Lois Kransz

Transcript of Lois Kransz
Interviewee: Lois Kransz
Interviewer: Gloria Evenson
Date: Feb. 19, 1989
Place: Chicago, IL
Transcribers: Roxanne Haveman and Dorothy Nygren
Length: 1:17:08

Copyright © 2015 Edgewater Historical Society

GE: Today is February 19th, 1989. I am Gloria Evenson and am interviewimg Lois Kransz for the archives of the Edgewater Historical Society. Lois, will you please give us your full name?

LK: Lois Mary Kransz.

GE: Thank you. (Pause). I will begin with a series of just the basic questions about your family history. What was the full name of the first ancestor of yours to come to America?

LK: Nicholas Kransz. I don’t have a middle initial off-hand. He came from Diekirch, Luxembourg. This would be about 1843-1844.

GE: Do you know what year he was born in?

LK: I think 1809, but I am not sure about that.

GE: And what did he do in Luxembourg before he came here?

LK: He was a weaver. The family did linen weaving and farming. Everybody farmed I guess.

GE: Do you know why he came to this country…financial reasons or adventure?

LK: Probably financial reasons. Probably he wanted to get away from the wars. Probably didn’t want to serve in the army and Luxemburg of course was an area being run over constantly whenever anybody had a fight..Germany France, Belgium….they all went through Luxembourg. I think a lot of the Luxembourgers wanted out.

GE: I don’t blame them. Who came with him to America?

(00:01:50)

LK: He had a brother and a cousin. I don’t have their names exactly. I don’t recall them. But they came to the Chicago area and worked for a man by the name of Reiss, I think that was R-I-E-S-S, I’m not sure about that, who had a farm north of the city. After several years they were paid off in land. Apparently they worked for Reis sand received no salary. But the Reiss had large land holdings. He paid them off after seven years in land that is now measured by Edgewater Ave. on the south, Clark St. which was then known as Green Bay Road on the west, what is now Glenwood on the east and Devon Ave. on the north.

GE: So the land was originally owned by Mr. Reiss?

LK: Yes, and he gave it to the three fellows who worked for him for several years. They continued farming. They built a house on what is now the corner of Ridge and Clark St. that is the northeast corner where the Donald Duck sandwich shop is now. It was a typical little frame farm house. I m sure I know there are pictures of it. The Lakeview North Historical Society has some. I don’t know who…. (Gloria shows a picture.) That’s it. That’s it. Hmn-hmn. It stood there until about 1936 I think. It was torn down at that time.

(00:04.20)

GE: Was the property sold when it was torn down?

LK: No. The property was still owned by the Kransz family, the descendants, at that time. I don’t think it was finally sold until the end of the 1940s. That corner, because the homestead was on it, was put in the names of all the children – all of Nicholas Kransz’ children and they never got a long. Of course with joint tenancy everybody would have to sell and someone always said, “No. I’m not going to sell. It just sat there and it was used and abused for some years. It’s too bad that that happened but that was one of the things that happen in families…

GE: …when there are a lot of children.

(5:23)

LK: Eventually after the three fellows built the farm house, they didn’t like “baching it” [bachelors]. They decided they needed someone to take care of them, someone to cook and clean. They thought the simplest thing was that somebody should get married. Of course they were pretty much confirmed bachelors and they thought “Who are we going to marry?” Well, there was a family that lived west and a little north. Their name was Faber. There was a girl named Margareth there. She was a nice girl and apparently Nicholas Kransz was appointed to get married, or either he… the story in the family was that the three fellows drew straws. Nick got the short straw so he was to get married.

GE: Oh dear.

LK: And he did. They found out eventually after he got married it didn’t work out so well with the other two and they moved on west. By that time apparently, it was late 1840s into the 1850s. The one brother ended up in Australia where he died and the cousin sort of disappeared somewhere into the Black Hills Gold Rush.

GE: So they didn’t really keep in touch.

LK: They didn’t really keep in touch.

(00:07:08)

GE: How did Nicholas go about courting the wife he was going to marry?

LK: I don’t know. I don’t know much about that. I don’t think there were too many fellows around and probably she was fairly happy to get the offer.

GE: What was her name again?

LK: Margareth Faber.

GE: How do you spell that/

LK: Faber is F-A-B-E-R. Margareth is M-A-R-G-A-R-E-T-H, I believe. The Fabers were eventually related to the Bierans who are the undertakers up on Clark Street. They’re still at Clark and Hood, I believe. They are related there. Her family married into the Bierans. So they were shirt tail cousins, as they say, in marriage.

GE: How many children did they have?

(00:08:10)

LK: Nicholas and Margareth had, I think there were six. There was another Nicholas and Peter, who was my grandfather, Henry, Mary and Anna and I believe there was another girl who drowned in a creek that used to run along where the railroad is now, the embankment, around Ravenswood Avenue. There used to be a creek in there and apparently the little child had set out to call father into the fields where he was working and she fell in the creek and drowned. There were at least five, and I think there were six children.

Mary Kransz married into the Weber family, the National Brick Company. They were in the brick building business. Anna married into the Schrup family in Dubuque. They were in the insurance business, fire insurance eventually.

GE: Do you have any idea how to spell Shrup?

LK: S-C-H-R-U-P. The others lived in the neighborhood. My grandfather of course lived on Ridge Ave. Nicholas Kransz – the last house they had is on Greenview and Granville, the northwest corner, a very beautiful house. It is beautifully maintained. I don’t know who owns it but it is an exquisite thing. They also lived in a house on Hood Avenue at one time and a small house over on Clark Street very early when he was first married.

(00:10:30)

GE: So he didn’t always live in the Seven Mile House?

LK: No, no. It became too small for them. It wasn’t a fancy enough place so they rented it. It was income property. There were two people who did farm a little bit in the area after the children of the first Nicholas Kransz grew up and moved away. Not far, but they did not live in the old farm house.

(00:11:13)

GE: The old Nicholas Kransz lived there until he died?

LK: Until he died. Yes.

GE: What year did he die?
LK: I’m not sure but I think it was the same year that Queen Victoria died, which was in the 1890s I think. I’d have to look up the date there. They said he just slept away with reading the newspaper….the news that Queen Victoria had died. His wife Margareth lived until about 1920, 1921. She was ninety-three, ninety-four when she died.

GE: Did she live in the Seven Mile House? Did she live with her children?

LK: She lived with her children. She was sort of farmed out between one or the other one. She lived most of the time with Peter, with my grandfather across the street from the Seven Mile House. Well, she got to be a crotchety old lady who controlled things. She was apparently fairly sharp into her old age. I think somewhat sharper than the other ones. My mother knew her quite well. She was living there when my mother and my dad were married. My mother said she was a nice sweet little old lady who had her peculiarities.

