500 Club in Clovis began as a saloon

Question: What is the history of the 500 Club building in Old Town Clovis? Did a church once meet upstairs?

– Al Verret, Clovis

Answer: The two-story red brick building at Fifth Street and Clovis Avenue was built as a saloon and billiard hall by Nestor Freitas between 1906 and 1909, said Louis Sarantos, who runs the 500 Club.

The fledgling Our Lady of Perpetual Help church celebrated its first mass on March 6, 1909, in a hall upstairs in the Robert E. Good building, on the northwest corner of Fifth and Clovis.

Not long after, the church moved its services to the hall above Freitas’ saloon, across the street on the southwest corner.

In 1913, the congregation built its first church, a wood-frame structure, at Eighth Street and DeWitt Avenue.

Sarantos said his family has leased the 500 Club building since 1953. At that time, it was called the Clovis Park Inn, named after a shady park that once stood on the northeast corner of Fifth and Clovis.

The original red brick building measures about 75 feet by 25 feet, Sarantos said. Most of the top floor of the building is a hall, but there also is a one-bedroom apartment complete with bathroom and kitchen upstairs.

The Sarantos family added a card room and improved parking in 1974, and remodeled the inside of the original building in 1984.

Q: I attended Jane Addams school through the ninth grade, when it was still a junior high. Did the school originally have a different name?

– Conrad Sanborn, Clovis

A: The forerunner of Jane Addams Elementary was a small school called Teilman Number Two.

When the school was built in 1911 at McKinley and Hughes avenues, it became the second school in the Teilman School District.

The district’s first school — Teilman Number One — was built in the Western Stick-style at Teilman Avenue and Divisadero Street in about 1900. The campus was vacated in 1977.

When the district merged with the Fresno Unified School District in 1931, Teilman Number Two was renamed for Jane Addams because the Fresno Unified school board decided to rename the school for a woman, said district spokeswoman Susan Bedi.

Addams was a social reformer and pacifist who championed women’s rights. She established Hull House in Chicago in 1889 to help immigrants and the poor in the neighborhood. She was the first woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, in 1931. Addams died in 1935.

Teilman Number Two was demolished some years after the merger and the current school was built on the site.

Teilman Avenue and the Teilman schools were named for Ingvart T. Teilman. One of the signers of Fresno’s articles of incorporation in 1885, Teilman was appointed city engineer in 1887 and designed the city’s sewer system.

The spacious two-story Italian Villa-style home Teilman built at Teilman Avenue and Kearney Boulevard in 1915 is listed on the Local Register of Historic Resources.

Q: Was there ever a streetcar on Van Ness Avenue just north of Fresno High School?

– Vince Correll, Fresno

A: The Fresno Traction Co. did not have a streetcar line on Van Ness Avenue, but part of the company’s Wishon Line passed just one block away from Fresno High School.

The Wishon line began in downtown Fresno and ran along Wishon Avenue north of Olive Avenue.

Fresno High School faces Echo Avenue and is bounded also by McKinley, Palm and Weldon avenues. Echo Avenue becomes Van Ness Avenue north of Weldon Avenue.

The Wishon line was one of the major routes of the streetcar company, which operated from 1902 to 1939.