– Today we are pleased to introduce Ann Waidelich as part of the Wisconsin Historical Museum’History Sandwiched In lecture series. The opinions expressed today are those of the presenter, and are not necessarily those of the Wisconsin Historical Society or the museum’s employee Ann is a retired Madison Pubic Library librarian, and co-author of the n edition of An Eastside Album. She’s curator and board member of The Historic Bloominggrove Historical Society, co-coordinator of the Eastside History Club in Madison, and she volunteers with the Wisconsin Historical Society in our photo archives. Ann frequently presents programs centered around the history of Madison. Here today to share the history of Madison’s Schenk-Atwood Neighborhood, please join me in welcoming Ann Waidelich.
(audience applauding)

– Thank you. Yes, good afternoon and thank you very much for coming. I’m going to talk about picturing the past and the present in the Schenk-Atwood neighborhood. I love this photograph that I’m starting with the turkeys of Atwood Avenue. There’s actually a YouTube video, a 20-minute video about the turkeys of Atwood Avenue. They came to live in the neighborhood between 2014 and 2015. They were just wonderful to watch and to look around and find out where they were today and where will they be tomorrow. They were a real icon in the neighborhood in that time. I wish they’d come back. We had a lot of fun watching the turkeys of Atwood. So this is a 1899 flat map of the Schenk-Atwood neighborhood. Whoopsie-daisy, that’s not the one I wanted to do. So this is the Yahara River running through here, and most of the city of Madison was on the west side of the Yahara River at the 1899 time, and then this street is Winnebago Street going out toward East Washington Avenue, and then Atwood Avenue peels off here to the right. And so these little black squares along here were the houses that were built at the time of this map in 1899.

In the early decades after Madison became a city in 1856, there were few homes east of the Yahara River and nothing like a business district. Early settlers, Philo Dunning, moved out here in 1849 and lived here for about 20 years, and he built this section of the house, which is this section of the house. And here is the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad line that got turned into a bike path in 1987. Yeah, 1987, and Philo Dunning’s house was in front of these railroad tracks and once the railroad got built, he decided to move to downtown Madison. He didn’t want the railroad coming through his front yard, and so, as I said, they only lived there about 20 years. Another early house in the neighborhood is the Simeon Mills house built in 1863, and that was on a 200-acre farm called Elmside and that name is familiar to the neighborhood today. So they built their homes east of the Yahama River because they wanted to live in the country, outside the city limits. And there were small family farms in the area growing produce and raising chickens to be sold into town, chickens and eggs.

One leftover of that era is the Klinke Hatchery that was on Winnebago Street from 1932 to 36, then it became the Means Laundry service in that building. The building is gone now and Klinke moved out to Monona Drive. But we know today, Klinke as the cleaners, and this is the same Klinke family. They were into chickens before they got into dry cleaning. After the Second World War, this thing called dry cleaning became popular and he decided he’d have more of a future in dry cleaning than in chickens, and that proved to be the case. So the character of the area was decidedly rural at this time, even into the ’30’s. The streets were primarily dirt foot paths following Ho-Chunk Indian trails initially. And then Fred and Wilhelmina Schenk moved into the neighborhood at the intersection of Atwood and Winnebago streets in 1893. The Schenk’s established a saloon, first of all, here on the corner, followed by a general store and a grocery store. This is an interior view.

Their customers were initially the farmers coming to Madison to sell their farm products or to shop for supplies on their way home. But development soon followed. A real estate boom began when the Madison Lakes Improvement Company aggressively promoted the sale of lots for summer cottages along the shore of Lake Monona starting in 1891, a wonderful poster map of the area. And I mentioned the Simeon Mills house. This is a rendition, it’s not the actual picture of the house, but that is the house that was there and still is there. And then this is Circle Park, which is still in the neighborhood. And then Lowell School would be up here in this corner. Here it’s called Milwaukee Street, but now it’s called Atwood Avenue, and coming down onto Monona Avenue. But that’s an early map of the area. And then the installation of an electric streetcar line up out to Elmside and the village of Fair Oaks made it the first Madison suburb to have public transportation.