GE: I guess everyone does.

LK: Everyone does when you get to be ninety-some years old. You’re entitled to it.

(00:13:00)

GE: I would think so. So Seven Mile House was eventually converted to an inn or a tavern?

LK: Well, it was sort of used as a wayside stopping place for funerals that went up to Calvary Cemetery. I think that was the main thing. It was never really operated a hotel or an inn as we think of it today. There was a little saloon and they had a little bar in there. They served a little beer, maybe some food. I don’t know. It was for the people who traveled all the way up to Calvary. I mean it was a long way out. I mean that is Evanston now…a long way from the center of population south in downtown Chicago.

GE: So it wasn’t intended as ….

LK: It wasn’t intended as…

GE: It was more like a hospitality…

(00:14:00)

LK: It was more like a hospitality… They picked up a couple of extra bucks. I think it was sort of a meeting place. Nick Kransz was a justice of the peace. So he was in local politics. I don’t know too much about it. He did have his finger in the pie there. It was mostly…well he had land and he was going to redevelop that land because early in the game they sold off that part north of Granville. I don’t know when, but that was not held by the family at all, from what I remember. They were not concerned with the development of that part of the land. I understand there has been a peat bog in that area. It wasn’t very valuable. It was burning for most of the time. They had a hard time getting the fire out.

(00:15:05)

GE: What did Nicholas Kransz do all together for a living? I have an article that he was in various things: farming and insurance….

LK: Farming and insurance. Yes. They farmed. It was truck farming. In the family we always heard the best celery was farmed in the fields where Senn High School is now. It’s the sort of thing that the Luxembourgers have done apparently always and always did do. They were in truck farming and vegetable farming. Then he had the land and he got his children married into these families; one was a brick company and the other one an insurance company. Okay. You’ve got brick – they were into brick building – and the insurance - they were going to sell fire insurance on the houses. Nick had the land. So the families together developed the land. The city was expanding. It was time to get the value off the land that they had.

GE: So it all worked out that way.

LK: It all worked out that way. It was what you would expect would happen now. You’ve got the land out in the suburbs on the edge of the city and the city is coming out in the suburbs and developing and you try to get in on it and develop that land.

(00:16:28)

GE: What were some of the civic activities and involvements that Nicholas Kransz had? I hear that he sort of had his finger in anything that was going on. He had an encounter?

LK: I think that he did. I don’t know that I could prove anything. He was into local politics of course and there was always the legend and I’m sure you found it too. I think it was the second campaign that Lincoln participated in after the first term that he served as President. He served as term as President during the Civil Way and he traveled to this area and stopped. They had political rallies, pressed the flesh as it were, at the Seven Mile House. That seems logical. It could have happened. I don’t know that it is exactly the way my grandfather remembered it who was a little kid at the time. It seemed logical.

GE: What kind of political rally was this and who would have attended?

LK: I’m sure just the local people, just like anything else going on now. So you send out the word that the candidate is going to be visiting or passing through. They make a stop. Things don’t change that much, just on the scale. Instead of going to the “L” station and shaking hands, they went to a little gathering place where their local justice of the peace lived. I’m sure that’s what it was. I don’t think it was anything highly organized. No, I’m sure it wasn’t.

GE: Was Nicholas Kransz justice of the peace at that time?

LK: I think so. I believe it was an elected office at that time.

GE: Would you know of any other interesting guests that might have passed by Seven Mile [House.] Would you heard of any?
LK: I don’t know. I think this was pretty much a back water…. After all, living that far out of the city…. It was the main road up to Milwaukee. Lots of people might have passed by. There weren’t any other family stories.

GE: Was Clark Street then called Green ….

LK: Well, Clark Street was Green Bay Road, the main road up north.

GE: So it was the existing road from downtown?

LK: Yes. If you look at a map it sort of wanders around. It doesn’t go straight. It wasn’t surveyed and laid out that straight. I think it was just one of those trails that had been there for years. It would follow the ridge, the beach at the edge of the lake. It was drier then. You’d get all muddy. So you’d walk on the high point and run your wagon up there – probably sandy. It still is sandy, probably with mud dumped in.

GE: Do you know if Ridge Avenue was in existence at that time?

LK: As a diagonal coming from….

GE: Coming from Peterson into Ridge?

LK: I rather doubt that. I think that was one that is laid out later. There were probably surveys made. I think probably other surveys. I couldn’t prove that. There were probably survey maps on that sort of thing. I don’t know when that would be. The railroads of course were put in and they would not be elevated as they are now. But I’m not sure when the Northwestern was built, probably 1850… before the fire certainly. When did the street cars start to run? I don’t know. That must have been probably after the 1850s. I know there were horse cars and beta (??) cars. Gradually they put in the rest of the streets in and public transportation sometime.

GE: Do you know if that was more of less when Mr. Cochran started sub-dividing the area?

LK: I think that it must have come gradually as the city expanded. It just moved slowly. I don’t know when all the building was done. There are apartment buildings on Granville; the south side of Granville between Greenview and Clark Street which I think were built around 1913. So that was considerably later of course. What we always called the sub-division – Hood Avenue, Glenlake and Norwood. Obviously when you walk down…those houses are older than the other ones. First Hood Avenue was developed; then Glenlake and then Norwood. Elmdale and Thorndale came later. Obviously. You just look at the buildings and you can see it.

GE: I think I’ll ask you some questions about your later family. Since the area was not too well populated when the Kransz’ first moved here, what did they do for schooling for their children? Did they have a church they attended?

LK: Yes, well the first Roman Catholic Church, I think, in the area was Saint Henry’s which stood on what is now Devon and Ridge Avenues. There is of course the brick church there at Saint Henry’s cemetery. The church that preceded that one was an old frame church that my father remembered going. The school that my father attended was across the street on the north side of Devon Avenue – St. Henry’s School. That was torn down, say, in the last twenty years – twenty- five, maybe twenty years.

GE: So they were Catholic families.

LK: Yes. They were Roman Catholics. Practically all Luxembourgers were all Roman Catholics. Interestingly enough my father graduated from eighth grade at St. Henry’s and could not enter high school. He was sent back to the Rosehill School to finish seventh and eighth grade over again because the standards were low compared to the public school at that time. He went to Rosehill School which was located on the west side of Clark Street about opposite Glenlake. He graduated from Rosehill and then went to Lake View High School which was the closest public high school and that was down at Irving Park and Ashland. He walked or took the street car down there. He graduated a little late you see. He was probably about twenty-one when he graduated because he had to repeat two years. He then went into a business school and went into business with his father – the insurance business.

GE: So the school. Did all the Kransz’ go to it then?’

