Peacock Alley: Highway 41 and the Growth of the Chenille Bedspread Industry

 

by

Ashley Callahan

 

In the early twentieth-century, a twenty to thirty mile section of Highway 41 in northwest Georgia came to be known as Peacock Alley, or Bedspread Boulevard, because of the brightly-colored tufted chenille spreads, often featuring peacocks, hung on lines along the roadside.  Residents of the area sold these spreads to tourists traveling on Highway 41, which at the time was the main route between Chicago and Miami.  As interest in these textiles spread, their manufacture increased and residents began selling chenille products to department stores across America.  In order to meet a growing demand, elements of the manufacture of the tufted spreads became mechanized, eventually leading to the development of the multi-billion dollar tufted carpet industry now centered in Dalton, Georgia. 

 

The traditional history of these spreads is that a young woman named Catherine Evans Whitener single-handedly began the industry through her interest in recreating an antique candlewick spread she encountered at a relative’s home.  She made her first tufted spread as a gift and was soon asked to make another for a friend.  As more requests arrived, she taught her friends to make spreads and they in turn instructed people from rural areas further from the highway to tuft.  The industry grew to involve many residents, both in town and in the country, providing work throughout the Great Depression. Though the industry was run by women well into its development, both men and women participated in the process of putting a pattern on a sheet, then tufting, washing, fluffing, and marketing it.

 

Numerous travelers recorded their impressions of the spreads as they sped in their newly acquired automobiles through northwest Georgia.  These writings, along with archival materials from the collection of the historical society in Dalton will be used to demonstrate the key role that the industry’s location along a major road played in its success.  Also, the presentation will discuss how the industry promoted the idea of the spreads as rural Southern items made by honest, hardworking Americans, thereby capitalizing on the popularity of the Colonial Revival style.  An examination of the chenille bedspread industry provides an opportunity to investigate a successful Southern textile industry begun and run by pioneering women.  

 

Ashley Callahan is the curator of decorative arts at the Georgia Museum of Art.  She received her M.A. in the history of American decorative arts through a program offered jointly by Parsons School of Design and the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution.