Explore Oak Park & Beyond

This episode is sponsored by Explore Oak Park and Beyond which is a collection 20 of communities just due west of Chicago, including Oak Park, River Forest, Hillside and many others. 

Show notes here! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:00

I'm Frank Lipo, Executive Director of the Historical Society of Oak Park and River Forest. Welcome to Oak Park River Forest Museum. 77 and beyond starts now.

SPEAKER_03 0:13

That was Frank Lippo from the Oak Park Lake Forest Museum. Thank you, Frank, for introducing the episode today. Yeah, buddy. Welcome to another episode of 77 Flavors.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

First time I ever introduced the podcast. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 0:25

If you are new here, thank you so much for joining us. Every week we dive into a piece of Chicago history and beyond.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

And beyond.

SPEAKER_03 0:33

If you are not new here, thank you so much for coming back today.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

What you doing?

unknown 0:37

Sorry.

SPEAKER_03 0:37

What do you mean?

SPEAKER_00 0:38

If you're not new, I mean if you're not new. If you're new. Wrong. I said that wrong. If you knew.

SPEAKER_03 0:42

That's okay. Welcome. We're happy to have you. If you're not new, thank you so much for coming back. Your support means everything. We can't do the things that we do without you. So we're so happy you're here. This week we went to Oak Park and beyond. This is the beginning of a new series here. We're going to visit a few of the surrounding uh suburbs that are that feel more like super close to the city to me. Yeah, yeah. You can claim. You can claim. I give you a pass. Oak Park, you can claim. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I got some stuff. Yeah. But before we get into the episode, I just wanted to um remind you that we have a weekly Substack that goes out. It is a companion piece to this episode. So if you um want to kind of learn a little bit more, see some other sources that I might link in there. Sometimes there's there's nothing too much different from the episode. It's more of my opinion, you know? Yeah, yeah. Uh but it's it's a fun substack. And if you subscribe to the Substack as opposed to going through the show notes, you also get first access to any events we're having. So uh we have an upcoming dinner on July 28th that is at Ermosa in Ermosa, where Chef Ethan and Chef Sarah Stegner from Prairie Grass Cafe are uh cooking a special dinner and they're donating the proceeds to our nonprofit. We'd love to have you. There's a couple ticket tickets left, I believe. Um, and you would get access to things like our tours. So uh July uh what's the weekend?

SPEAKER_00 2:10

29th.

SPEAKER_03 2:11

29th, yeah. Whatever that weekend Saturday or Sunday is. This is why you should subscribe because I don't know it off the top of my head. Um we are doing a tour of Pilson with the uh what the girls are doing.

SPEAKER_00 2:23

26th? I'm wrong. Yeah, it's the 26th.

SPEAKER_03 2:26

It's yeah, next it's you're if you're listening to this on Monday, it is the coming weekend. Yes. Um so you would look you would learn through about that through our Substack. Uh, or if you don't want to do any of that and you just want to read the show notes on the website, our website has a brand new page on it now. We have an events page on there. Clean. Uh it looks really good. Cast and Sierra, they uh always do such a great job. They've built out, obviously, if you remember our entire branding and our entire website.

SPEAKER_01 2:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:57

And we added a new page. We added an events page. So please go check that out. Uh, it'll grow as we get more and more stuff coming through. But um, yeah, that those are those are my updates. Yeah, we had a fun packed week this week.

SPEAKER_00 3:11

We had we I feel like we just uh were always outside. Yeah. Uh dealing with the small. The small horrible. I hope y'all are good out there because it is preterous.

SPEAKER_03 3:21

Stay safe because uh Thursday, Friday was pretty bad.

SPEAKER_00 3:24

Thursday was I remember walking outside and we we saw it. Like it was sunny, bright day, kind of hazy. Then it got darker, like in the next 30 minutes, and then darker. Yeah, and I'm like, let me go ahead and take the dog out. And think about how early that is. I didn't even take the dog out yet. It was getting dark. I walked out there immediately. I was like, Smells like smoke. And and I can I can only imagine, like, you know, I feel like I got like an acute case of asthma, you know what I mean? Yeah. Like not severe, but just it's something there. My mama got asthma. I was like, yo, if people got asthma out here, y'all got to be careful.

SPEAKER_03 4:00

Yeah, wear wear a mask, it helps. Or stay inside if you uh if you can.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

Man, but uh but also uh people in Canada, man, I'm sorry, y'all going through it right now, man. Canada, all the East Coast, it's it's pretty bad. Global warming, y'all. Global warming.