LK: I don’t know. Let’s see. Well my father’s sister, my aunt Elsie went to St. Henry’s. I think she managed to get to about eighth grade. She did not go to high school. It wasn’t done. Women when they grew up didn’t need education. The other ones that lived in the area: Nicholas, Junior, my grandfather’s brother, had two children – Lida and Margareth, two girls. Lida never married. Margareth did. Her name was Beecher, married Marty Beecher. They had a couple of kids. There was a set of twins who are a little older than me. I’ve lost track of them. She had a couple of kids.

Then Henry Kransz had several children. They moved. Henry built on Sheridan Road. I think the house is still there, one of the last ones….maybe it’s torn down. I don’t recall, over there on Sheridan Road and Lunt. It was on the lake side and of course as the lake advanced there was less and less land and more and more problems. They still have [problems]. His family eventually moved. His children moved into the northwest suburbs. I think you can still find his son Harry in the suburban phone book. He has a girl named Ruth and….I can’t remember. They were very very close. The Kranszes always competed with each other and after the business, the sub-dividing and the development of the land was over, each one was so mad at the other one they didn’t want to have anything to do with each other. They had as little to do as possible with each other. Annie lived in Dubuque and Mary Weber lived down on Kenmore at the Sovereign Hotel. She had a daughter named Chrisdida(?). They automobile is spelled the same way and they call it Crysdida. I heard she died some years ago. The other Webers, Vernon, Vida and Clarence, my father’s generation, I think are all gone. I don’t have any contact with them.

LK: Peter Kransz was your grandfather and your father’s name was…?

GE: Aloid (??) Now my father Peter Kransz married Katerina Becker. The Beckers farmed along Peterson Avenue opposite Rosehill Cemetery. My grandfather’s mother was born, I think, in a house that is now California and Peterson. Eventually the family moved to a new farmhouse on Peterson and Wolcott opposite the florist that burned down.

GE: Plasine(??)?

LK: Yes. The house is still there. The oldest part of it must be 125 years old at least.

GE: I think I’ve seen it. It’s a small frame building?

LK: Well it’s got two stories with an asphalt fake-brick siding on it now. That house is really quite old. It should be photographed and be in one of the files. It’s got to be one of the oldest houses still standing in the area. It’s got to be.

——30 minute mark———–

GE: I’ve seen it. We might want to get someone out there with a camera.

GE: You might want to get someone out here with a camera.

LK: Yeah, I don’t, I thought that when it was sold, when the Becker-Harrity family sold it. Now that must be about twenty years ago or so. I thought they sold it to Plazine but I am not sure. I think I could find Veronica, the daughter that lived in one of those co-op buildings off of Granville. The family bought a property in one of the high-rises on Sheridan Road.

GE: The Becker Family?

LK: The Becker? Yeah. The Harrity, the Becker family, and there were two children home yet and Dick left her, my father’s cousin, Lizzie. Lizzie died and they lived up on the twenty-third floor of one of these buildings. It was a beautiful apartment. I was there; I visited, I went home and I sat in the basement. After Dick died, his two children sold that apartment so fast it was really funny. And they got down into a low-rise building. They weren’t high-rise people.

[00:17:13]

GE: They didn’t want to get…?

LK: It had floor-to-ceiling windows and a balcony outside of them. It was very distressing [short laugh]. I didn’t like it at all either. And Veronica said she couldn’t take it. She said it was terrible. Her father thought it was marvelous. He could stand on the ledge and look out and she was… hanging on to the inside walls [giggles].

GE: I imagine high-rises weren’t that common.

LK: They weren’t that common. That was an early one along there and floor-to-ceiling windows and that was what threw her and it thrilled me too. I can accept a windowsill say of about three feet or something like that goes all the way down to the bottom and even if there’s that little balcony out there. I got terribly unhappy.

GE: People were used to single-family [homes] in those days.

LK: Yeah, they were – she was used to an old farmhouse. She lived on the main floor. [Laughs] She wasn’t used to going up that high. Oh well, that’s one of those things, y’know?

GE: Were you born in Edgewater?

LK: Ah, I was born here. We lived on 5888 Ridge Avenue.

GE: And were you born at home or in a hospital?

LK: No, I was born at Evanston, ah, Saint Francis in Evanston. And, um, all that’s, my brother was born there too, but he, he was a little older than I, whose been gone some ten years now, ah, but, at the time, eh, he was born in 1919. He was, he would always say that as a little kid that he lived on Ridge Avenue by the cow. Now, the people who rented the seven-mile house, the Walters, it was the Walters at that time, did keep a cow…

[00:19:12]

GE: Mhm.

LK: …so it was still fairly rural around here comparatively speaking.

GE: Did you grow up in Edgewater then?

LK: I grew up in Edgewater.

GE: In the house on Ridge, you’re saying?

LK: In the house on Ridge Avenue.

GE: Where did you and your brother go to grammar school?

LK: I went to Hayt School and my brother went, started out at Saint Gertrude’s. And at that time, well, he was I think about fifth grade when they moved him over to Hayt because there was like sixty kids in a class.

GE: Mhm.

LK: And there were only about forty-five kids in classes at Hayt School.

GE: Were you the first generation not to be educated at Henry’s?

LK: At Henry’s? Ah, yes I think so. Of course they changed the boundary lines of the various churches. There were…Saint Ita’s in the area and there was Saint Gregory’s in the area and Saint Gertrude’s, and we lived on Ridge. We were right at the border line. We could have gone anywhere. It was the same for the public school. The neighbors went to Peirce [School]. I went to Hayt. We were right on the border line so it was sort of optional as to where you went. I don’t know why I went to Hayt School. I was taken over there. I went to school at Hayt.

GE: So there was more of a variety of churches and schools in the area by that time?

LK: Yeah, well, yes. They are all still here. I mean the schools. I think they still have the grammar schools, all of these. Both the Roman Catholic churches and the other schools are still are still around. Peirce is still in existence. Hayt School is still in existence. I was going to say, we were on the border line so it was sort of optional.

[00:21:15]

GE: What are some of your earliest memories of growing up in Edgewater? Things that stand out to you?

LK: Well… we, of course, had a large… my grandparent’s home and the house that my father built was in the same yard on Ridge Avenue. We were pretty… insulated [laughs]. We knew most of the neighbors, of course. Um, I don’t know, it, um, it was just a really quiet residential area. There was shopping up on the corner. Um, in the median area there were stores. There was all this - Winsberg’s was on Granville and Friedman’s up on Clark Street. The department stores, it was quiet I would say, almost at that time, like a semi-suburban area. My father had a car. Now [laughs] everybody had cars. In 1925 everybody had cars when I was born. But my father never truly believed in the internal combustion engine. He always drove a steam car.

GE: Oh.

