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These two bricks and the roof finial were recovered from the small Tudor-style building at 2 W. Northwest Highway on the day it was demolished in March 2021. Almost 100 years ago, in 1927, this building first opened as the Moehling Service Station. John C. Moehling, also owner of Mount Prospect’s first store, built this service station in order to serve the growing number of cars in the area. By the early 1930s John C.’s son, John P., began managing the station. The bricks and finial are now part of the Historical Society’s collection.

The service station remained in operation for many years under different owners. In 1981 George and Dee Zoumaras diverged from that trend and opened Submarine Express, a sandwich shop, in this same building. By 1990 the timber-frame façade features, including this roof finial, were added to the structure. The exterior transformation helped this historic building better match the style of its neighboring historic buildings in downtown Mount Prospect. George and Dee’s son, Tom, later managed the restaurant. Over its almost 40 years in business, Sub Express became a local favorite and one of the Historical Society’s most enthusiastic supporters.

It is so refreshing to see this summer’s calendar filling up with in-person programs. If you’ve already peeked at the “Upcoming Events” section of this newsletter, then you probably noticed that many of our summer programs will be held on the Historical Society campus. It will be fantastic to see visitors on our grounds again!

All of us here at the Mount Prospect Historical Society are also eager to welcome everyone back into our buildings for research, rentals, and tours. We are currently planning this stage of reopening and hope to allow visitors inside buildings by the end of this year, providing it is safe to do so. Please watch our website and social media accounts for future reopening updates.

Part of reopening, however, will require your help. We are currently looking for volunteer tour guides to lead tours of the Dietrich Friedrichs House. Lena and Dietrich Friedrichs built this home in 1906, and at the time, it was the thirteenth house in town. Today it is both a museum and the home of the Mount Prospect Historical Society. All of us at the Historical Society love this historic building, and you can help us show off this beautiful home as a volunteer tour guide! Becoming a volunteer tour guide is a wonderful way to share local history with your community, as well as learn more about it yourself. More information on volunteer responsibilities and the volunteer application form can be found on our website: https://www.mtphist.org/volunteer/

If you’d like to help the Historical Society in other ways, we have plenty of opportunities to volunteer with us once we fully reopen. In addition to house tours, we offer hands-on experiences working with the artifact collection and researching topics in local history. As we begin resuming in-person programs, we will need volunteers to help at many of our events. There is always household maintenance that needs to be done too, so if your talent is fixing things around the house, we could certainly use your talent. Whatever time or talent you’d like to share with the Historical Society, we’d be happy to have you. Please fill out the volunteer application form on our website to become a volunteer.

Have a wonderful summer, readers, and I hope to see many of you join us as volunteers!

by Marni Pyke – March 2021

When most people think of a historic site, a shopping center usually isn’t the image they conjure up. Imposing Victorian mansions or places like expansive battlefields seem old and unique in the 21st-century world, making them worthy of consideration as a historic site. Shopping centers, on the other hand, are a relatively modern addition to the American landscape and they seem to be everywhere. What could possibly be historic about a place like that?
Despite assumptions to the contrary, shopping centers, like Prospect Place in downtown Mount Prospect, have a historical context. Although this local shopping center is about to undergo redevelopment, the center itself is a product of earlier redevelopment.

The 1923 Drainage District Map indicates that the land on the corner of today’s Main Street and West Prospect Avenue belonged to a farmer named George Meier. It’s unclear exactly when Meier sold his land, but the Weller Creek Drainage District office ledger, which recorded land payments, shows that by late 1940 a woman named Stella C. Wilson was making payments on the property. Later in the 1940s it was the site of the annual Lions Club Fall Festival. Whenever the sale occurred, Meier was one of many local farmers during these decades who sold their farmland to investors or developers looking to build new neighborhoods.

However, the northern part of Meier’s property was destined to become the site of “one of the most modern and unusual store developments in the entire Chicago area,” according to a February 11, 1950 issue of Realty and Building magazine. This store development was originally named the Mount Prospect Park and Shop and was designed by architect Edward P. Steinberg.

The term “park and shop” was commonly used in the mid-1900s to refer to a shopping center that also provided nearby parking spaces. 21st-century Americans might instead consider a similar structure a strip mall. This type of shopping center represents an important change in retail history and in the development of the suburbs. In retail history, park and shop centers mark a change in architecture that accommodates customers and their cars. Park and shop centers were, in theory, a way to solve the congestion issues caused by increasing numbers of cars on the road.

For Mount Prospect, the park and shop served to accommodate a growing population and was a way to keep
residents shopping in downtown areas, rather than on the outskirts of town or, more significantly, in neighboring towns.