So this is the streetcar coming across the bridge on the Yahara River at Williamson Street. Now the interesting thing about Williamson Street is that it turns into Winnebago Street in the middle of that bridge. It goes from Williamson Street to Winnebago. And here of course is a picture of a streetcar going from University Avenue out to Elmside on the east side. And then as I mentioned, once upon a time there was a little village of Fair Oaks, between 1906 and 1913, here near the intersection of Atwood and Fair Oaks Avenue. And this is the village hall and it’s still standing. It’s now an apartment building. But the village of Fair Oaks couldn’t sustain itself because it didn’t charge enough taxes and we’ll get to that here in a minute. Schenk’s Corners, at the corner of Atwood Avenue, development along the streetcar line made Schenk’s Corners here a business node.

And of course this building is still there, although it had a very bad fire a couple of years ago and doesn’t quite look like that today, but that building is still at the corner of Atwood Avenue and Winnebago Street. This corner got called Schenk’s Corners because it was a Schenk-Huegel department store. But then, the other corner out at Fair Oaks sometimes is referred to as Hess’ Corners. It’s not as prominently known as that. But here was the Fair Oaks Hotel and today it’s Birrenkott’s Appliance Store. And I love taking these old photographs and counting the windows and looking for the building today and that is obviously the same building when you look at the way the windows on the second story are arranged. And on the opposite side of the street was the First and Last Chance Tavern up here in the upper right. Now it was called that because it was the first chance to get a drink when you were coming into town and the last chance to get a drink as you were leaving town and that’s where it got its name. That building was there for quite some time until this building here at the corner was built. And then it was called Hess’ Corners for this building here on the lower right, which was Hess’ General Store. Go back, go back. The Hess family lived upstairs of the store here, and I understand that this building is going to be coming down shortly. So it’d be even less of Hess Corners.

As the new century got underway, many influential Madisonians opposed industrial growth. The west side was developing as a residential area for University faculty and professionals. The industrial land use was relegated to the east side where the land was flat and where raw materials and finished products could easily be transported by rail. Thus was created this east side-west side dichotomy that to some extent still exists today. And so this is a wonderful map of the industrial east side about 1920 and again, the Yahara River cutting through with Gisholt here and Fuller and Johnson across the street. This is Breese Stevens Park that is there now. Stanley Morris was over here by the railroad tracks.

This is East High School. And then coming down to Rayovac, which was initially called French Battery Company. And over here the Steinle Turret Lathe is where Goodman Community Center is now. And then the Madison Railway Company where the streetcars had their home and the Madison Plow Company along Fair Oaks Avenue. And then you can see the rail lines are these patched lines cutting all through the neighborhood and they still do except one of them has been turned into a bicycle path. As the new century got underway, many Madisonians opposed the industrial growth and when the Monona lakefront and the rail quarter located within a few blocks of each other, the neighborhood evolved into a microcosm of that dichotomy, of both more well-to-do and more working class living in the same neighborhood. Where some saw the most beautiful place for a summer home in America, “The Saratoga of the West.” As they say, “the most beautiful place for a summer home, a hunter’s paradise, fisherman’s delight, tourist’s mecca.” This was going to be the Elmside Addition. Others saw homes for working men and I’ll read the text here.

“Fair Oaks subdivision on the eastern limits of the city was opened up with a total of 322 lots in December of 1901. It was then an empty stretch of field. Today there are in Fair Oaks 14 homes and families,” this’ll be 1903. “New homes will be rushed up with the opening of spring. Only 50 lots remain. These will be closed out during the present month of February. Taxes are low as Fair Oaks is outside the city limits. Where taxes are $5 in Madison, they’re only $1 in Fair Oaks.” Now where have we heard that before? All the suburbs claimed that they have lower taxes than the city of Madison, but that was one of the problems why the village of Fair Oaks couldn’t continue is ’cause they were only charging a dollar a year for property taxes.

“The land office will be open on Sunday. Take the street car and look over the field. Some choice lots are left.” And James P. Corry was the agent for selling these lots. The neighborhood retains the dual character in its diverse housing stock. Business owners and their employees find suitable accommodations within a few blocks of each other on the east side. The neighborhood became home to large and small manufacturing enterprises, requiring skilled workers. Starting with the Steinle Turret Lathe Company, which turned into Kupfer Ironworks, which turned into the Durline Scale Company, which is now the Goodman Community Center. So that building is still there on Waubesa Street.

