Gay-Mill Gardens

Miller is outside my bailiwick, but having previously encountered a 1922 ad in the Hobart newspaper for the Gay-Mill Gardens, I couldn't help but be thrilled to receive a photo of the place.


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Image courtesy of R.F.

The 1922 ad described the location as Lake and Forrest Avenues, so I suppose the photographer was standing on Forest Avenue and looking west toward Lake Street.

This photo was among a group relating to the Buchfuehrer family. William Buchfuehrer may have been driving the Henderson Ice Cream truck out front of the Gay-Mill Gardens. He was employed by the Henderson factory in Hobart off and on during the 1920s and '30s. In fact, in 1937 he (in partnership with William Ittel) purchased the factory, and went on to operate it for some 20 years. But this photo predates that purchase — by 1937 the Gay-Mill was abandoned. The cars in the photo are from the early 1920s (as the Ainsworth vintage-car expert tells me), so the photo probably was taken not long after the Gay-Mill first opened.

Things I Learned in the Farm Room (Part 3)

I have learned that you can go online and buy fake ears of corn. That has got to be the silliest thing I've ever learned, in the farm room or anywhere else.


But I'm making progress with my farm-room labels! Here's a couple of photos from a few days ago showing some of my labels, as well as my artfully placed fake corn.


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Things I Learned in the Farm Room (Part 2)

Unlike my last such post, this one could be called "Things I Just Never Thought About Before."

I never thought about how we went from windmills like this:


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Illustration by G.A. Harker, from James Baldwin, Stories of Don Quixote Written Anew for Young People (American Book Company: 1910), via Wikimedia Commons.

… to windmills like this:



Apparently the change started in 1854 with a guy named Daniel Halladay who patented a "self-governing windmill" that was not only lower-maintenance than the Don Quixote type, but also cheaper to build and easier to ship to faraway locations. Later inventors added refinements such as (in 1870) the change from wooden blades to steel (more durable, and able to be molded into more efficient shapes).

That, at least, is what my hasty research has taught me.

Your Favorite Organist

Yesterday while reading microfilm at the Hobart Historical Society museum, I came across this ad from the Hobart Gazette of June 9, 1949:


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Your favorite organist is little Jackson Hendrix, all grown up.


I have mentioned the Ridge Road Gardens before, in connection with an incident in 1921. This ad gives us a more precise location — Ridge Road at Missouri Street. So the Ridge Road Gardens' former location is under the I-65 interchange, possibly in the vicinity of where the notorious Berghoff road house once was. If I had time, I'd go check the 1950s directories at the museum, in case an actual street address was ever listed. My 1962 directory doesn't list the Ridge Road Gardens at all.

Things I Learned in the Farm Room (Part 1)

I mentioned that all my blogging time is going into making labels for the various objects in the "Farm Room" at the Merrillville/Ross Township Historical Society museum. But I'm having fun and I'm definitely learning things!

One of the first things I learned is that contraptions like this actually existed:


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The image above is from an 1898 Peter Henderson & Co. catalogue (reproduced in 2002)[1], which I bought to help me identify farming implements.

We actually have a wheelbarrow seeder in the Farm Room, although it's in two parts — the hopper is on one wall and the wheelbarrow on the floor along the adjacent wall — and it seems to be missing the chain that runs through the hopper, according to this video about "Antique Broadcast Seeders": https://youtu.be/ue-IMpTgvDs.



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[1] Turn-of-the-Century Farm Tools and Implements. Minneola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc. (2002).

Another Car Crash at the Black Cat

An article titled, "Reckless Drivers and Speeders Draw Fines in JP Court," that appeared in the Hobart Gazette of September 23, 1948, contained this description of an accident:

A three-car crash on state route 6 near the entrance to the Black Cat restaurant last Saturday evening about 11 p.m., resulted in the arrest of William E. Finley, age 34, 2699 Gibson St., East Gary. Police investigation showed that Paul Verplank of Hobart, who was pulling a small two-wheel trailer on the back of his westbound car, was forced to stop when a large semi-truck suddenly stopped in front of him. Emil Skolak, age 33, 1705 McKinley street, Gary, who was accompanied by his wife Helen, and driving a new Lincoln sedan then stopped back of Verplank, and Finley, driving a Buick sedan, crashed into the rear of Skolak's car, which in turn hit Verplank's trailer.

When I found this, I thought at first that perhaps the mystery of the undated Black Cat crash photo had been solved … until I started searching online for images of the cars mentioned; namely, a 1947 or '48 Lincoln sedan and a Buick sedan (probably 1940s, maybe 1930s). The images I found didn't look like the cars in that picture. So the photo remains a mystery, and I can only conclude that the Black Cat was a popular place to have car crashes.


I am on something of a blogging vacation because I foolishly promised that over the winter I would label the agricultural implements and other tools in the Merrillville/Ross Township Historical Society museum's Farm Room (as several visitors have asked us to do), and I'm finding out that (a) there is much more stuff in that room than I ever realized, and (b) my knowledge of vintage tools is pretty vague. So my blogging time has been going into educating myself.

Photographers Who Fell Into My Lap

While looking for something else in the Gazette microfilm, I came across some information about a few photographers operating in Hobart in the 1940s.


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Hobart Gazette, 5 Feb. 1948.

It was nice of the writer to package up Fred Ehlen's beginning and ending so neatly for me — if the opening of his studio circa 1942 was announced in the Gazette, I wasn't paying attention.


Next comes Herbert Hagenwald, Jr., who doesn't stay very long.


Hobart Gazette, 15 Apr. 1948.


And then Arthur Miller of East Gary (Lake Station), whose duration has yet to be determined.


Hobart Gazette, 8 July 1948.

I myself don't recall ever seeing any photos with the Hobart Studio or Loray Studio name. They may be out there somewhere.


I have also updated the entry for Roland Grabill to reflect that, according to his 1943 obituary, he closed his studio in 1938.

The updated photographer list is available here.