The History of Isaac Woolf, "Newsboy's Friend," and Owner of Woolf’s Clothing Store, Chicago, Illinois.

Isaac Woolf was born in London, England on January 4, 1852. He came to the U.S. as a child with his parents and they settled in Lafayette, Indiana. His family was poor, and he began his business life as a newsboy.

From that, he went to stripping tobacco, but he found time to attend school and also to enroll at a business college.

He spent several years in Cincinnati learning the clothing business and then came to Chicago where he was employed as a retail salesman by the Barbe Bros. clothing house. In 1880 he embarked on the clothing business on his own account with his brothers at 183 W. Madison Street in Chicago.

In 1896 he opened his establishment at 160 S. State Street. His brothers Benjamin, Edward, and Harry took employment at Woolf's Clothing Store.

Isaac Woolf decided it was time to give something back.  He decided to provide a full Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings for any and all newsboys in Chicago who wanted to attend. 

The tradition began in 1882 when owner Isaac Woolf invited about a hundred newsboys to join him for Thanksgiving dinner. Called “newsies,” the boys were employed as the main distributors of newspapers to the general public. Typically earning about thirty cents a day, they were wretchedly poor, often sleeping on the streets. 

Having been a penniless newsboy himself, Woolf understood their plight and that of others who were impoverished. Paying for the meals out of his own pocket, the kind-hearted retailer expanded his annual dinner to include other poverty-stricken families and destitute elderly couples, as the ranks of the poor swelled during the severe economic depression called the Panic of 1893.

By 1895, Woolf was providing over 10,000 dinners each year to those in need on Thanksgiving evening. Everyone was welcome.

On March 17, 1898, Isaac Woolf opened his grandest store yet at the southwest corner of State and Monroe, Chicago. He billed his store as "The store with a horseshoe over the door and the Palmer House over the way."

In the afternoon of November 28, 1900 it was unseasonably cold; the temperature had already dropped into the teens when the store clerks sprang into action. In what had become a well-orchestrated ritual, they stored away the goods and removed the counters from the main floor. Next, the tables were brought in, covered with marbled oilcloth, and decorated with flowers, fruit, and pyramids of small cakes. After carefully arranging a thousand place settings, reportedly with as much precision as you would find at a fine hotel, the clerks donned white aprons and jackets just before opening the doors at 6 PM, ready to serve old-fashioned turkey dinners to the multitudes who would begin filing in from the frigid weather.

For twenty-four years Woolf, president of Woolf's Clothing Store closed early on the day before Thanksgiving, as it had done for years, in order to get ready to serve a holiday dinner for the poor of Chicago. 

Woolf died after 2 days of sickness on October 21, 1906. Woolf Clothing Company was in trouble without Isaac at the helm. Within two years, Woolf Clothing Company filed for bankruptcy.

Chicago Examiner, December 31, 1908

This impressive monument marking his burial place can be found in Section L of Rosehill Cemetery in Chicago, Illinois.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Legal Alcohol During the Prohibition Years in Illinois and the Country.

Prohibition began on January 16, 1920, when the Eighteenth Amendment went into effect. Most people think that Prohibition meant there was no legal alcohol. There were lots of exceptions. And those exceptions were quickly abused.

For example:
1. Churches and synagogues could buy and serve sacramental wine at Communion or with a certification from a Rabbi. Suddenly, a lot more wine was being purchased by religious organizations. The number of Rabbis also increased dramatically.

2. Hospitals could order alcohol for cleaning purposes. The hospitals that used to order rubbing alcohol by the quart now ordered it by the boxcar. (Note: there was a way to chemically change rubbing alcohol into drinking alcohol.)

3. Patent medicine had always had a large percentage of alcohol. That percentage grew larger. And physicians were prescribing a lot more medicine. Sometimes doctors got a couple dollars kickback for every prescription they wrote for a certain liquor.

Men working in a storage facility surrounded by Old Grand-Dad Whiskey and Old McBrayer Whiskey boxes, bottled by the American Medicinal Spirits Company, Chicago, 1933. The A.M.S Company were producers of "medicinal whiskey" during the era of Prohibition.

Whiskey could be obtained by prescription from medical doctors. The labels clearly warned that it was strictly for medicinal purposes and any other uses were illegal. Still, doctors freely wrote prescriptions, and drug-stores filled them without question, so the number of "patients" increased dramatically.

4. The industrial use of alcohol was still legal. Many industries needed a lot more alcohol than they used to.

5. People could legally make hard cider, beer, or wine at home for home use only, so Pabst and Anheuser Busch sold malt extract and other products for home brewing. California grape growers sold wine grapes, which had never fetched more than $30 to $105 per ton. The price spiked for a short time in 1924 to $375 ($6,115 today) per ton!