Then we have Madison-Kipp. Started out in 1903. They bought then this other building on Atwood Avenue and still own and operate out of both places, and I love the lower left has a series of murals that were painted into the windows on the left side of the building because they weren’t using the windows for windows anymore. They recently had people paint a mural with workers on that lower left picture. Then the Madison Brass Works was across the street from Madison-Kipp and it’s now been turned into an extension of the Goodman Community Center. The Goodman Community Center was so popular, is so popular, that they bought they old Madison Brass Works building, added an addition onto that and that just opened last month, very, very recent. Rayovac, we all remember our Rayovac batteries being made here at Winnebago Street and East Washington Avenue. That’s been torn down, the site is being redeveloped into a medical clinic and housing,nbut it’s too bad that the building itself couldn’t have been saved and reused. And then at the other end, down at Schenk’s Corners was the Hess Cooperage, a barrel making, wooden beer barrel-making company from 1904 to 1966.

This is Frank J. Hess, the father of four brothers that also worked in the barrel-making company, and there is a historical marker at Schenk’s Corners for that Hess Barrel Making. But then, let’s see, so then because of all the houses being built in the neighborhood, we needed lumber yards to supply the lumber for building the houses in the area, and Ellefson was one lumber company from 1902 to ’54 on Winnebago Street, and actually the Ellefson house here beside the lumber yard is still standing. It’s right ever here where it always has been and it’s now the Big Oak Child Care Center on Williamson Street, so that’s fun to see something that was built as early as 1902 still being used. And then the Loftsgordon Lumber Company, actually had two lumber companies in the neighborhood. That was at the corner of Atwood and Ohio. That’s been torn down and it became the convent for St. Bernard’s church next door on the right here up until 1974, and then it’s a Dane County Juvenile Shelter Home since 1974, but it’s not the same building, it’s just the same site.

And then of course with all the houses being built, all the families moving in, all the children getting born, we needed some schools. So Hawthorne School was built in 1903 on Division Street just off of Atwood. It’s now a park, Hawthorne Park, although there is a Hawthorne School, ’cause the new school got renamed for the old school. It was torn down in 1940 when Lapham School and Marquette School were built just before the war. Then St. Bernard’s Church built a school all the way back in 1909, which lasted until 1950. That would be the building on the left over here. Then down here St. Bernard’s built a new school in 1950 which closed in 1975. The thing about St. Bernard’s that we’ve learned is that the Catholic families would send their children to Lowell School for kindergarten, and then they would pull them out and send them to St. Bernard’s for first grade through eighth grade because they didn’t have a kindergarten.

And then Lowell School was built in 1916. It just celebrated its 100th anniversary a couple of years ago; it’s been expanded many times. But the front of it along the corner of Atwood and Fair Oaks definitely still looks like this. And then of course with all these families moving in, we needed churches, so Plymouth Congregational Church was one of the first ones started in 1903. This building, the right-hand side of this building was built in 1916 but it’s still going strong on Atwood Avenue. St. Bernard’s started out in that two-story building which was both the school and the church. And then they built the new building in 1927, a very handsome icon in the neighborhood. St. Bernard’s. Bethany Evangelical Free Church started out in 1906 and built the first church on the left in 1912, a more traditional old-time church, but on the right, they built their new church in 1978, a more modern looking facility on the same lot. Trinity Lutheran Church has been there since 1906. They built their first church on the left in 1910, a cute little traditional church, and then just across the street, the old church was over on this left-hand side, but the new church is just across the street on Winnebago, built in 1951, a very large, very prominent Lutheran church.

Actually, the downtown Bethel Lutheran Church, the great big, downtown Bethel Lutheran, had an outreach to the Schenk-Atwood neighborhood, especially in the summertime. This cute little wooden building on the left just operated in the summer so you wouldn’t have to go all the way downtown to church in the summertime. Now it’s been converted into a private house, on the right, and again it’s fun to go looking for the building and to see the similarity and differences between the old building and the new building. Zion Lutheran Church is just off of Atwood Avenue. It started out on East Washington Avenue and then it moved to Division Street in 1919. It sort of rebuilt itself in 1939 and torn down in 1968 because now it’s the parking lot for the new church which moved to the other end of the block in 1968.