LK: He had one from, ah, something like 1903 on and he didn’t believe in gasoline cars. He was not used to them. They didn’t run the way he though they should run. They didn’t control them they way he was used to controlling a car. So, that we were then the people in the neighborhood that had the old fashioned wacky steam car that everyone really looked at and wondered if it was going to blow up. But it was only used in the summertime; it was only used for pleasure. It was never practical transportation because it took an hour and a half to get the darn thing steamed up if you wanted to go anywhere! It wasn’t the matter of just turning the thing on. You had to light the pilot; you had to cook the water and things like that, so it was a big deal. So of the local kids around, they all wanted to ride in the steam car. They would, we’d take a lot of our friends around on little outings, but we never went very far. A lot of people were more sophisticated than my family. My grandfather we sophisticated. He went to Europe every year. He went to California in the summertime, or in the wintertime when he’d get oranges. He got away from the snow and the cold, but his wife, my grandmother, she didn’t want to travel. She liked to stay at home. My father didn’t want to travel. He was never farther away from home then Dubuque, Iowa.

[00:24:17]

GE: Mhmm.

LK: Once I remember going up to Kenosha. My goodness, what a big effort that was! You’d think we were going to Timbuktu. [Unintelligible] We were very close and insulated. We would stay by ourselves. My mother’s family lived further south along Ashland and School Street in the Lincoln-Belmont area and we had social activities with her side of the family and that was it. I mean, we didn’t travel much. We did go the World’s Fair though in 1933-1934. We lived practically at the fair. That was a highlight of my childhood.

[00:25:30]

GE: Did you see where was that fair was held?

LK: Well, that was on the lakefront from about 12th Street, Roosevelt Road to about 31st Street. From there, well, the Field Museum and the planetarium and the aquarium are extended to the south, down through what is now Meigs Field and the park on the lakefront there. That was a great fair. The only fair that ever made money I guess [laugh]. It was quite the experience. My grandfather at that time was serving as council general for Luxembourg in the Chicago area.

[00:26:16]

GE: Oh.

LK: …And he had charge of a little booth that was telling the world about the produce of Luxembourg. Like leather gloves and china, and what else… a few other little things. They made a coal, iron business. And consequently he was invited to all of the social functions of the fair for those two years. Since my grandmother did not like to go to things like that my mother went. So, they had a good time. They went to all the social events, all the parties. They had a good time.

GE: I imagine they met a lot of people…

LK: A lot of people.

GE: …and saw a lot of interesting things.

LK: Then of course they’d wonder. My mother was always introduced as Mrs. Kransz and they’d look at my grandfather. My mother was considered younger and well, he’d go, “Yes, that’s Mrs. Kransz. That’s my daughter-in-law.” [Small laugh].

GE: How did he come to be council…?

LK: I really don’t know. He went to Luxembourg and visited. I guess he somehow or another, he was active the Luxembourger [unintelligible], that was like a lodge, like the Knights of Columbus, through the church and I think he just somehow go in, was appointed by the Luxembourg government as the local commercial representative. He took care of the visas and passports and things like that. He was sort of the little commercial representative for the government. These Luxembourgers were all in these lodges, and they all knew each other. This neighborhood did at that time have a lot of Luxembourg settlers, people from Luxembourg. Up on Ridge Avenue, if you look at probably old maps and old address, you’d find a lot of dream houses that were built up along there. A lot of people grew tomatoes and carnations and flowers. When you go to Luxembourg, even today there are greenhouses. All of the, the people have always done greenhouse work. Apparently, they came over here and build more greenhouses.

[00:28:52]

GE: So that’s sort of an ethnic….

LK: …That is an ethnic trait, yes. It seems to be a cultural, ethnic trait, the greenhouse business.

GE: So things like agriculture…

LK: Agriculture and as they say, truck farming and vegetable farming. Not big or anything like that. It was all small stuff.

GE: Did the old Nicholas Kransz have his own truck that he sold stuff in?

LK: Well, yeah, he used to go down and sell vegetables at the South Water Street that was located where Wacker Drive is now. It was on the south side of the river.

GE: So that would be in downtown Chicago?

LK: That would be downtown Chicago, yeah. He went down there to sell the produce. The markets are still there. They’re moved a little further west now. What do they call it? Where the- the main vegetable markets are? And the Budlong people? Of course they grew their cucumbers for the west, a little bit south in the North Park area now. And, so, they’d go down and sell their pickles.

GE: Were their certain market days when people would bring…?

LK: I’d rather think so; I’d rather think so. I don’t really know, but that is before my time.

[00:30:20]

GE: When old Mr. Kransz finally died who lived in the house after him?

LK: Well, I think Margareth stayed there for a while and the next ones that I know are a family by the name of Welter. They lived in the neighborhood and they were of Luxembourger background.

GE: Where they people who rented the house?

LK: They rented and somewhere around in the early thirties there was a florist, a Mrs. Canter rented the area, the corner. She built a little florist shop and lived in the house. But finally we decided the house was just too run down and it hurt to see it so dilapidated and it was eventually torn down. I’ve got the walnut railing stairway link in my house

GE: That must be such an interesting piece.

LK: It’s a section of railing, but its solid walnut.

GE: Do you have it as part of your house or….

LK: I have, no, no. I’ve got it on the wall and I use it every time I go downstairs, I hang on to it. And there was an art chest, a cedar chest my father made. There was a bar out of cherry wood was in that house. So I have that, buts it’s made into a cedar chest.

GE: Mhmm. [Pause] So after the house was demolished, the Kransz family still owned the property for a while.

[00:32:01]

LK: For a long time and eventually I think it was sold. Well, there was a Phillips 66 [gas] station that went in there. Ah, now Mr. Vinci, now Henry Vinci, V-I-N-C-I, and his brothers were in the vegetable market. They had a market. There was one on the sharp corner of Ridge and, um, Elmdale – Peterson and Elmdale. And then there was also a market across the street on the south side of Ridge Avenue. There were three Vinci boys; they were all in the vegetable, grocery store business. And Henry eventually bought the section, of the back on the northeast corner of Ridge and Clark Street and Thorndale. He had his market there, the Vinci store – a good-sized grocery store and fruit market with fresh vegetables. He would have farmers come in and sell his vegetables.

GE: So he first rented from the Kransz’s?

LK: First he rented and then he finally brought. They finally agreed to sell him the property.

GE: So that’s where the original house was?

LK: Yes. And Vinci was in the forming of the certified co-operative grocery stores, the certified, co-op. I think that is was originally a co-operative market for grocery stores and he was in the organization of that.

GE: Do you know about what year he bought the property from the Kransz family?