5a. Vine-Glo was a grape concentrate brick product (aka wine brick) sold in the United States during Prohibition by Fruit Industries Ltd, from 1929. It was sold as a grape concentrate to make grape juice but the packaging included a specific warning that told people how 'not' to make wine from from the brick. Watch the video below.

Wine Bricks & Prohibition

6. People could still drink any alcohol they had leftover from pre-prohibition days. Knowing that many individuals and private clubs stocked many years' worth of alcohol in anticipation.

7. Alcohol was legal on ships that were outside the 3-mile limit. Needless to say, this technicality was exploited by everyone, including the State-owned shipping line. 

Prohibition was repealed on December 5, 1933.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Robert Pershing Wadlow, World's Tallest Man, Alton, Illinois. (1918-1940)

Robert Pershing Wadlow, born February 22, 1918, to normal parents in Illinois, Robert Wadlow weighed a healthy almost nine pounds. While this may seem like a typical start to life, who could have guessed that the baby would one day be known as the Giant of Illinois.

By the time Robert turned one year old, he was already over three feet tall and weighed 45 pounds.

His growth spurt started in infancy and kept growing throughout his life, thanks to a hyperactive pituitary gland problem. The condition caused his system to produce an abnormal amount of human growth hormone, and Robert would continue to grow until the end of his short life.

In his early teenage years, he was well over seven-feet tall, which, combined with his quiet disposition, earned him the nickname "gentle giant." He was a Boy Scout enjoying photography and learning to play the guitar.

 

 

In high school, Robert was popular and active in many extracurricular activities, even serving as the advertising manager for the yearbook. He was wholly accepted by his peers. However, he lost that acceptance when he attended college and struggled with the stares, and it bothered him so much that he dropped out and returned to his parents quite penniless.

That is when his brief stint with Ringling Bros. began. His 1937 contract was brief and had strict conditions and terms. First, Robert would only attend shows at Madison Square Garden and the Boston Garden. He would display himself only two times a day for three minutes. He refused to allow any exaggeration of his height via media releases or standard height-enhancing sideshow trickery like platform shoes, top hats and trick photography. Furthermore, Robert would only display himself in the center ring and refused any association with the sideshow. Despite all of these restrictions, Robert proved to be incredibly popular.

Robert was so popular that following his time with Ringling Bros., he signed a fabulous contract with The International Shoe Company. The deal included quite a bit of travel and personal appearances, and in just under a year, Robert had made over 800 appearances and traveled over 300,000 miles.

Perhaps most importantly, the company provided Robert with free shoes – a big deal when you are a size 37 and your shoes cost over $100 a pair (over $2,075 today, 2023).

Robert broke the world record as the tallest man in history when he was 19, but he didn't stop growing. He measured in at eight feet four inches tall at the time.

In addition to custom clothing to accommodate his size— he required massive 37AA size shoes— he needed customized furniture as regular tables and chairs were not large enough.

Eventually, his hands would grow too large to participate in his favorite hobbies, but this wasn't the only downside to his larger frame. The physical toll on his health would ultimately bring his life to an abrupt and premature end.

He suffered from weak legs and commonly experienced loss of feeling and numbness in his limbs and extremities. He depended on specially designed leg braces and a cane to move around—although he never used a wheelchair.

During an infection from a blister caused by one of these ill-fitted leg braces, Robert's health took a turn for the worst. He underwent blood transfusions and emergency surgery to control the infection, but ultimately the doctors' efforts weren't enough. His condition continued to decline because of an autoimmune disorder, and he succumbed to the infection. He died in his sleep on July 15, 1940 - he was only 22 years old. When he passed away, he measured 8 feet 11.1 inches and weighed an astounding 439 pounds.

Robert Wadlow's body was viewed by 33,295 within 28 hours after his death. His funeral was attended by 40,000 mourners, and it took twelve pallbearers to hoist his thousand-pound casket. Robert was buried in Oakwood cemetery in Alton, Illinois, on July 19, 1940, and required two standard-size grave plots.

A life-sized statue of Robert Wadlow still stands in his hometown of Alton, Illinois.

The Story of Robert Wadlow.

[runtime - 26:38]

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

The January 16, 1967 McCormick Place Fire, Chicago, Illinois.

McCormick Place, an exhibition center on Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive, opened in November 1960. The center included a theater, several restaurants and banquet rooms, and over 500,000 square feet of exhibition space.

In January of 1967, McCormick Place hosted the National Housewares Manufacturers Association Show, which featured nearly 1,250 booths selling kitchen and household appliances. The event was scheduled to open on Monday, January 16, but, at around 2 AM that morning, McCormick Place janitors noticed smoke rising from a small fire at the back of an exhibition booth.

The janitors waited to raise the alarm and instead attempted to extinguish the fire themselves by beating at it with brooms and pieces of carpeting. The flames quickly spread to the walls of the booth, prompting the janitors to call the Chicago Fire Department. Firefighters responded immediately and, within five minutes of the first alarm, an officer on-scene ordered a second alarm.