So the Schenk-Atwood neighborhood now in this aerial in 1959 has grown and expanded and become a real traditional business-shopping district. The railroad tracks, which are running down here is now the bike path, and I’ll talk more about the Eastwood Bypass road that’s going along the bike path on this side. So this is Atwood Avenue. The Barrymore Theater is here. The Schenk-Huegal store was here on this corner and the Security State Bank down here across from it. The Hess Barrel-Making Company was right in this section here, with the railroad tracks behind it, which is still a railroad track. And then East Washington Avenue is way over here. But it’s a very dense, both housing and business, along Atwood Avenue in about 1955.

So the intersection of Atwood Avenue and Winnebago Streets became Madison’s first shopping center east of the Capitol Square. In the 1940’s and ’50’s, this area took on the look of a small downtown. And you see here the Security State Bank building. Strand Bakery over here, Rennebohm’s, and we’ll talk more about those, but I love all the old cars and the traffic and the busyness, the density. It’s just a wonderful photograph. So, some of the businesses that were at Schenk’s Corners was Rennebohm’s Drug Store. We actually had two, one at Schenk’s Corners, one at the other end on Fair Oaks. And then the building got remodeled and this Vault Interiors and Design was in the corner where the drug store used to be. But in 2017, there was that fire in the Schenk-Huegal building, and so the Vault is no longer there and the building is being refurbished from the fire and we’ll get new commercial development in that building in the next year or two, I hope. So we had actually two banks. The first one was Security State Bank. I’m so delighted that the Monona State Bank has taken over the building, so we still have the bank. It looks so imposing, particularly in these two pictures, with these wonderful, iconic columns, you’d think it was a great big building.

Well, they built these apartment buildings behind it and it’s taken away the look. It’s really only like a story and a half tall, and it’s shrunk. As you’re driving down Atwood Avenue towards it, it doesn’t look nearly as imposing as it used to. It’s really kind of sad. And then there was the Evergreen Savings and Loan, again, in that Schenk-Huegal building. It turned into the Madison East Savings and Loan, and then it became Anchor Bank, and then Anchor Bank has left this corner. It’s not the bank anymore. We had a library, the Hawthorne Branch Library was here on Atwood Avenue from 1958 to ’73. It was named Hawthorne for the school that used to be and had gone by 1958. It’s moved now out to the East Madison Shopping Center, the Hawthorne Branch is still in existence, but not on Atwood Avenue anymore.

The Eastwood Theater. Look at all the people going to the theater with dresses and hats and all dressed up, from 1929 to 1967. We’ll talk more about, ’cause the theater is still there. But in 1929, this was the first theater outside the downtown of Madison, and it’s early enough that it has a stage for vaudeville acts, who are still performing in the 1920’s when this theater was built, and of course that’s been the saving grace of the Barrymore Theater is that it does have a stage so that they can do music performances today. We had a fire station on Atwood Avenue. This wonderful arts and crafts building until 1973 when it was torn down. Fire Station number 5 is now out at Cottage Grove Road where 51 goes across, right out there. Some restaurants– People didn’t go to restaurants back then like they do today, so the Felly’s Restaurant was there from 1927 to ’43, then it became Leske’s Steak House. Some of you might remember, and Leske’s had a big place out on Monona Drive after 1956.

And today it’s Daisy Cafe and Cupcakery from 2009 to date. It’s still a restaurant in that building. And again, you see the similarity with the roof line here to the roof line here. And it did then have this apartment building sort of on top of it, behind it. We had a funeral home, Gunderson Funeral Home started on Winnebago Street in 1927. It was in what’s now the parking lot behind the Security State Bank or between Trinity Lutheran and the bank building until 1957 when they moved out to Monona Drive. It is the same Gunderson Funeral Home, again a wonderful classical style building. A flower shop– We actually had two flower shops. Flagstaff’s was there until 2014, and the building is still there. It’s now hairdressing places, beauty parlors in that building. And then there was a Flagstaff’s, or Flagstaff was one flower, Lavin was the other floral shop down on Winnebago Street also.

We had a post office from 1930 to 1961 in this building. The building is still standing. It’s an apartment building with some commercial on the first floor. We have a post office at Schenk’s Corners today. It’s in the Stop ‘N Go store, which is at what? First Street, Second Street, I think? This building is no longer the post office. But we still can mail a letter at Schenk’s Corners, thank goodness. That’s where I get my stamps. It’s not nearly a long line, that there are other post offices. And we had our own newspaper. The East Side News newspaper was published weekly from 1924 to 1962. It also had this East Side Print Shop where you could get business cards and posters and flyers and things printed. So it started out in this little building here, which was torn down, and then it was in this building for a while, and then finally, when this building got torn down, it was over here, and this building is still standing on Winnebago Street, but it’s not the East Side Print Shop anymore. It’s just another commercial building.

