Rudolph J. Shutting's letterhead
1936 map of downtown
Grant Park, an uncompleted project
Grant's headquarters would have been featured in the park.
Hales Bar Dam
Pine Breeze Sanitarium
One could do a Memories column on the card catalogs of libraries. They’ve all but disappeared, with computerization having supplanted them. However, the Local History and Genealogy section of the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Bicentennial Library still has a small wooden cabinet that contains inventories of celebrity visits to Chattanooga, high school annuals, and maps.
If you ever want to visualize what Chattanooga was like before Interstates, suburbs, and urban renewal, browse a few of the maps at the library. The staff will assist you in retrieving the map from archives. Chances are good that the map has the name of Rudolph Shutting on it.
The biography of Rudolph Shutting begins in Eastern Europe. His father, Julius, was a native of Riga, Latvia and was an engineer. His mother, Helen, served as governess for the Russian royal family. The two moved to Chattanooga and were married in 1876. Julius Shutting became a draftsman for the U.S. Engineer Corps, and drew plans for the canal at Muscle Shoals, Alabama.
Rudolph Shutting was born in 1878, and lived in the heart of downtown. According to a December 3, 1948 interview with the Chattanooga News-Free Press, his love of drawing started at a young age. Shutting used his mother’s dough board, a soap box, and brushes and pens to do his early illustrations.
After serving in World War I, Rudolph Shutting worked in the U.S. Engineers’ office, and then went to work with the Hunt Company at a salary of $3 per week. In 1920, he completed his first map of Chattanooga. “You know, a map must be just right, and the work can’t be rushed,” Shutting told the reporter. His toolset had been expanded to include a T-square, an air brush, and pen, and he spent much time with them in getting every curve of the Tennessee River just right.
Shutting’s first office in the Keystone Building (later Key Hotel) was on the top floor, which gave him a high-level view of the city that he drew. His portfolio expanded to include birds-eye illustrations of the area’s scenery and buildings.
Shutting also completed projects for each state in the United States, as well as Canada and Mexico. As shown on a 1925 letterhead in the library’s clipping files, his business grew to include indoor display advertising, letterheads, and post cards; all available in color or black and white.
Some of his many works were:
* Broad Street extended beyond its original southern terminus at Ninth Street
* Chattanooga 1930 map, showing newly-annexed areas
* Chickamauga Dam, as it looked when completed, prior to the addition of the Thrasher Bridge
* Chickamauga Park – a detailed indexed map
* Downtown street map for 1936 Visitors’ Guide
* Grant Park – a project that never came to fruition, but would have been centered around Ulysses S. Grant’s Civil War headquarters on First Street
* Hales Bar Dam
* Hamilton County map, which shows the pre-Chickamauga Lake view of the county and the Tennessee River
* Peerless Woolen Mills in Rossville, Georgia
Rudolph Shutting passed away in 1951. His wife, Lillian Wood Shutting, preceded him in death. Four children survived, though none continued in his craft of drawing according to the aforementioned News-Free Press interview.
His final map of the city was published in 1953. Ten years after his passing, his friend, George B. David, was interviewed for the April 18, 1961 “Looking Backward” column of the Chattanooga Times. In it, Mr. David noted that Rudolph Shutting should be credited for having originated the Postal Zoning System of the U.S. Post Office. Some readers may remember the one-digit codes used on mail prior to the ZIP (Zone Improvement Plan) Code, such as St. Elmo’s “Chattanooga 9, Tenn.”
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