A Rich and Beautiful Corner

Across the street from Noodles, once the Ditzler and Hosler Dry Goods store, stands Zazú Salon and Day Spa which also once housed a far different business in the nineteenth century.

The sturdy Italianate building with its unique granite corner was built by George Reuss in the 1860’s. Originally a tailor from Bavaria, young George sailed to America to fulfill his ambitions — which he did admirably.

After a couple of years in St. Charles, he married his sweetheart from back home and they moved to Naperville. George prospered as a merchant tailor. He employed other tailors and built both the corner establishment and the attached addition.

Successful and well-respected Reuss opened the Bank of Naperville in 1886. The massive stone entrance was added at that time to make the new bank look appropriately impressive.

Eventually George’s private bank grew to become a corporation. Both his son Joseph Reuss and his son-in-law Valentine Dieter were employed by the bank and served on the Board of Directors.

1917’s “Souvenir of the Naperville Homecoming” boasts that “the bank now has a capital of $100,000 and a surplus of $25,000 with deposits of about $400,000. A modern steel lined burglar proof vault has recently been completed and safetly [sic] deposit boxes installed for the security of the bank’s patron.”

Son Joseph Reuss was called to the bar in 1896 and was the attorney for both his father’s bank and the city of Naperville.

George suffered a stroke in his later years and was forced to retire from active participation in his businesses, his church and his city. He died in 1901.

Among his activities, George served in 1880as the president of Naperville, the term used before the city was incorporated.

Son-on-law Valentine Dieter was the last president before Naperville started electing mayors in 1890.

Changes Around the Corner

Talk is swirling about how the proposed Water Street project will change the look of downtown Naperville. But not all downtown changes have been so dramatic.

When you pop into Noodles and Company for lunch the building fits right in with its neighbors even though it was radically updated thirteen years ago.

Just weeks before the new millennium dawned, a fire broke out in the upper floor of the building following some roofing work done earlier in the day. No one was injured in the fire that destroyed the upstairs apartments, but the lower level restaurant suffered severe smoke and water damage.

Coupled with the need to bring the old building up to code, repairs proved too costly so Wilma’s Café moved into a plaza on Ogden Avenue. But the space was rebuilt and it still strongly resembles its earliest incarnations.

Before the popular Café, the building held many other businesses, including a series of drug stores and dry goods stores.

Moses Hosler, General Merchant, advertised in the town’s first Holland’s Business Directory in 1886 with his then-partner Eli Ditzler. Moses’ daughter Malinda married John Rickert, a familiar Naperville name.

Later Herb Matter and Eli Stark ran a dry goods store in the same space. Eli Stark was also an enthusiastic amateur photographer whose legacy is a number of early Naperville photos. He is immortalized with his camera on the first panel of the “Pillars of the Community” mural on Chicago Avenue. 

Happy Birthday to Joe Naper's Settlement!

 
This week marks the anniversary of the date that Joseph Naper along with his family and friends arrived at the banks of DuPage River to start their new settlement. The exact date remains elusive, but it was around the fifteenth of July.

Normally, I would suggest stepping out onto the prairie at our local forest preserves like Churchill Woods or West Chicago Prairie to see and feel what it would have been like when the settlers finished their journey. But this year there is probably no similarity!

In 1831 winter reluctantly gave way to spring. Ice on the Great Lakes broke up quite late and ships, such as Naper's Telegraph, had to wait longer than usual before it was safe to start sailing. Cool and wet weather continued for much of the season and into summer. While it was July before the families arrived at Fort Dearborn, the landscape must have looked as green and fresh as if it were early June.

Contrast that with this year! Our mild winter, early spring and super hot and dry summer has fried the prairies to a crisp. Can you imagine if the Napers, the Murrays, the Boardmans, the Sissons and the other families were pulling up their ox wagons today? There isn't much time left to grow any sort of crops under the best conditions. Trying to start seeds in this kind of weather would be very disheartening!

Fortunately for Naperville's settlers, they were able to sow rutabagas and buckwheat and grow enough food to survive their first winter. As we shop for groceries in our air conditioned stores, we should spare a thought for those hearty pioneers who left civilization and comfort behind them to start new lives in their new home here in DuPage County 181 years ago this week. 

Read all about the journey in "Ruth by Lake and Prairie," a "Little House" version of our very own history written for children ages eight through twelve -- and their parents!

Before Naperville Had McMansions, We Had Real Mansions

 Sketch from menu of Willoway Manor when it was a restaurant.

 Heatherton during its gracious days.

Dining outside on a warm summer’s evening is a fleeting pleasure for Chicago-area folk. One favorite spot is the patio at Meson Sabika on Aurora Road.

Originally, the restaurant was a private home. At one time it was known as Willoway Manor, lending its name to the adjoining Wil-O-Way subdivision. The illustration above is a menu from when the manor first operated as a restaurant. But when William Ransdell Goodwin lived there, it was called Oakhurst Farm. Apparently people liked to eat out-of-doors even during the Goodwins’ time. A Chicago Tribune article from June 2, 1909 tells of Mrs. Goodwin’s garden party for 400 women who sipped pink lemonade while seated on camp chairs under the trees.

William raised Berkshire swine, Buff Leghorn fowls and Indian Runner ducks at Oakhurst, as well as Angora cats, but he was also an “ardent automobile enthusiast” and a well-respected writer for the Breeders’ Gazette, according to his obituary: “He was buried Tuesday afternoon, April 8, 1919, in the village cemetery at Naperville, his shaft within sight of Oakhurst's pillars. No stone can ever symbolize the imperishable monument he holds in the hearts and minds of American breeders.”

Oakhurst Farm was considered to lie outside of Naperville, but William’s brother had an estate within the city limits. John Samuel Goodwin partnered with William to breed Aberdeen-Angus cattle and they were both members of the Saddle and Sirloin Club. John also served as a judge in Chicago, although he lived at Heatherton, his gracious manor here in town.

John built Heatherton on the site of Lewis Ellsworth’s house who in turn built on the site of Fort Payne. Joe Naper and the other settlers erected the fort in 1832 for protection during the Black Hawk War, but it was never actually used and was eventually dismantled. North Central College’s athletic fields fill much of the estate today.

Heatherton went up in flames on March 14, 1920, and in an eerie coincidence, Goodwin, who was staying at the Palmer House in Chicago, died of a heart attack just two hours before the fire that destroyed his home .

Living with History

We had the opportunity to visit with John White in Elburn last week. Mr. White kindly took us on a tour of his 1840's log house, filled with antique furniture, pottery and other bits of everyday life.

The log house is not original to the property -- he moved it like a huge stack of Lincoln Logs from Wisconsin -- but it was originally built more than 150 years ago.

Not all of it could be salvaged.Parts tha were too rotted were rebuilt or worked around. For instance, the two-story walls are now more like one and a half stories and the flooring had to be laid completely new.

But what a floor! The planks are random widths, from narrow to almost two feet wide. White ripped the boards himself from a White Pine that grew near his farm and was toppled during the Plainfield tornado in 1990. He figures the tree was a seedling about the same time that the log house was being built originally.

Some people like to read history and others like to visit historical sites, but John White went out to rescue history, dragged it home and spent years rebuilding it. Many thanks to Mr. White for a truly special Saturday morning!

For more details of Mr. White's log house, see The Daily Herald article.