And the East Side Business Men’s Association and the East Side Women’s Club promoted the area and sponsored the East Side Fall Festival for 70 years, from 1923 to 1993, and they would have different booths for the different businesses in the area and Schoep’s Ice Cream had a booth back, probably in the ’40’s is about when this comes from. I love the dresses on the little girls, the socks and shoes there, and it says, “It brings back memories of how Mother used to make it. Sweet cream and eggs” is the small print there underneath the Shoep’s Ice Cream sign. “Brings back memories of how Mother used to make it with sweet cream and eggs.”

But the opening of the Madison East Shopping Center in September of 1953 on East Washington Avenue. Then there was Carl Payne’s C&P Shopping Center on Cottage Grove Road in 1962, and the Fiore Shopping Center at East Washington Avenue and First Street in 1963, led to the decline of businesses at Schenk’s Corners and along Atwood Avenue. And this sad picture of the neighborhood in about 1975, it really had gone downhill. There were as many as 15 vacant store fronts along the street. At this time, we have the Nibble Nook. People remember that. That was sort of an early hamburger stand, hamburger shop. A tavern, a bar here, and then the Strand Bakery had now become Mrs. Bowen’s Bakery. The bank was still functioning, and here’s that Evergreen Savings and Loan in the corner, Schenk’s Corner building. It looked as sad as this picture looked. The street just had lost all its joy in the ’70’s.

The Cinema Theater changed its name from the Eastwood Theater to the Cinema Theater in 1967 and by 1987 it was showing X-rated movies. It was really run down and the whole neighborhood had changed quite a bit. But then, in 1974, the Eastwood Bypass opened. It was part of the Marquette neighborhood plan because they didn’t want the cars to turn onto Jennifer and Spade Street at the head of Williamson Street and run through the Marquette neighborhood. And so they also wanted– because it was getting to be more and more traffic– cars would have to go through Schenk’s Corners and that was getting to be a bottleneck. So they built the Eastwood Bypass, which is still functioning today. So as you’re going east out of town, you don’t have to go through Schenk’s Corners. Coming into Madison, you do have to come down through Schenk’s Corners, but half the traffic is gone, and that helped to cause the businesses to decline.

Nevertheless, the area maintained the atmosphere of a distinct neighborhood. Gradual turnover in the population led to more diversity in age and occupations. Rising house prices elsewhere in the city brought urban pioneers into this out of favor neighborhood looking for reasonably priced houses and business opportunities. And I was one of those urban pioneers. We moved into the Schenk-Atwood neighborhood in 1974. It was cheaper than Monroe Street. Not by much, but a little. A little more out of favor than the Monroe Street neighborhood is and was. And so I’m a classic example of that. And then gradually other businesses began to move in. One of them was WORT Radio. They moved into what used to be the WMFM Radio Station from 1948 to 1975, and that went out of business and WORT took over because it was already a radio station. They were there until 1981, and now they’re out on? Pardon?

– [audience] Bedford Street.

– Bedford Street, that’s right. And so that building was torn down. It’s now the parking lot in front of the Studio Paran, which has been there since 1995. That’s a very, very fancy, high-end glass blowing studio. You can buy real fancy glass vases and things there at Studio Paran, and it’s often open on these art walks that are around town. So that was one of the first businesses. And then several local business people, starting on the left with Reid or Dewey Bido of Bido Plumbing, Emerson Black of the Cooperative Pharmacy and Barbara Golden of the Yahara Natural Foods, one of the first natural food stores in Madison, along with others decided to step up and try to improve the area. They formed the Schenk-Atwood Revitilization Association, or SARA, in 1980, and they began working with the city planning department and the Madison Development Corporation with the motto, “Progress Through Planning.” And progress was slow. It still took a long time. But eventually this abandoned gas station at Atwood and Rusk Streets was torn down and replaced by the Atwood Apartments in 1986. And the Atwood Apartments is this on the right-hand side. On the left, this is an older building.