When Mayor Pendleton shoveled the first scoop of dirt during the May 1950 groundbreaking ceremony, the $250,000 Mount Prospect Park and Shop Center was planned to hold eight or IN THIS ISSUE: nine stores. The
Park and Shop opened for business in fall 1950, and the entire block of stores was completely full by the end of 1952.

Some of the earliest tenants at the Park and Shop were Reid’s Ladies Apparel, Sethness Men’s Store, Brunberg’s 5 & 10, Lenhart’s Pastry Shop, Bachmann’s Hardware Store, the National Food Store, and McMahon’s Dry Goods. While none of these early tenants remain in the shopping center, other tenants became fixtures. Keefer’s Pharmacy, Strass’ Ladies Apparel (later Mary Jayne’s Ladies Apparel), and Sam’s Place were or have been located in the Park and Shop for over 40 years.

Although the style of a park and shop center was supposed to relieve traffic congestion, the one in Mount Prospect had the opposite effect. The Mount Prospect Herald reported in December 1950, only a few months after opening, that the Village had recently imposed a two-hour parking limit on south side of West Prospect Avenue in order to
“accommodate the new stores.” Another suggestion to improve traffic involved creating a driveway space leading into the Park and Shop parking lot through the central island of grass and trees down Prospect Ave. These parking issues were part of larger downtown parking problems throughout the 1950s, so the Village eventually asked a commission to study the situation.

Over the following decades, the name “Park and Shop” disappears from the records. It seems that the Park and Shop became part of the Village landscape as the rest of the street filled in with new retail space. The building is currently called “Prospect Place Shopping Center,” but there are no records of when or why the name changed. (If you know the answer to this history mystery, please contact the Historical Society!) Though the name may be mysterious, the Prospect Place sign with the clock is instantly recognizable in the downtown landscape.
At the time of writing, the Village has approved plans to replace the shopping center with a five-story building containing first floor commercial space and apartments above. It appears that this land along West Prospect Avenue will continue the cycle of redevelopment, but this time in a new century.

Betty Stolze was a new military wife on an adventure in August 1952. Her husband, Bob, was a corporal in the U.S. Army 441st Counter Intelligence Corps Detachment stationed in Tokyo, Japan from summer 1952 to summer 1953. (This assignment was unrelated to U.S. occupation of Japan at the end of World War II. Japan regained independence a few months before the Stolzes arrived.) This album was originally a Christmas gift from Bob to Betty that year and was donated to the historical society in 2020. Within its pages is a record of all their travels within Japan, events attended, their apartment, and many of their friends and neighbors. Enjoy a few photos from their travels!

Hello and happy Spring, readers! One of the many lessons 2020 taught us was the importance of flexibility. Like so many cultural institutions around the world, we have been adapting to a new normal. I’m grateful that we have a talented and committed team of staff, board members, and volunteers who have made the transition to virtual programming smoother than imagined.

We met some of the past year’s challenges by adapting the format of some of our programs. Some programs were easily modified to follow new safety guidelines, like the blacksmith demonstrations, but others were moved online. Instead of hosting summer History Camp programs at the historical society campus, last summer’s campers met online to participate in activities themed around the history of the Olympics and the Chicago World’s Fair. The complications of the pandemic also inspired us to create new programs, like the 2020 Dollhouse Video Tour.

Because so many guidelines have, so far, remained the same in 2021, we are continuing to be creative in finding ways to share history with the Mount Prospect community. Our Annual Meeting, for example, will be a virtual presentation this year. Watch your email inboxes, as well as our website and social media, for more details on this event. The financial presentation of the Annual Meeting is enclosed in this newsletter. This spring our Second Sunday programs will not feature “Make and Takes,” but rather “Take and Makes.” Participants will take their activity supply bags home and make the craft together over Zoom, instead of in Central School.

Although our buildings are not yet open to the public, you can still reach us by calling the office or sending an email to info@mtphistory.org. We regularly share moments from Mount Prospect history on our Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts. Make sure to follow us if you’re not already! Our social media accounts and our website are two of the best places to stay up-to-date on all our upcoming events.

Stay safe and healthy
Emily Dattilo, Director

by Emily Dattilo

Does this house look familiar? You may have seen it while driving down West Kensington Road before May 2001, or you may have taken a virtual tour through its miniature counterpart on the 2020 Dollhouse Video Tours. Though this house at 211 W. Kensington Road no longer stands, its distinctive red and white siding make it memorable. However, few remember the Russel family who lived there and farmed the
surrounding land. The only indication that the Russels were ever there is the street named after them, which intersects Kensington Road near the farmhouse. Despite their relative obscurity in 2021, the Russel family left their mark on the community. Their lives and the life of their house and farm offer a snapshot of the development of Mount Prospect from a small farming community to a busy suburb.