LK: [Sigh] In the early forties. It might have been right after the war. They were dickering around the Second World War. They were dickering about it in that period. I think it was finally settled after that. Before my father died in ‘57. My grandfather died in what?’44? And I think it was rather after my grandfather died that they finally sold the thing because he didn’t want to sell and I think that was right after his death when he finally settled with Vinci, and all the fuss [laughs] the whole thing was [unintelligible]. They were all gone so those that were left got their money out of it.

[00:35:00]

GE: Do you know what other businesses have occupied that corner since the Vincis?

LK: Since the Vincis there was a hamburger joint. They had used the building that Vinci built, ah, it was never very successful. I can’t think of the name of it, but they tried to pretend it was a garden or something. They lost their shirts whoever used that… whoever put in that store must have lost their shirt. They also had a marvelous fire. They were paving the parking lot around it and that’s been just gravel and the truck that had the tar in it burned.

GE: Oh, dear…

LK: [Loudly] Oh, it was a beautiful fire! I remember calling the fire department. Of course, it is right down the street and I was the second one who called. Apparently someone else got ahead of me in calling. But the whole thing didn’t explode or anything. They controlled it pretty well. Certainly it was a mess for a while.

[00:36:08]

GE: It must have been a scare to the neighborhood too.

LK: Yeah.

GE: …If it was a pleasant, everyday-life type of neighborhood.

LK: Well, yeah, of course it was! You see the other, that land, the park now was just empty lots. That was mostly well during the war that was victory gardens. But that is where the kids would play. At one time they started to build a house, an apartment, but the city stopped it because apparently over many, many years they tried to get that land for a park. Then, of course, eventually did. Then they laid out the baseball diamond so dumb. The kids were always knocking the baseball over the traffic on Ridge Avenue. [Laughs] Those dummies! Well, they finally got that straightened around. I don’t think it’s too bad now. They put up a big fence so the balls don’t come out into Ridge Avenue. But Ridge was always a major street and then when the lane-control signals went in… it was unbelievable, just unbelievable, the traffic on that street. It still is.

GE: It’s confusing today.

LK: It’s bad enough today, but it was even worse at one time. It was just before the Kennedy Expressway was open. Ridge Avenue was just appalling; it was terrible. You couldn’t get across the street. It was just hopeless [small laugh].

GE: Did they have a high degree of accidents there?

LK: Yeah, yeah. There were always accidents and I remember once seeing a Cadillac chase a Volkswagen right on to the sidewalk.

[00:38:08]

GE: Eh.

LK: It was pretty dangerous along there. [Laughs] The things you remember from the neighborhood! Mr. Gout was the janitor in the [clears throat] the apartment building on the corner of Ridge and Ardmore. Sharp corner. And there were trees along Ridge Avenue, Elm trees and leaves. And he used to get out in the morning and he would sweep the leaves into the street. And he would say, “Down to Broadway!” [Laughs] and he would throw all his leaves into the street and cars would of course, swish, and he would take the leaves all the way down to Broadway. [Still laughing] I do not what happened to them down there. But we had [laughs] our peculiarities around here. There was that time that we had, ah, tornado. It wasn’t quite down on the ground, but Maybelline was in the building. It was the Ridgewood Apartments; the building that was on Clark and Ridge, southwest - southeast side. And it was a doozy of a storm, and it blew in on the Clark Street side and out on the Ridge Avenue side and it took all of the little brushes and go in the- the- the, when they are packaging their mascara and it took the little mascara cakes and just threw the stuff all out on Ridge Avenue. [Laughs] everybody has free Maybelline for years. I…

GE: But when did that happen? What year?

LK: Oh, I don’t know. Must have been in the forties, late-forties. Early fifties. I remember that one. Everyone around the neighborhood was picking up things, “Hey, does this belong to you?” [Laughs] The car, the tires from the corner gas station from that time were all the way down to Glenwood and we had all the inserts and the tires. We took up the tires and threw them! Everyone was chasing down their property that had been disseminated around the neighborhood.

GE: How did you come to be a Lutheran if you came from a Catholic family? Was there a change ever?

LK: Oh, that was of those things. I don’t know. We drifted around. My mother wasn’t Roman Catholic. Her family went to the church that was closest to where they lived and consequently they went to the Presbyterian; they went to the Congregational; they went to the Baptist; they went to the Lutheran; they went to the closest church.

[00:41:01]

GE: So whatever was a church….

LK: Yeah, and I somehow or another drifted. I went to North Park College and I went to Augustana College. It seemed the logical thing to do. I sang for a while over at the Presbyterian Church – Granville Avenue Presbyterian Church – and then finally I got fed up with the very small choir and I said dog-gone-it, I want to sing with a decent, medium-sized, church choir.

GE: [Over LK] Did you major in music?

LK: And I came here. No, I sort of minored in music.

GE: Mhmm.

LK: Then I moved over to Emmanuel [Lutheran Church] and it was fun. We did a capella work and it was kinda fun. It was a small chorus, ran around twenty-five to thirty and still does and is reasonably well-balanced and is still kinda fun

GE: Well, have long have you gone to Emmanuel?

LK: Ah, I don’t know. I think it’s about thirty years now. It’s a long time.

GE: What had you majored in college?

[00:42:08]

LK: In history.

GE: And did you use that in your career or was that just more or less…?

LK: No, it sort of went sideways. I ended up working for the Apollo Musical Club. I was in the music business really and the music management of the call society.

GE: So by management…?

LK: I ran the organization. I did the clerical work and I made arrangements for the rehearsals, for the soloists, for the rental halls, for the hiring orchestra, things like that for the Apollo Music Club.

GE: Is that what you’ve done most of your career?

LK: Yes. And then when I had enough I retired and have managed by myself now.

GE: So have you lived in Edgewater most of your life? I know now you live in…?

LK: Well, yeah. I lived in Edgewater until 1964. So it’s been twenty-five years now, but this still seems to be the- the old neighborhood.

GE: I imagine it was so much a part of your past.

LK: Yes, and it’s what’s familiar and I am shocked when I see it now because I think of it as the way it was twenty-five to thirty years ago. Things have changed. Things have gotten worse and things have gotten better! It changes.

GE: So what are your views and feelings on Edgewater?

LK: Well, I hope that that the community, the area, can just not disintegrate. I think its past, its worst, its… the buildings being neglected. I think that – I hope that that’s past. Ah, it should be a nice area. It’s got good transportation. You’re not too far from the city. You’re still close to the lake and [Laughs] it’s still cooler here than it is west from Western Avenue. If buildings are just maintained and not abused. I don’t see why this cannot by a very successful, developed community. And it does, it can, it has always been, I think a rather mixed community. Sure there were a lot of Luxembourgers up to the north and to the west here. There were a lot of Swedes and Scandinavians south. There’s been a very good mix I think in the neighborhood. There were always the businesses. I don’t know if not so many…. Of course there are not as many mom and pop grocery stores they way they used to be. They’re large chains now. They’re all down on Broadway, aren’t they? It’s, I don’t know. There are restaurants; there always were restaurants around.