SPEAKER_03 4:14

These wildfires are real.

SPEAKER_00 4:17

They're not they're not a joke. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:18

Um, but we we managed to do a couple things outside on Tuesday. We actually went to the Hillside Summer Nights, which Hillside is one of the um uh you know, the beyonds that we're visiting in this series, series. What's a series? Yeah, series, series, series. Um, and so uh because we we've already done the interviews and we've you know we filmed the episode already for that one that's coming out in a couple weeks, but they uh do these summer nights, and this past Tuesday, the 14th, was their first one. Yes, um, and they had uh the band Chicago, yeah, one of the members from the band Chicago was out there. Yeah, it is such a fun experience. They have vintage cars out there, people bring out their vintage cards.

SPEAKER_00 5:05

Some of them not so McLaren out there.

SPEAKER_03 5:07

I know there was some some really cool bunch of Corvettes, bunch of Corvettes, some old cool ones, some like yeah, oh my god. Uh, and then they have uh food from you know the restaurants in the in the neighborhood. Then a shop, and then there's a market. So where like makers come and and between the market and the food is the lawn where the stage is set and people were just sitting out there. It is it was such a fun time. You got you got some stuff? I did get some stuff. I I got a ring, I got a purse.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

Where's the ring? A hold on, let me see. I am not wearing it. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_03 5:39

It's in it's in it's in the room. But uh, I got a really I got a really cute uh zebra striped purse from one of the uh vintage dealers there.

SPEAKER_00 5:50

Dario got some uh uh Hot Wheels, Batmobile Hot Wheels, y'all. Before y'all want to get judgy, you know what I mean? Yeah, they said they were vintage Batmobile. I saw instantly, I was like, how much is this? Give me that. Give me that.

SPEAKER_03 6:03

There's some some people making some cool things out there.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

Yeah, that same uh that same seller had some dope artwork uh from what is it, China? Uh Chinese, uh Japanese artwork that was.

SPEAKER_03 6:15

I believe it was Japanese, Japanese, and it was it was like uh using fabric on on canvas.

SPEAKER_00 6:23

Yes, and it looked painted, but it wasn't painted. You look up close and it was threaded.

SPEAKER_03 6:28

Yeah, it was yeah, almost it wasn't embroidery per se, because it was like sheets of fabric, and then there was like thread over that. Yeah, it was really cool.

SPEAKER_00 6:37

It was crazy, and colors were popping.

SPEAKER_03 6:39

Yeah, so they do these. Uh there's four more, so there's a total of five, four more through the throughout the summer, and it's every Tuesday. From this episode, y'all. From this episode, yep. So if you're listening on Monday tomorrow, they have one. August 4th, they have a prince one, and I think we're gonna go try and go back to that.

SPEAKER_00 6:54

I'll try to go there.

SPEAKER_03 6:54

It's called Purple Night. Uh so I don't know. The mayor is super nice and Chef Tamborino, Chef, Chef Tamborina, Mayor Tamborina. Uh everyone that works for the mayor's office is just the best.

SPEAKER_00 7:08

Yeah, they cool.

SPEAKER_03 7:09

Yeah, we had a great time. I I loved going out there. Yeah. Uh, and then the next day on Wednesday, I guess we didn't do shit on Wednesday, but Thursday. Thursday, I went to the University of Chicago. They uh had the so if you don't know, the University of Chicago, their library is open to the public. All you need is an ID to go inside. And they have programming at their special collections, the Kim Park uh special is that what it's called? Kim Park Special Collection.

SPEAKER_00 7:39

Is it the Hannah Holborn?

SPEAKER_03 7:40

Hannah Holborn Special Collection is the thing, but Kim Park is the name of like when I um show notes. Oh, it's the Kim Park program. So I'm uh signed up for their newsletter. So I get their like weekly newsletter with all of the things that are happening. Sometimes it's more than a week once a week. They send out like what programming they have and if it's open to the public or if it's just for students. And this one was one that was open to the public. It was a zine making class, which if you don't know what a zine is, it's like a mini self-published or small published magazine.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

You gotta add it to the subjects.

SPEAKER_03 8:16

I know it was it was so fun to make. The uh person that was giving the class is she makes her own zines. Uh, and uh I'm like, you need to have like 50 more of these because it was like the sign-up was done so quick, like it was full super quick the workshop, and there was a long wait list. Yeah, so I had a great time. Uh and our friend Cairo works for the Kim Park uh programming, so I I just loved seeing her.

