newsletter

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.

In the Summer 2021 newsletter we asked readers if they knew how or why the Mount Prospect Park and Shop changed its name and one of you had the answer! (Thanks, Tom!) During the Mount Prospect Façade Improvement Project of the 1980s, Park and Shop owner Mike Weinberg worked with Ken Fritz to give the shopping center a new look. One of these changes was adding an arch above the central driveway. While the arch was a nice feature, it still seemed to be missing something. Mike suggested adding a clock as a focal point and his wife Penny, an artist, drew the design. At this same time the Park and Shop, the Village of Mount Prospect, and Ken held a contest to pick a new name for the updated shopping center. Children from around town were invited to submit their ideas and the child who submitted the best name would receive a $100 savings bond. “Prospect Place” was the clear winner.

Fall 2021

This signed baseball reflects a time of transition for youth baseball in Mount Prospect. It’s signed by the members of the 1976 Angels team in the Broncos division (ages 9-12) of the Mount Prospect Baseball Association (MPBA). One of those signers, Lisa Scelsi, was one of the first girls allowed to play in the league. She clearly loved baseball. The local sports pages of the Daily Herald show that Scelsi also played in the 1975 and 1977 seasons, even hitting a triple during a May 1977 game.

Scelsi, and many girls like her, were able to play on boys’ baseball teams because of the 1972 passage of Title IX, a federal civil rights law. This act was one of the Education Amendments enacted that year, and it prohibited discrimination based on sex in educational programs or activities that received federal funding. Importantly, it also challenged established assumptions about girls’ ability to play traditionally boy sports. The impact of Title IX was so widespread that, after a 1973 legal battle in New Jersey, Little League amended their charter in 1974 to allow girls to play baseball and establish the Little League Softball program.

Many communities around the United States needed to reevaluate their youth baseball programs as a result of these changes. Mount Prospect was no exception. Their program was called the Mount Prospect Boys Baseball Association until the mid-1970s when the name changed to the Mount Prospect Baseball Association. These names were used interchangeably in local newspapers at least as recently as 1975, but the revised name seems to have stuck by 1976. This transition was by no means a smooth one. The baseball’s donor, Carl Kraft, was one of the players on this team, and he noted that his father, Bob, was an MPBA board member who worked hard to make it possible for girls to play in the league. It is because of the courage and determination of girls like Lisa and adults like Bob that girls growing up in Mount Prospect today have so many opportunities to play sports.

After a busy summer and fall here at the Historical Society, I am thrilled to announce that the Dietrich Friedrichs House is now open again for guided tours on Wednesdays. We have an amazing new group of volunteer tour guides who will show you around the 115-year-old house and share the story of the Friedrichs family who built it and lived there for 60 years. Tours are by appointment only and can be made over the phone or on our website.
Central School is also open on the second Sunday of each month for our “Second Sunday at the Society” program. Stop by to see the schoolhouse, and stay to make a seasonal craft!

As the world opened up a little more, we were able to attend events around the community. You may have joined us on our bus tour of Chicago’s Pullman Neighborhood and the Robie House, seen us at the Lions Club Farmers Market, or filled out a survey for our Pandemic Moments Project while at the Mt. Prospect Park District concerts at Lions Memorial Park, the Downtown Block Party, or at Randhurst Street Fest. If you haven’t yet, you can still submit your photos and stories to the Pandemic Moments Project on our website.

Since the last newsletter, the Historical Society has received many wonderful artifact donations. Our artifact collection now contains an almost complete collection of Prospect High School yearbooks, pieces from Prospect Place Shopping Center (including items from Sam’s Place), Mount Prospect Baseball Association memorabilia (see below), and several hats that belonged to Historical Society cofounder Gertrude Francek, just to name a few of the amazing contributions.

Everything that the Historical Society has accomplished, especially during these tough times, has been made possible by the generosity of members and donors like you. Your financial donations allow us to continue preserving Mount Prospect’s history through our artifact collection and educational programs, as well as allow us to share that history with the community. Thank you for all you do to help us fulfill our mission! 

by Jean Murphy (fall 2021)

Happy 50th anniversary to Hearth & Home at 530 W. Northwest Highway in Mount Prospect and the O’Donnell family! H&H has a long and interesting history in this community.

Its founder Bob O’Donnell went into partnership to start the business with Dave Waldman in 1971 and they opened the doors in September that year. The O’Donnell family lived in Prospect Heights at the time.

“Both my father and his partner, Dave, were salesmen for Northern Illinois Gas Co.,” Pat O’Donnell, current president, explained. “They sold gas appliances, gas lights, gas grills, gas heaters, etc. for the sales department of the gas company. My father had worked there for almost 15 years when Northern Illinois Gas decided to eliminate their sales division. At that point both my father and Dave decided there would be a gas appliances market to address in the area and since they both had young families to support, they decided to go out on a limb and go into business together.”

The partners ran “OWL Appliance and Heating” (which stood for O’Donnell —- Waldman — and they went out on a Limb) until 1977 when Waldman died. They sold, installed and serviced gas fireplaces, gas logs, gas space heaters and gas ovens and cooktops. Wood-burning fireplaces were added soon afterward.

OWL was located at 15 W. Busse Avenue in the small triangle (across from Busse-Biermann Hardware) until 1980 when the Village began talking about redevelopment of that triangle.

After Dave died, Bob’s wife, Marilyn, stepped in to help with the books. Soon afterward, in December 1978, Bob’s son, Pat, graduated from St. Norbert College (DePere, WI) and while looking for a post-graduation job, he began working for his dad to earn some money.

“A neighbor of ours was an outdoor furniture sales representative and we were talking about my future and he talked about his industry. The idea of a career in a family business sounded intriguing to me. I then talked to my parents about adding outdoor furniture to our product mix and expanding and moving the business.”

So, in 1979, Pat formally joined the family business and the next year they moved to a larger space at 430 W. Northwest Highway, added patio furniture to their product line and changed the name to Hearth & Home Shoppe. Eight years later, in 1988, the O’Donnells bought the current building at 530 W. Northwest Highway, renovated it and moved there that April. Pat’s sister, Mary, also joined the business that year. In 2011, after five years in the banking industry, Ryan O’Donnell, the third generation, joined the business.

“Our future is in good hands,” Pat said.

Today they boast a staff of 15, including five family members – Pat and his sister, Mary Schappert (who are co-owners), Pat’s wife Anne, their son Ryan, and brother-in-law Ed Schappert.

Congratulations, Hearth & Home!