It was built as Lunder’s Furniture store, Lunder’s Furniture, and at this time. The time the picture was taken, it was an oriental restaurant, Wong’s Garden Oriental Restaurant, which has remained until quite recently. It’s a very handsome building, and then the apartment building is still there, but that started happening in 1986. And then Joe Krupp– some of you might know Krupp Construction, this is him standing in the doorway there– decided to locate his construction company offices in the old Hoffman Kennedy Dairy Horse Barn in 1985. So that horse barn is still standing. He refurbished it and made it his headquarters for the construction company. And of course we have a cow from the Cows on the Concourse. I’m sorry, but I don’t think we have a Badger from the Badgers that were just up around town recently, but we do have a cow from the Cows on the Concourse because it was Kennedy Dairy in the days when the milkman brought your milk in a horse-drawn wagon, and so that’s why they had to have a horse barn here for the east side of town. After he rehabilitated that building, he began developing other properties in the neighborhood, along with Peter Moran and Connie Maxwell, including the purchase of the Eastwood Theater, the Cinema Theater and turning it into the Barrymore Theater in 1987, and these two gentlemen were part of the group that refurbished and brought back to life the Barrymore Theater, which is very active today and just did another remodeling with new seats and all. I’m so glad that still is in the neighborhood.

And then the Havey brothers had a gas station until about 1990 when both of the gentlemen died, and you can see again how the building– Here these windows or the garage doors have been changed and the door to the actual garage and then this corner window is still a part of the restaurant here. So the Monty Schiro turned Havey’s Gas Station into Monty’s Blue Plate Diner in 1990, and thus began the Food Fight Restaurant Group which must have what? 30 restaurants around town by now? And they used to have their headquarters in the Schenk-Huegal building there at the corner until 2016 when they moved to Monona Drive. Everybody seems to want to go to Monona Drive.

And then in 1990, the Schenk-Atwood Starkweather-Yahara Neighborhood Association was formed to carry on and expand the work of revitalizing the neighborhood, the SASY Neighborhood Association. The Schenk-Atwood-Starkweather- Yahara Neighborhood Association is now the active business in the area. And ever since there has been a continuing upgrade of the neighborhood, starting with United Way, where what used to be called the Community Chest, built the building on the left in 1959 and then expanded and built this very attractive new building on the same site and opened in the year 2000. Sid Boyum, have you read about him in the newspaper? He was a local folk artist that did these concrete sculptures and statues and whatever, and they were taken out of his backyard.

This is his house over here on the right. His backyard was full of these things. And in the year 2000 a group got together and took a number of them out of that yard and placed them around the neighborhood, and the mushroom and this urn are at the corner of what’s now called Jackson Street Plaza. It’s been redeveloped, redesigned as still plantings and just a lovely little park, and actually the Sid Boyum house has now been sold to a private couple that are refurbishing it. They had hoped to do a Sid Boyum museum in the house, but that never came to fruition. It was too much in the neighborhood. It wouldn’t have worked as a public museum. And then actually behind those Sid Boyum sculptures in that Jackson Plaza is this cute little white triangular building and it started out as Edgar’s Shoe Repair shop. And this is Joann Hoveland in front of, across the street from, Edgar’s Shoe Repair Shop. That’s what is behind her here.

And then we actually, in that building, Larry’s Tattoo Parlor. And it was one of Madison’s first tattoo parlors. I mean, we just have lots of firsts on Atwood Avenue, some of which we’re more proud of than others, but tattooing is all in these days. And then it became the Jamaican Arts and Crafts. That’s why that picture on the lower left has the Jamaican flag colors painted around it, and my goodness did it smell good in the background when you would use the bike path going by. The Jamaicans had a special kind of cigarette that they would smoke out in the backyard. But now, it’s very, very popular as the Chocolate Shoppe Ice Cream shop, and they only open it in the summer time. Obviously, it was kind of small. It has no heat or air conditioning, and it’s very popular as an ice cream shop, so we’re hoping that that will stay now in the neighborhood for some time. It’s had a very varied history and it’s just so cute, just very appropriate.

