With my Hyde Park section—that is, writing articles for the Herald—I’m aiming toward some kind of walking tour/guide. Things to see as one walks around the neighborhood. I was thinking the next thing might be Lorado Taft, who of course produced one of the most famous sights, The Fountain of Time, as well as the lovely Recording Angel at his Midway Studios. He also, as it turns out, was very active in Hyde Park politics even before his daughter became Hyde Park’s representative in Congress.
When I’m looking at a topic, I tend to just troll along through the search results in online archives. That gives me a range of information and sidelights not available in books. But it also causes other bits of information to pop into view. So here are two.
Coach Stagg’s Car
I’ve already written in the Herald about football at the University of Chicago, so I don’t have a place to put this, unless I sneak it into a future account of the Museum of Science and Industry (now the Kenneth C. Griffin Museum of Science and Industry).
Lorado Taft often appeared in the social column of the Hyde Park Herald, and so did Amos Alonzo Stagg in 1933. In the long drawn-out effort to strangle Big 10 football at the university, President Robert Maynard Hutchins refused to renew Stagg’s contract in 1933. Publicly the excuse was Stagg’s age. He was indeed in his 70s, but he immediately got a job at the College of the Pacific, where he coached for another 13 years, including a team that came back and beat the Maroons.
Back in 1923, Stagg had an injury and couldn’t run up and down the sidelines, so the Order of the C alumni of 1919, that is, the elite varsity players who graduated in 1919, got together and bought him an electric car so he could keep up with play.
The car was—and is—a 1923 Milburn Model 27L. The social news item was that he was donating it to the brand-new science and industry museum opening up in the neighborhood because he wasn’t sure it would make it all the way to California over the mountain ranges.
Remarkably, the MSI (KCGMSI) kept the car. They refurbished it between 1999 and 2001. For a while, according to the Tribune, they paired as a Then and Now exhibit with their 2008 Tesla. Here’s a video, apparently only on Facebook, that shows some interior shots of the Milburn.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2334033243331561
It’s a gorgeous color apparently known as “peacock.” This photo is from the website of the Society of Automotive Historians in Britain
I haven’t gotten to the museum yet myself to check it out. It’s no longer paired with the Tesla.
The automotive buffs of Britain took a look because the company’s founder, George Milburn (1820-1883), was born in Alston, England. He settled in Mishawaka, Indiana, where his daughter ended up marrying Clement Studebaker. Milburn became a manufacturer of farm wagons. The company invested in electric cars in 1914. They made auto bodies for Oldsmobile as well as the Milburn electric cars until they lost out to the combustion engine. Woodrow Wilson and his Secret Service detail drove Milburns around the White House grounds.
T. R. Wolf Toy Store
Another rabbit hole was an item of the T. R. Wolf toy store on 55th Street. It struck me because I know people who grew up in Hyde Park before the 1970s remember it with great fondness. This news item had shown up in the Herald’s Hyde Park jubilee issue of 1939. It mentioned that the store was founded March 8, 1894. I was astounded, not just because that meant it survived its founder but also that it had survived urban renewal, which wiped out its original locations.
So I poked around, curious how it survived and apparently it survived on joy.
Wolf was from Iowa. His first job was working in a bakery, then a toy factory. Then in 1893 (possibly 1894) he opened his toy store with his sister, Miss Emma Mae Wolf, at 1481 E. 55th Street. They later moved to 1401 E. 55th Street, where they lived in an apartment above the store. It claimed famous people (for the 1930s) as its customers, including Katherine Cornell, Grace Cornell, Lawrence Tibbets, Jean Harlow, Amelia Earhart, Gloria Swanson, and Milton Sills. The Herald refers to him every time as the neighborhood Santa Claus in a store of delights. He gave to fundraisers for the Neighborhood Club, devoted to helping children without means.
In 1942, the neighborhood was saddened when Miss Emma Mae died. She, sitting in her chair by the door, had become a neighborhood institution. During World War II, Wolf added Hallmark greeting cards to send to the servicemen to his line of toys, candy, and school supplies. He died in 1944. At that time, the T. R. Wolf toy store was the second oldest business in Hyde Park. Eggers’ Grocery store was oldest. The third oldest was the Barkey Boot Shop, which, as so many small retailers were, was forced out of business during the war. A cousin of Wolf’s, Ira Jones, took over.
During urban renewal, it kept moving, trying to keep ahead of the wrecking ball, wandering as far west as Ellis Avenue, until some old single-story stores were allowed to survive because there were no residences on the second floor. A goal of urban renewal was to cut the population in half and eliminate cheaper housing. The stores were given new big windows, and T. R. Wolf moved into 1344 East 55th Street in 1960.
Apparently, it changed hands again to Chester Howell, remembered as a retired law enforcement guy who would sit at the front door. His wife was behind the counter with their other staff member Trixie.
In 1976, the toy store gave up the ghost and Model Camera expanded. I mentioned T. R. Wolf on the Hyde Park Facebook group and the memories came pouring out:
Matchbox cars!
Penny candy!
Hand puppets, books for children
The women behind the counter were quite elderly and a bit snappy as we wasted their time getting penny candy - ice cubes and Chunkies, etc.
We bought birthday presents there. The owner--Mrs. Wolfe? -- would carefully wrap the gift. For a girl's gift she would tape a candy lipstick on top. It had shiny gold paper wrapped around the base and was a wild magenta color that turned your lips bright pink when you ate it.
I purchased rubber baseballs, kites, penny candy.
They had anything a child would want. We'd get everything from penny candy to model airplanes there. A couple times a week someone would have to get a rubber baseball to play strikeout at Murray.
For the two years I went to Ray School. The highlight of my day was going to T.R. Wolf after school.
Remember those metal rockets you would put caps into? Toss them up into the air and it would land with a BANG!
Also, I’d build model cars. What a great childhood memory.
Maybe bringing joy increases longevity. One of the longest surviving stores in Hyde Park is still a toy store packed with the kinds of things you can’t find just anywhere. It’s Toys Et Cetera in the Hyde Park Shopping Center. Not unlike T. R. Wolf caught in urban renewal, it’s about to be hard to find, squeezed between two restaurant tents (Ascione and the new Mahari Restaurant) so please go give it some love. It’s really a treat. And for those of you reading this out of town, it looks like Toys Et Cetera has a catalog.
Long after my children were past toy-store-age, I went into Toys, Etcetera to buy a gift for a friend’s child. They remembered me and my girls and we had a wonderful time reminiscing.