It’s unclear when the farmhouse at 211 W. Kensington Road was constructed, but it was connected to the Russel family. Hans Heinrich Russel, also known as John Henry Russel, arrived in the United States from Germany in 1849. He was one of many German immigrants who fled economic and political hardships in the Germanic states during the 1840s. Hans made his way to the present-day northwest suburbs, and there he married Engel Maria Schilling of Schaumburg. They had a son, Henry. Engel Maria died in childbirth, and a few years later Hans married Louisa Katz of Elk Grove. Louisa gave birth to another son, John. She was probably related to the Mount Prospect Katz family who owned much of the land north of Central Road, including the surroundings of the red and white farmhouse. Even with this close connection it’s not known how Hans acquired the farmland neighboring the Katz family. His 1904 Cook County Herald obituary suggests that he began farming that land around the time of his marriages in the 1850s. In 1878 Hans also constructed a house on the 200 block of Russel Street. Almost 50 years later Ludwig or Henry Katz split that house in two and moved the other half across the street.

Despite the geographical distance between neighboring farms, farm families maintained close ties with their community. They helped with each other’s farm work, especially at harvest time, and they came together to socialize and celebrate. Hans must have been a good neighbor to be remembered in his obituary as “one of our substantial German citizens, an early settler who by industry and honesty rose to affluence and influence, highly esteemed by all who knew him.” By the 1900s the family and their farm were so well-known in Mount Prospect that the Russel farm was noted as a landmark when the Cook County Herald announced the beginning of Mount Prospect’s rural mail delivery service.

While Hans and his oldest son, Henry, were actively involved in the farm community, John’s career path headed in another direction. As the long-time secretary of the Des Plaines Mutual Insurance Company he insured the goods and farms of families all across the area. He also served as the school treasurer of Wheeling Township and became an elder and trustee in
St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in Arlington Heights.

Russel family members began moving off the farm and into Arlington Heights in the early 1900s. Henry rented the farm and sold the equipment at auction in October 1911 and the Russel farm went up for sale after his passing in 1918. A public notice in the Cook County Herald announced the public auction of the farm on September 21, 1918. The records do not clearly note who purchased the estate, but the H. Roy Berry Company discussed developing Northwest Heights, which includes the Russel Estate, in a January 1926 issue of the Cook County Herald. They boasted of turning the farm into “small country estates” that are “especially suited to the man who has a desire to raise his own vegetables and live the life of a small farmer while being employed in the city.” This series of events for the Russel farm was mirrored elsewhere in Mount Prospect, especially during the 1920s development boom. For example, William and George Busse purchased the rest of the Owen Rooney farm in 1916 and over the following years subdivided the land into Busse’s Eastern Addition. These sales laid the groundwork for Mount Prospect’s transformationfrom a small farming community into a growing suburb.

In 1942 Margie Atwood and her family moved into the Russel farmhouse. The Great Depression halted much of the redevelopment of the 1920s, so the
rest of the neighborhood, like much of Mount Prospect, was still surrounded by farm fields. Prospect High School and Randhurst Shopping Center, two present-day landmarks in the area, hadn’t been built yet. The Atwoods were at the edge of town.

The Russel farmhouse appears run-down in a photo from the 1940s (and for this reason was included in the book Lost Mount Prospect), so it may have been impacted by the Great Depression’s slowdown. Fortunately, the Atwoods brought the Russel farmhouse back to life around the same time that development resumed in the rest of the neighborhood. By the 1964 photo (page 1) the house appears well-cared for. In this way the Russel farmhouse successfully transitioned to its role as one of many homes in a suburban neighborhood, a feat not guaranteed for most historic farmhouses.

The Russel farmhouse stood facing Kensington Road until it was destroyed by fire in May 2001. A new house with a new design was constructed in its place. However, the story of this house doesn’t end here. Margie Atwood was so charmed with the farmhouse after living there for almost 40 years that she decided to build a dollhouse replica. This project fulfilled her lifelong dream of having her own dollhouse, according to a 1982 Daily Herald article. She renamed the house Atwood Manor.

This dollhouse not only represents a long-time resident’s labor of love, but it also serves as the only remaining physical link to the neighborhood’s agricultural past. Through this dollhouse the Russel family continues to have a place in the Mount Prospect community.

Thank you to Jean Murphy for research assistance!

Note: The spelling of “Russel” appears most frequently with one L.