The Hudson Hotel, the building on the left, was there from 1917 to 1925 to house the workman who were emigrating from Norway and Germany to work in these factories that were on Schenk’s Corners. And then it became the East Side Business Men’s Association and East Side Women’s Club clubhouse from 1925 to 1954. And then it became the Atwood Community Center from ’54 to 2008 before the community center moved over to Waubesa Street. And of course the Business Men’s clubhouse is now out on– It’s still Atwood Avenue, not quite Monona Drive when you get out there. And then it turned into Bunky’s Cafe, a restaurant, until 2016.

Today, Bunky’s just does catering out of that business. It’s not a daily restaurant. We had a dental clinic, the East Madison/Dean Clinic from 1945 to 2004 there at the corner of Atwood and First Street. And then it got torn down because the clinic moved out to Stoughten Road and a couple of big apartment buildings were built on the site of the Dean Clinic. And then, one thing with photographs, the picture on the left is a picture of a parade, but I don’t care that it’s a picture of a parade.

What I’m interested in is this gas station over here on the left, and then this store on the right was Gerhard’s and then Schaefer’s Pharmacy here on the right because today the gas station is the Division Street Apartments, and then the Schaefer Pharmacy has turned into this eye glass store. And then over here is an Atwood Family Barber Shop, which is an African-American barber shop. Very well attended, lots of people, it’s a wonderful old-fashioned barber shop with the men sitting, and the children, the boys and men sitting, waiting to get their hairs cut, haircut. And I love the barber pole here too on that building. As I say, what I’m interested in often is the houses and buildings in the background of what the original picture was taken for. And then this corner of Atwood Avenue started out as the Atwood Bowling Alley, just a couple of lanes, and the entrance is right on the sidewalk. You had to walk up the stairs and down the stairs if you just wanted to go on the sidewalk, in order to get in. And I love the two advertisings here. This is Centennial Brew from Fauerbach Brewery when it was 100 years old. And then the Security State Bank that we’ve talked about.

Then it became a nondescript, or it was torn down and became a nondescript office building, but now it’s a quite enhanced, Cornerstone Apartments with Barrique’s Coffee Shop on the first floor. You can hardly find a seat there in Barrique’s anymore. It’s a very popular coffee shop. We had another barber shop on Atwood Avenue, Kretlow’s or Hoveland’s. Kretlow’s turned into Hoveland’s, and then it got torn down for the Lauer Realty Group in 2015, a very handsome building but we lost the barber shop. The Arcade Bowling. Now this was the big bowling alley on Atwood Avenue, Arcade Bowling. It also had Fielder’s Choice Bar in it. And that was torn down for this Kennedy Place apartment building and retail shops on the first floor, again called Kennedy Place because of the dairy, and here’s that dairy barn for the horses behind it, still. And then Madison Motor Company sold cars and repaired cars.

The thing here is two things. First of all, this is a gas pump. Before there were gas stations that you pulled into off the road, there used to be just gas pumps beside the road just by the sidewalk and by the curb, and you would just stop your car right on the curb and they would fill it up and that’s what this is right here. The other thing that’s interesting is you notice this decoration on the buildings. Here it is when it’s now been turned into Blied Plumbing after it was Capital Water Softener. And then down here the building today is called Threshold, and it still has that decoration on the front of the building, so you can see how it’s progressed and know what building it was as time went past. And then history continues to be made on Atwood Avenue. Back in 1960, Badeau Plumbing was very proud of its grand opening here. But I like the story over here of: “Krupp is proposing a 4-story mixed use building where the ugly 1-story building stands now.” Well I don’t know that it’s so ugly.

Down here on the left, next to Monty’s Blue Plate Diner. “Gail Ambrosius is moving into the space” and she has, she’s our chocolatier on Atwood Avenue and has moved into this new Asana, is what they’re calling that building. It’s an apartment building above and the Chocolaterian is down below. And then last but not least, one of our most recent apartment buildings that’s been built on the site of what used to Capital Plating and then turned into Capital Water Softeners is the Velo 418. I love this, they give these names for these apartment buildings. Velo, of course, is a word for bicycles or has something to do with bicycles, and that’s good because it is along the bike path. And the 418 is because the address is 418 Division Street. It’s right off of Atwood Avenue. And it’s quite a handsome building. We were a little concerned ’cause it was three whole stories as opposed to this one-story building, but it’s fairly set back, it blends in.

It’s okay. As an Atwood neighborhood resident, it’s not bad. Thank you very, very much.
(audience applauding)