GE: It’s a good place to be.

LK: It’s a good mixture of…. I think that fact that there are these houses in the area, Norwood and Glenlake and Hood Avenue and that immediate area for those all those two, three, four blocks as far as Broadway is a stabilizing influence. I suppose there were nice apartment buildings. They were all good-sized apartments as I recall. I don’t know how many of them have been cut up. I know a lot of them have been condominiums. Whether that’s good, bad, or different, I don’t know.

GE: But there is a lot in this neighborhood.

[00:46:14]

LK: There is. I think so.

GE: Now before the tape runs out I need to ask. Where was the ….

(Part 2 / Second tape)

GE: This is part two of the interview with Lois Kransz, great-granddaughter of Nicholas Kransz. Now on the last tape, the tape ran out just when you were saying where the early Kransz members were buried.

LK: Oh, well Nicholas, my great-grandfather and his wife – they are buried up in Saint Henry’s Cemetery, up on Devon Avenue and Ridge.

GE: Mhmm.

LK: And the others are in Boniface on Clark and Lawrence.

GE: Alright, so just Nicholas and his wife are…?

LK: Yeah, well, their children are up there and there’s one large…. I haven’t been up there for a long time. There’s one large monument and there was a lot of names on it.

GE: So there was a Kransz family monument?

LK: Yes-

GE: At Saint Henry’s?

LK: Yes, there was one. I think it’s still there. It’s fairly close to the front. And my grandmother’s, my father’s mother’s family, the Beckers, many of them are also buried in that cemetery. They lived in the neighborhood and were members of that parish.

GE: So, Nicholas Kransz and some of his children are at Saint Henry’s?

LK: Some…

GE: Most of succeeding generation are at Saint Boniface?

LK: …are at Saint Boniface, which of course was larger. And then about the time my father was thirteen years old he confirmed my grandfather, Peter P, changed the church membership to our Lady of Lourdes, down on Ashland and Leland because he wanted to be attending an English-speaking church.

GE: Ah-ha, so Saint Henry’s was German?

LK: German or Luxembourg-speaking.

GE: Were you raised in the Catholic Church?

[00:48:36]

LK: Ah, I never went to Catholic school. I did attend Saint Ita’s for a while. But my mother was not particularly… was not Catholic, Roman Catholic. Then we just sort of drifted away. Eventually, I went to North Park College, which is not Roman Catholic.

GE: Mhmm.

LK: And I was a member of Granville Avenue Presbyterian Church. I sang in the choir there because I knew a bunch of the people and the choir director and I sort of drifted there. And finally I drifted over here to Emmanuel because I got sick and tired of never knowing what part I was singing. It was one of those occasions when it had maybe eight people and I sang whatever wasn’t there.

GE: You had to switch around?

LK: Yeah, I had to switch around and I was tired of it and I wanted to sing one part and I knew that the choir here was more balanced, [laughing] so I transferred to Emmanuel.

GE: Now I showed you that picture last week of one of your uncles or great uncles…

LK: Great uncle.

GE: …who was a Father at Saint Gregory’s? So you know very much about him or his involvement with Saint Gregory’s?

LK: Well, I don’t recall… That must have been fairly early. I don’t know what the date was on that because Henry P. Kransz built over on Sheridan Road. And I know in later years they were more involved with… oh, what is it? The church… Loyola up on Devon and Sheridan and that area. What is the name of that Church?

GE: St. Gertrude’s.

LK: No. I don’t, I don’t think they went to Gertrude’s. I’m not sure. They were very close to Gertrude’s. But you see, right where I lived on Ridge Avenue, near Clark Street, from the Roman Parishes point-of-view you were right in the middle. You were close to Saint Gregory’s. We were told that we were to go to Saint Ita’s. My father got mad at the priests at Saint Gertrude’s [laughs] which was right on the border line. So, I found that when my father died, I think we had to go to Saint Gregory’s to get the grave open at Saint Boniface Cemetery, or was it my grandmother? No, my grandmother. And then when my father died they sent us over to Lourdes, because that was closer to the cemetery. The whole thing was just very confusing because there was a lot of red tape. I don’t think that any of it holds true.

GE: So at the time you lived in the middle of a very heavily Catholic area that you…

LK: Yes.

GE: … were pulled between this church or that church?

LK: Yeah, well, there were all kinds of…. The boundaries were all mixed up in this area, I think. I don’t know if they still are or what, but it’s pretty confusing. I think that basically in the old days it was a matter of what language did you want to speak. Did you want to go to church in English or did you want to go to church in German? Even though they used Latin for the whole thing, it still made a difference. There were portions that were in the vernacular and you wanted to select which language you wanted to use. I think it’s true now too. Doesn’t Ita’s have a large Spanish congregation right now? So, that’s still not very different. Maybe they should go back to using Latin, and then everybody could use the same thing [laughs].

GE: Might make it simpler.

LK: [Still laughing] Yeah.

GE: Did you ever see the Seven Mile house?

[00:52:51]

LK: Yes.

GE: You have?

LK: I remember seeing it. Yeah. I was at kid. It was torn down about 1936. ’35 or ’36.

GE: Do you remember what it looked like or how many rooms it had?

LK: I don’t recall. I don’t know if I was ever inside, because, you see at the time I saw it, it was being lived in by other people so I would not go into that house, but it was a very typical little farmhouse.

GE: Was it one or two stories?

LK: Ah, it was two stories. Ah, it looked like the second-story had been added on to. It was one of those houses; you build a rectangle, then you add a porch and another porch. Then you add a wing over here as you needed more space and as it got a little more money. Then you put a second-story. The second-story was up under the attic, I mean, it was still pretty low. I mean, these weren’t ten-foot ceilings or anything like that. I doubt that they were even eight-foot ceilings in that little house.

GE: Was it a white frame?

LK: Well, that depends on what kind of paint you put on it. It was frame. It was more gray as I recall which could have been dirty white. It did have a porch on the little pillars. That was the way they built them then. If you got a [unintelligible] then you got two porches.

GE: Do you remember if it has any kind of yard or garden around it, or if it just plain land-

[00:54:29]

LK: Well, [sighs] as I recall it didn’t have a set yard defined by a fence at that time. Um, when you look at the corner now, you look at this area now, it’s all level. It went downhill at that time because of the ridge, the beach, um, there was a little shack, a shed, a summer kitchen, I guess it was lower down as I recall. Probably there was, y’know a wire fence around. Um, it was not well maintained as I remember it. And as many of the families, they would rather see it torn down then, y’know, dilapidated….

