Staff photo by Mark Kennedy/ This newspaper ad touted an all-electric house in the Rivermont neighborhood of Chattanooga given away at a Chattanooga Lookouts game at Engel Stadium on Sept 4, 1936. Merchants around the city gave away coupons for the drawing in return for in-store purchases.Billed as the first “modern house” built in Chattanooga, the Rivermont abode in the accompanying advertisement was the talk of the town in the late summer of 1936.
It was given away in a coupon drawing at Engel Stadium, then home of the Chattanooga Lookouts, on Sept. 4, 1936, during a baseball game.
The winner of the house was Paul B. Garber, an East Chattanooga plasterer by trade, who told a reporter from the Chattanooga Free Press after his winning coupon was pulled, “It’s the first time I ever won anything in my life.”
On the evening he won the house, Garber predicted that he would move in within a couple of weeks, but the newspaper reported just over two weeks after the drawing that Garber sold the house to a buyer named Rudy Satrian for an undisclosed price.
The newspaper advertisement was one of many display ads that published in the days leading up to the big drawing. It appeared in the Aug. 31, 1936, Chattanooga Free Press, the first edition of the newspaper ever published. Merchants from around the city participated in the give-away, with many retailers giving coupons to customers who made purchases in their stores.