild of Helen Mae Hoeft. She and Millard Reynolds began a portrait studio and photo finishing operation in La Crosse in 1920. When a competitor drastically cut prices four years later, Hoeft’s and Reynolds’ business seemed doomed for failure.
It was then that Helen conceived of the idea of offering a mail order service. She convinced her business partner to help pay for advertising in various magazines and newspapers around the country. Send in a roll of film, along with twenty-five cents, and Ray’s Photo Service will process and print your pictures and return them to you in the mail.
Things looked pretty bleak after their initial efforts. Helen actually moved to Chicago to work as a waitress. According to her story reported in a 1954 La Crosse Tribune article, she came home after her first exhausting day at the Chicago restaurant to find a telegram from Reynolds: “Twenty sacks of government mail in front of the store. Come back. I’m panicky.”
She took the next train back to La Crosse. They quickly hired some additional employees, set up their equipment, and began a brisk business that lasted for decades. She said it was not uncommon to receive over 1500 rolls of film a day; that’s nearly $400 in quarters.
Hoeft claimed that their business was the first in the country to offer mail order film processing. Others copied the format, with dozens of similar companies across the country entering the field over the next several years. La Crosse became known as a center for film processing, and soon had as many as fifteen such businesses. Besides Ray’s Photo Service (known locally as Paramount Studio) other local firms were named Universal, Century, Club, Radio Film, Moen Photo, and American Studio, among others. They all advertised regionally or nationally.
Helen purchased full ownership of Ray’s in 1942 and ran the firm until she retired in 1955. The company continued at its 225 Main Street address until 1983.
Known as a pioneer in the photo finishing industry, Helen Hoeft would likely be astonished to see the instant digital photography of 2021. Of course, many millennials are equally astonished by the time and effort required to create photos back in the twentieth century.
This article was originally published in the La Crosse Tribune on March 26, 2021.
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