By 2:30 AM, five alarms were sounded, bringing 94 apparatus and over 500 fire and rescue personnel to the scene. Fire fighting efforts were severely delayed, however, as four of the seven McCormick Place fire hydrants were shut off.

To attack the flames, firefighters had to draft water from Lake Michigan and rely on fire hydrants a quarter-mile away. The fire was extinguished by 10AM, around the time the N.H.M.A. show was scheduled to begin, but McCormick Place was essentially destroyed.

Initial investigations by the City of Chicago exposed several serious fire safety issues that had been overlooked by McCormick Place management. The exhibition area did not have fire sprinklers or fire walls, and fire proof materials did not protect the steel roof supports. Also, most of the electrical wiring for the booths did not follow electrical safety standards, as the facility was still using temporary electrical systems for the exhibition are as. Most tragically, one McCormick Place security guard was killed in the fire, presumably because he could not find an unlocked emergency exit. Other employees who escaped the blaze confirmed that they had never been told how to find unlocked emergency exits.

In the months following the fire, the Illinois Inspection and Rating Bureau launched a comprehensive investigation into the McCormick Place Fire and published a detailed report on its findings. The investigators did not determine a definitive cause, but it is assumed that the temporary electrical wiring started the fire. The report did, however, shine light on many of the difficulties the firefighters faced, noting how “firefighting was seriously hampered because of lack of adequate water, intense heat, rapid fire spread, early roof collapse and unstable exterior panel walls.” The report helped to bring about numerous changes to the Chicago Municipal Code, as ordinances on exhibition halls, electrical facilities, emergency exits, fire walls, and smoke and heat vents were soon revised based on the lessons learned from the McCormick Place Fire. 

by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Edited by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Kiddieville (Amusement Park), Niles, Illinois. (c.1936-c.1966)

Amusement Park Name History: 
Kiddieville (Amusement Park), Niles, Illinois (c.1950 – c.1966)
East Maine Miniature Rides, Niles, Illinois (c.1939 – c.1949)
East Maine Miniature Train, Niles, Illinois (c.1936 – c.1939)

Long ago, the property at the very north end of what is now the Golf Mill Shopping Center in Niles, Illinois (Incorporated 1899), was land owned by farmers John and Anna Schwinge (pronounced 'swing'). He owned 80 acres bounded by today's Greenwood Avenue on the west, Golf Road on the north, the Bruhn farm on the south (approximately where Emerson Street is now), and crossed over Milwaukee Avenue.

Sometime around 1935, Anna Schwinge was approached by a carpenter from the northwest side of Chicago named Herbert Fritz (a relative of Art Fritz, the founder of Kiddieland in Melrose Park, Illinois in 1929). Herbert Fritz purchased a miniature train in Chicago. Unfortunately, he didn’t have room for it in the city, so Herbert offered to purchase 10 acres from the Schwinge's, but settled for a lease. 

On the northeast corner of Schwinge's property was the perfect location for a miniature train. Milwaukee Avenue was the only paved road in 1936. By the following summer, Schwinge's “East Maine Miniature Train” sold rides for 3¢ to the area families and travelers from the city.

There was a story about Herbert Fritz attending the Bruhn-Pries wedding in the late 30s and took the entire wedding party on a midnight train ride. The train track was a huge oval running north and south along the east side of Milwaukee Avenue up to Golf Road at the north end of the property.

Over the next few years, Herbert Fritz and his wife, Laura, bought and built new rides, including pony rides. Three years later, they changed the park's name from “East Maine Miniature Train” to “East Maine Miniature Rides.” Their son, Herbert "Herby" Fritz Jr., joined the armed forces in 1942, and after his tour of duty ended in 1946, he joined his family's amusement business.

The business began to flourish as soldiers returned home from WWII and started families. Schwinge added a merry-go-round, a boat ride, a Ferris wheel, a small car ride, a tilt-a-whirl ride, airplane ride, fire truck ride, rocket ride, and finally added the miniature roller coaster.

The Schwinge's changed the name of their park to “Kiddieville.”

Many of the locals, kids, and adults, were employed at Kiddieville. The miniature railroad was expanded with more train cars and a longer track, which then encompassed the entire ten-acre park perimeter.

There were plenty of jobs to be had, from selling tickets, walking the ponies, operating a ride, or working in the concession stand. Unfortunately, some rides were rickety and unsafe, and the park was sued a few times by riders claiming injuries.

50 Rides $43.50 Today (or 87¢ per ride).

The park was sold in 1966. It became Finks Links” a miniature golf course, and the location of the “Children’s Bargain Town, U.S.A.” toy store. In 1971, Toys "R" Us merged with the chain and continued using the "Children's Bargain Town" as their slogan until the early 1980s. Today, the location is a Patel Brothers grocery store.

VISIT OUR KIDDIEVILLE SOUVENIR SHOP

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.