HS Board

Throughout the early 1900s Lena Friedrichs kept in touch with friends and family by sending postcards. During the first fifteen years of the 1900s, postcards were an immensely popular way to send a quick note to loved ones, much like a text message with emojis today.

Postcards came in all sorts of designs for just about every occasion and sentiment that a sender could imagine. Lena’s collection demonstrates this wide variety. Some of the postcards send a holiday greeting or a congratulations, while others are photographs of places that family and friends had visited. Still others are much more whimsical! Now that Lena’s collection has been digitized, I wanted to share some favorites with you.

Thank you to all the volunteers who digitized these postcards!

The Historical Society volunteers have been busy this winter. In addition to guiding tours, volunteers have been hard at work adding newly donated artifacts to our database, digitizing files from our archive, and assisting me with an upgrade project for the Historical Society artifact collection.

Digitization efforts have sped up considerably thanks to a generous donation from one of our volunteers that allowed us to purchase a new scanner. This new equipment will allow us to share more of the Historical Society collection not just in exhibits and presentations, but also in the newsletter and through our website and social media accounts.

I am endlessly impressed by the talent and dedication of our volunteers, and we are so lucky to have each and every one of them sharing their time and skills with the Historical Society.

Staff and board members have also been busy planning programs and other events this year. In March we will hold a virtual Annual Meeting on our social media accounts. (The corresponding 2021 financial report is enclosed in this newsletter.) We will announce the exact date and time closer to the presentation, but afterwards all content will be available to view at any time. For my part of the Annual Meeting I will be presenting a new tour of the Dietrich Friedrichs House. I’m especially excited to share some of my recent discoveries about this beautiful historic house.

Probably the most intriguing discovery in this research process was finding a receipt in the keyhole of what is now the door to our office. Thanks to help from a board member and my coworker, Amanda Marcus, we were able to locate and contact the man named on the receipt. His stories about living at 101 S. Maple Street illuminated a part of the house’s history that was previously unknown. It was a rare example of finding answers — and history — in strange places!

Happy spring, readers!

by Emily Dattilo

Before 101 S. Maple Street was a museum, it was a home. Dietrich and Lena Friedrichs built the house at 101 S. Maple Street in 1906, and five years later their daughter Bessie was born. Collectively the Friedrichs family spent 60 years in this beautiful house.

After Dietrich and Lena’s passing, Bessie decided to move into a home of her own with her husband, Charles Barnes. She sold 101 S. Maple to Richard and Jane Webb in 1966. Just like the Friedrichs family, Richard and Jane adapted the home to meet the needs of modern life and personal preferences.

One of the Webb family’s adaptations involved creating a main floor bathroom out of the pantry adjacent to the kitchen, as suggested in the 1966 real estate listing for the house. The Webbs also repainted the house yellow, as seen in the photo on the left.

In 1975 First Chicago Bank of Mount Prospect purchased 101 S. Maple Street, and the Webbs moved to another home in Mount Prospect. The bank was located across the street, on the corner of S. Maple Street and W. Busse Ave. in what is now the former Chase Bank building. Their original plan for the property was to tear down the home, garage, and carriage house in order to pave a parking lot. Neighbors and the Village of Mount Prospect, however, were strongly opposed to this plan because the space was zoned as a residential area. Instead, First Chicago Bank began renting out 101 S. Maple Street, most likely as a way to get a return on their investment.

One of those tenants was Richard, a young man whose lease lasted from 1982 to 1984. He shared the house with four other young people, all in their late teens and early twenties. During that time Richard occupied the room that is now the Historical Society office, and in July 2021 Historical Society staff found a receipt with his name on it stuffed into that door’s keyhole. One of the most entertaining memories from his time as a resident was when another resident’s cat had kittens. The kittens could be found roaming all over the house!

Richard moved out of town in 1984 and the rest of the tenants moved shortly afterwards. By 1987 the house was empty and once again available for purchase.

First Chicago Bank first approached the Village of Mount Prospect with an offer to sell the house, and the Village then turned to the Mount Prospect Historical Society. The Historical Society was interested in preserving this historic home, and they enthusiastically began an intense fundraising campaign to raise $94,000 in less than a year. First Chicago Bank donated the first $16,000 towards the purchase price. Individuals, businesses, and local organizations contributed the rest of the almost $80,000. Fundraising efforts included door-to-door campaigning, bake sales, breakfasts, and other special events. It was truly a community project!

However, it would take plenty of restoration to bring 101 S. Maple Street back to its former glory.

That meant continued fundraising. The Historical Society formed a Restoration Committee who guided the entire process with thorough research and input from two former residents, Bessie Friedrichs Barnes and Jane Webb. Volunteers spent countless hours researching furnishings and household items appropriate for an early 20th century home. Some of the most significant objects acquired for the museum were those that once belonged to the Friedrichs family. Bessie donated many of these, but others, like the dining room table and chairs and the hall tree in the entryway, were returned by their second owners.

The Mount Prospect Historical Society’s Dietrich Friedrichs House Museum officially opened with a dedication ceremony on September 12, 1992. Crowds of supporters gathered to witness the ribbon-cutting ceremony and celebrate all the hard work and dedication that made the day possible. 30 years later, we’re still sharing Mount Prospect’s history in this beautiful, historic home.