SPEAKER_00 8:43

It was a household name in this podcast.

SPEAKER_03 8:46

They also have something coming up uh soon with uh they were looking for volunteers um for the Pullman Railroad Days because Pullman it's the 100th year of electric rail this this year. Um and so that's coming up soon. Uh it is July 25th and 26th is the Pullman Rail Railroad Days. And we're gonna try to get there 25th and 26th.

SPEAKER_00 9:12

Oh my god, why is these weekends so packed? I know. Man.

SPEAKER_03 9:15

We're gonna try and go um on the 25th and see if we can if we can get out there slide through for a little bit. It's I'm just I have to see it. I want to see what they're doing. They are looking for volunteers if you wanna if you'd like to volunteer for that. Yeah. Um, and then let's see, what else did we do this weekend? Um like I'm trying to think of like what people be interested in.

SPEAKER_00 9:38

Well, if you're interested in Legos, uh you can see that.

SPEAKER_03 9:40

Oh, yeah, that was the last thing on my list. Legos.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

My uh birthday was last two Thursdays, Fridays ago. But uh Sarah got me three Lego sets. I went out the next day, got two more Lego sets, and then we went out this past week and got four more Lego sets. Addicting. Yeah, addicting. They are they are so fun. The collection, I'm learning this whole world of Legos.

SPEAKER_03 10:02

Also, I just realized it's not you can't say Legos, it's Lego. They're very particular people.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

One dude let me know on the uh on online, he was like, hey man. You can't say Legos, it's Legos, not Legos, but I mean, you know, okay. If I'm if I'm I'm saying Legos, you know what I'm saying? I'm I want to be like, remember where I'm from. No, no, but no, but I I respect it. Like I do, I do, because if somebody says 77 flavors, flavors.

SPEAKER_03 10:27

Oh, I don't know how you would mess that up, but like my favorite joke is to because Dario's name is often mispronounced. Always always say Dario or Durham. Yeah, no, I say I when I his alter ego, his evil, evil twin is Dario Durham.

SPEAKER_00 10:46

I don't know why they just make me giggle.

SPEAKER_03 10:48

So anytime he's being a menace, I'm like, there goes Dario Durham.

SPEAKER_00 10:53

If you ever hear us say that, you know I'm I'm acting a fool for some reason. I don't know what's going on, but uh anyway, uh enough about us. Um let's get into this. I so we I'm excited to talk about anything outside of Chicago fun. Yes, yes. Uh we love Chicago, obviously. We still gonna be doing it. But like it's it's cool, it's cool to like get out and see the connections to Chicago for sure. Not that this is what this is about, you know what I mean? We are telling their history, uh, but you know, it's uh cool if you want to, you know, have some kind of like tie-in how we do this. But um, yeah, so we are doing this Oak Park Beyond. I'm excited to uh get going.

SPEAKER_03 11:38

All right, before we get going, I just want to mention that this specific episode is sponsored by Oak Park and Beyond. Thank you so much for making this possible. They um also assisted us with uh scheduling the interviews for the rest of these episodes, so but they specifically sponsored this one. But this was so fun. I I actually uh I feel like I've mentioned this all the time, but I I lived in Oak Park for a year. Yeah. When I I so I graduated college, I moved to Mexico, and then I moved back. And for a year I lived in Oak Park after I moved back before I moved to the city, and I loved like living in Oak Park. Yeah, I lived in the art district very close to Austin. Yeah, and uh so you get like a you know, I felt like I was really close to the city, but the blue I lived like right off the blue line. Yeah, it was it's just such a cool town.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:29

I I I really liked it.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

Yeah. Um I've done comedy there. Uh the comedy complex. Uh I did comedy there a few times. Um, so there's some there's some times we had Oh, my therapist was in Oak Park. Shout out to Rachel. Man, what's up with the there was a food spot that we did. There was a collab between Soul and Smoke and the Spanish.

SPEAKER_03 12:48

Oh, it was a it was a um, wasn't it pizza? Pizza, something.

SPEAKER_00 12:53

I we gotta get the name. We gotta find the name because I'll put it I'll put it in the show notes. Yeah, it gotta shock them out proper because that food was so.

SPEAKER_03 12:59

That was so good.