GE: Mhmm-

LK: …the way it was. So, ah, that was what was done. It had served it usefulness and probably had termites in the foundation, y’know. It didn’t have any cement foundation. It was probably sitting on some rocks or so. I don’t know if there was cellar under it or not. Those cellars that don’t have cement foundation, had dirt floors even on the sand hill here and we [laughs]-

GE: I can imagine

LK: [mumbling]

GE: I don’t think I would feel comfortable in a house like that.

LK: No. They smell. They are all musty, damp, and of course lead to mice. Things like that [laughs].

GE: Good old-fashioned…

LK: [Laughs] [unintelligible] I mean, people put up with all the things that we put up with now-

GE: Things are very different now.

LK: Very different.

GE: You have mentioned that a person in your family had moved into a high-rise on Sheridan Road.

LK: Yes.

GE: Who was that?

LK: Ah, this was my father’s cousins. My father’s cousin, Lizzie, Elizabeth Becker. That was the children of my grandmother’s brother. Uncle Mike. Mike Becker’s kids. After Lizzie died, passed away, her husband, Dick Harrity, sold the family home on Wolcott and Peterson. And he and the two youngest – two youngest children, moved into a high-rise on Sheridan Road. The top floor on one of these new buildings, it was a very nice apartment and I visited there. It had floor-to-ceiling windows and a balcony outside and after spending an afternoon at that house, in that apartment I went home and sat in my basement. Ah, Dick Harrity, and Ronny and I think the boy got married shortly after.

GE: So, Dick Harrity was there?

LK: They lived there for quite a while. But after Dick died, Ronny sold the apartment and moved onto one of the streets on Granville into a co-op.

GE: Ronny was the son of Dick?

LK: Ah, Ronny – Veronica….

GE: Oh, Veronica…

[00:58:01]

LK: …was the girl. Ah, I don’t know that she married, but she bought a co-op apartment in now more than a four-story building! [Laughs] and she was rather strong.

GE: I imagine that people felt God expected people to live on the ground since they’ve always done that.

LK: Ah, I don’t know. I’ve been on high-rises and I’ve been in forty floors, but it does not upset me. It did not upset me as much as that one did. Why, I would not want to live in that particular building [laughs].

GE: Do you remember what address that was about?

LK: I don’t remember which one it is. It’s about sixty… its sixty-something, on the lakeside. It’s the one that had twenty-three stories. There’s two of them that are very similar and it’s the taller of the two. It was a beautiful apartment, it was fantastic! It was terrible.

GE: [Laughs] [unintelligible].

LK: Terrible! If they hadn’t had these floor-to-ceiling windows, I don’t think I would have been so bothered by it. It was awesome. I was very unhappy and heights don’t usually bother me [laughs] that much.

GE: It was a new thing then.

LK: I was leaning against the inside walls and I can remember Dick say, “Oh, it has sliding doors to go out on the balcony” and he was saying he was going to put some special locks on these doors so that no one could climb from one balcony to another and break into his apartment. I said, “Dick, if anyone climbs from one balcony to another on the twenty-third floor, they deserve to break into your apartment”. It…. [Unintelligible] No way! [Laughs].

[01:00:08]

GE: What is the… let’s see. Did you ever meet the old Nicholas Kransz or had he passed-

LK: He was dead long before I was born. No, he, ah, long before

GE: Who was the oldest from the Kransz family that you can remember seeing?

LK: Ah, my grandfather. I don’t remember my grandfather’s mother and she died before I was born. Let’s see, when did my grandfather die? That was I was trying to figure out. I think Peter B Kransz died about 1944 or ‘45. Um, I think so. And he was eighty-seven, eighty-eight by then. And it was in January and my grandmother, Catherina died in ‘57. ‘57? No, fifty… that would be my father died in ‘57. She must have died about ’52, ‘53. She was ninety-three at the time. So….

GE: Did you ever really get to know your grandparents or were they really [unintelligible] close to….?

[01:02:04]

LK: No. They lived next door to us. The two houses were in one yard, so that we were with them all the time. Very close with my father’s grandparents. Now and with my mother’s grandparents lived further down near the Lincoln/Belmont area. But I didn’t know my mother’s father. He died before I was born, I believe. Or else I was about a year – less than a year old. Well, I knew my mother’s mother. I don’t remember when she died; it must have been in the early forties. ’40, ’41 – it might have been something like that. She was about seventy-five then.

GE: Do you remember anything what your father’s parents were like? Sort of his personality?

LK: My grandfather, my father’s father, was rather outgoing, opinionated, but the man liked to travel, and well, he liked to go to lodge meetings. Do all kind of things like that. He talked a lot. He traveled and he liked to tell stories and my grandmother did not like to go out of the house. My grandmother did not like to travel. She could not think of anything more horrible than riding on a train, and telling stories was kotch! [Laughs] so she didn’t quite approve of that….

GE: Apparently opposites?

LK: Grandpa liked to go the baseball games every once and a while and he liked to listen to the radio on the baseball, Cubs, on the radio. And he loved to listen to the Lone Ranger on the radio on the evening. Radio was very big for him. It’s too bad he never saw a television. He would have been in seventh-heaven! But he did like to travel and as long as he could he did. He would spend a couple of months in California in the winter and he went to Europe several times. And my grandmother stayed home, took care of the dog. [Laughs] She didn’t like to travel.

[01:04:47]

GE: They say opposites attract just like…

LK: Completely opposite.

GE: Do you remember any stories your grandfather told that he would tell around when you were a child?

LK: Well, I don’t know. I can’t really recall. I know he used to tell how he had a chicken he made chicken soup out of every Sunday. It was such a great chicken he just sort of held it up and with the sun shining through it into the pot and [unintelligible] chicken soup. Ah, he had a lot of funny stories.

GE: So he had sort of a good sense of humor?

LK: He had a sense of humor, yeah. He would play too with a lot with the kids…with his grandchildren, yeah. I know we’d sit on the back porch in summer evenings and he was, of course, in his seventies and eighties and he had a lot of patience and he would untie string and untie knots out of string and would wind it up very carefully. He saved string. He got stingy, as they said, in his old age. No one else that I ever knew of pulled this one. He used to get envelopes in advertising circulars that were sent open. Where you just put the little flap and they mail it for a penny and a half. A cent and a half years ago! Well my grandfather would get all this junk mail and he would see all these beautiful envelopes. So he got a pan of water, a dish pan, and he would put the envelope in there and soak it apart and then hang it up, carefully dry it, fold it inside out with the address on the inside, paste it together again and he would have a brand new envelope. Not that he every used it, but it gave him something to do when he was retired and didn’t have anything to do.

GE: Didn’t have bingo parlors in those days.

