The Berghoff Road House Again

I am still overloaded with work, but I came across some information about the location of the notorious Berghoff road house.

First, in the Hobart Gazette of January 22, 1926, we come across an article headlined, "Whip Factory Buildings Sold" — in which we learn that Hobart's old whip factory is to be demolished. The article says that some of the materials from it will be salvaged for new construction by brothers Karl and Paul Wurffel (whom I've never heard of before), who intend to build a filling station "at the northeast corner of [semi-legible number] and Missouri, across from the Berghoff." The problem is that bad microfilm and its semi-legible number. The number looks as if it could be "30th," "36th," or "39th." We've previously seen the Berghoff described as being "on the Chicago Road," a name used for what is now Old Ridge Road. Old Ridge Road curves into 39th Avenue just east of I-65.

In the April 16, 1926 Gazette,the "Local Drifts" column includes this item: "Karl and Paul Wurffel opened last Sunday their filling station on the Ridge Road, opposite the Berghoff, which will be known as the Ridge Road Service Station."

I don't know if "Ridge Road" here means Old Ridge Road, in which case the Berghoff was at the intersection of Missouri and 39th, or (new) Ridge Road (i.e., 37th Avenue), in which case the site of the Berghoff is now buried under the Ridge Road/I-65 interchange.


I have yet to find any more information about noted Chicken Farm.

Requiem for a Roadhouse

(Click on image to enlarge)
Hobart News 8 Dec. 1921.

I wish I knew where the "first bend after you leave the Ridge Road" was. Elsewhere, the Gazette gave the Berghoff's location as "on the Chicago Road [i.e., Old Ridge Road], near Gary corporation," and added: "Former operators at first operated a gambling joint in the building as the rear of the Inn, which recently burned, but City Marshal Rose put a stop to gambling there before the building burned."

The fire was not the end of the trouble; as the new year opened, the Berghoff closed.


(Click on image to enlarge)
Hobart News 5 Jan. 1922.

It was fun while it lasted, one supposes.


Additional Source: "Berghoff Inn Closed." Hobart Gazette 6 Jan. 1922.

The Noted Chicken Farm and the Disgusting Hog Farm

I don't know anything about the "Chicken Farm," but apparently the Gazette's readers were expected to know all about it, as the paper reported in August 1921: "The noted 'Chicken Farm' gambling house may be transferred into a school house, as East Gary is said to be considering its purchase. A school house is needed in that part of town." So it was somewhere in or near present-day Lake Station.

Elsewhere, the paper noted that "[t]he Berghoff Road House had its grand opening last Saturday evening. This is Hobart's new place south of the Chicken Farm." The two establishments being mentioned in the same paragraph suggests to me that they were of similar character.

♦    ♦    ♦
West of Hobart, a hog farm was stinking up the place. At a special session of the town board on Tuesday evening, August 9, the "secretary of the local board of health was directed, through a notice from the Clerk, to notify the owners of the hog farm, situated in the west part of town, to place their farm of 40 acres in a sanitary condition. This place is known as the Sykes hog farm, the hogs being fed on garbage from Gary." (I have not been able to identify those 40 acres or their owner.)

At the same meeting, Sherman Henderson was appointed to the town board to fill the vacancy left by Hugo Zobjeck's departure the previous spring.


Sources:
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 5 Aug. 1921.
♦ "Town Board Meeting." Hobart Gazette 12 Aug. 1921.