[01:06:53]

LK: Didn’t have bingo parlors. He wasn’t much of a bingo player and if the Cubs were playing and they weren’t telling all about the baseball game on the radio, then he could play with his envelopes. I know my brother fixed up a radio. Built a radio for him that wouldn’t distort as you turned up the volume because my grandfather was pretty hard of hearing. He would sit in front of the radio with his ear, his hand cupped behind his ear and it would be blasting away and Pat Flanagan would be telling about the Cubs and he would be listening. And we could hear it across the yard, inside our house with the windows shut, but he could just about hear [laughs] the radio. And my grandmother, well she was a little deaf too, it was a good thing because it would have driven her nuts. But, ah, those were all the foibles and funny things that you have to tolerate when you get old.

GE: Everyone has their own personality.

[01:08:04]

LK: Yeah. When the time my father put in a new thermostat to control the heat and he didn’t want them jiggling it around, wanted it to set down to find out exactly where they should set it so it would control the heat in the house they way liked it and my grandfather got balled out for touching the controls on the thermostat. He knew if he got that thermostat to control the cold, the bi-metal would open and turn the heat on. He knew he wasn’t supposed to touch it. So he got a bottle of milk out of the refrigerator and held it up against [laughs] the thermostat and got us cold so the heat turned on.

GE: Was that a practical joke or did he just want to change the temperature?

LK: No, he knew he was going to get balled out if he diddled with it and he figured that he wasn’t actually touching the controls, but he was getting some cold air around the thermostat, so the bi-metal would open up so the furnace would turn on. He knew how it worked.

GE: He wanted to get what he wanted?

LK: But he wanted… he was cold and he was told not to turn the thermostat up. Oh, well.

GE: It sounds like the Kransz pretty much always knew how to….

LK: Yeah, they knew how to- they always balled each other out quite a bit, I mean. He was trying to get around, get out of being scolded. That happens.

GE: So your family is pretty much scattered then? Do they ever have a family reunion or do they just kind of live their separate lives?

LK: No, they have all pretty much separated. I don’t see much and I don’t know much about the rest of the relatives on my father’s side. They never were close. They were always rather in competition. I think I said that before.

GE: Yes, you did.

[01:10:04]

LK: And they just didn’t have too much to do with each other. And certainly, it’s moved away with so many generations, we just don’t have much. Haven’t had much to do with each other.

GE: Ah, well I think you had quite a bit of information-

LK: Yeah, as I said, I don’t know whose living and who isn’t [laugh]. There is Henry P. Kransz in one of the suburban, north suburban telephone directories. Now again Henry P would be a great-grandson, my generation. I don’t know the fellow at all, but I know the name is listed in the, one of the northwest- or north suburbs. You can look in the phone book and I think you can find it. So that would be a relative, would be a second cousin.

GE: And you said there were two women who still live in the Chicago area?

LK: Ah, there is still my cousin, Ginger Pierre who lives in Morton Grove. Ah, there’s my Aunt Elsie. My father’s sister’s daughter and I’m sure there are some others. Ah, there must be some of Christina Weber’s children. I don’t….

GE: So you’re not sure if there are any Kransz’s in Chicago anymore or not?

LK: In actually, in Chicago? No. Ah, there is this, the only one I know is Henry P. Kransz, K-R-A-N-S-Z. Still keeps that spelling is listed in one of the northern suburbs. Winnetka, Kenilworth, Glencoe. Somewhere up in there. I don’t remember what the address was… North Shore.

[01:12:15]

GE: Well, we may be contacting him.

LK: Well, try it! Look in the phone book. You can find out. The grandson of the Henry who lived on Sheridan Road and he would probably know. And then, there were some Nueses, N-U-S-E… N-U-E-S-E-S, I think, was the last name of [unintelligible] cousins from that branch of the family. I don’t know if there are any of those people around.

GE: [Unintelligible]

LK: Like I said, just look in the North, North Shore, North Chicago suburbs.

GE: This has all been very helpful. I think we got pretty much basic information.

LK: Well, yeah.

GE: And we’ll be using this for… Let’s see, our editor said it will probably be a two-article series. June 1st is our official mailing date for our first issue and then there will be another one after that.

LK: [Laughs] Somehow I think you must be hard up for news.

GE: [Laughs] Well we… I find this very interesting. There is a lot about neighborhood history. I have lived here all my life and I had no idea who the first settler was. Anything about them. I learned a lot from his interview.

LK: Yeah, seems like a long time ago. Everything seems a long time ago.

[01:14:11]

GE: And as far as you know, there are no photographs you have access to?

LK: Not that I have. As I say, back in the thirties, ’36, ’37, ‘38. At that time, material was given to whatever historical society was headquartered at the Hild Library.

GE: So they might still have….

LK: So there should be stuff there. That I think was that Lakeview…. [Ravenswood Historical Society’s Lakeview Collection]

GE: Well I know….

LK: I don’t know.

GE: The Hild Library is now the Sulzer [Library]

LK: Well, the Hild Library. I don’t know what it is now? Storage building and this new one. [The old Hild Library is now the Old Town School of Folk Music.] What is it? Rowby. What do they call it now? Not Robie(?). Ah, the new libraries down the street from where Hild is at Lincoln and….

GE: That’s called the Sulzer.

LK: Sulzer. Yes, near Montrose [Avenue]. And that Montrose used to be Sulzer Road. And Robie (?) Street was Southport, Right?

GE: I would not know. I’m not-

LK: I think that at one time Southport Avenue, Southport was called Robie (?) Street. My mother always called it Robie (?) Street. Just like how there are some diehard who call Crawford Avenue Pulaski Road.

GE: [Unintelligible] Then they might have some information there.

LK: Yeah, but there was a Lakeview Bank that had a nice little publication a couple of years ago. That’s that bank on Lincoln and Belmont.

GE: Yes, I know where that is.

LK: They had a… I think it was their hundredth anniversary or something like that and they had a nice publication that had a lot of information in it. That should be in the file somewhere.

[01:16:15]

GE: Mhmm. So if I contacted the Lakeview Bank I might be able to…?

LK: I am sure you could, yeah. I think I got a copy of that at home. I don’t know where I got it from, but somebody sent it to me. But they had a lot, a nice little book about, maybe one hundred twenty-four pages or so. It was good sized. Paperback. Blue cover.

GE: Aw, that sounds pretty good.

LK: It was a nice publication. They worked hard on it and….

GE: Would you possibly be able to find that?

LK: I think I can, yeah. I will try to bring it. Will you be in choir tomorrow? Thursday?

GE: No, I’ll be in church next Sunday.

LK: Okay. I’ll put it out, stick it in the car and bring it over.

GE: Yeah, I’d like to see it. I don’t intend to keep bothering you indefinitely, but I think…..

[01:17:08] End of interview