SPEAKER_00 13:00

Man, man, it was good. So um I got a brief, I got some history that's pretty cool that we didn't necessarily hit on with uh Frank Lipo, because right right after this, we're gonna hand it over to him. Yeah, he's gonna take us uh take us home. But um, I I do have some things. This feels good to kind of go back to the uh old school way of uh doing it. Oak Park. First settled by Joseph and Betty Kettlestrings. They were uh Kettle strings? Kettle strings, yeah. You know? Yeah, kettle strings. Uh they were the earliest white settlers in the area, now known as Oak Park. Uh, but they came from Yorkshire, England. And uh they had two children when they came from uh Yorkshire, England, when they crossed the Atlantic.

SPEAKER_03 13:42

They've is it Yorkshire or Yorkshire?

SPEAKER_00 13:47

Yorkshire. No, no, I feel like it's Yorkshire. Yorkshire, England. I thought it was Yorkshire. That's what it feels like. Um I feel like uh uh that's something Dario Durham. I'd be up to the castle, castle somewhere saying it like that. Uh, but they had two uh kids, you know, on their way over here. Reason why I bring that up is because they had 11 in total. Oh they had 11 in total. We'll get there.

SPEAKER_03 14:14

Busy household.

SPEAKER_00 14:15

They yeah, yeah. They settled in Baltimore first, uh, then made their way Cincinnati, you know, so they were doing their westward journey. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:23

They were on their house, house, what is it called?

SPEAKER_00 14:26

What do you mean, hustle?

SPEAKER_03 14:27

Little House on the prairie.

SPEAKER_00 14:28

Oh, yeah. Oh, you you like that. Sarah locked into the new series. Uh the reboot, really.

SPEAKER_03 14:32

The reboot.

SPEAKER_00 14:32

Uh so yeah, they they moved to this area in roughly, so I tried to put this together to make make sense because they they built a home in 1835, and I'll get to that in a second. But they lived in 1832 in Cincinnati, and then it says a year after they start moving towards Chicago, which would put it at 1833, 34-ish, you know? And then they didn't build a house until uh a cabin until 1835.

SPEAKER_03 15:03

It takes a while.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

It takes a I know it takes a while, but like how long did that travel? Did it take two years to travel? You know, so so that's that's why I'm like, I don't know, you know, but right around that time they left and came to Chicago. Uh now that house uh they they built in 1835 was located by eight uh at 820 Lake Street, close to that site. Yeah. Now that is the uh the park that's there, and there's a plaque that you can go see. So we'll be and it's close to the public library. So we'll be back out there. I know exactly where that is. Yeah, yeah, we we got more episodes. We'll be back out there, revisit this part of the story.

SPEAKER_03 15:39

Um but also stay tuned. We are doing a program at the library in October over there.

SPEAKER_00 15:43

Yeah, yeah. So, so yes, all this information is is relevant. Um, but uh yeah, so 820 Lake Street is what their house, I believe that was their first house because they had two homes. Uh 1837, they purchased, uh Joseph purchased land, 173 acres worth of land.

SPEAKER_03 16:02

Purchased.

SPEAKER_00 16:02

Yeah, yeah, right, from the government. We know 1833 was the treaty uh of Chicago, yeah, where land was yeah, we we know about what it was. Yeah, he they took it, they took it 18 uh 173 acres of land from the government for 215.98. Boy.

SPEAKER_03 16:26

But how much was that today? You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 16:28

Look, we still looking for 40 acres in a mule. Okay, that's what you know you know. I just I just want 40 acres anyway. They moved to Chicago. Uh they moved, so they they built Atlanta, right? They they started doing their thing. If this is what Frank Lipo is gonna touch on. That's not a lot of money. That's how much is that?

SPEAKER_03 16:43

It's like $4,000.

SPEAKER_00 16:45

Oh, we can do that.

SPEAKER_03 16:46

I have $4,000.

SPEAKER_00 16:47

We can do that.

SPEAKER_03 16:48

I mean, I liquidate some things, you know what I'm saying? But I can get $4,000. You say it might have to move some. Move some things around.

SPEAKER_00 16:55

But we can get $4,000. Boom, bop, bam. You know, just a little shuffle.

SPEAKER_01 16:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:59

Um, so they they start building up the uh settle here, right? They start settling here. Now this their house also turned into like the uh kicket spot. It was like it turned into like a tavern and that kind of thing. So they were they were it's a tavern in those times. Yeah, the local. Well, I mean, think about it was close to Chicago. Chicago was taverning up.

SPEAKER_03 17:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:17

Matter of fact.

SPEAKER_03 17:18

But Oak Park later on became like a no-alcoholic.

SPEAKER_00 17:22

Right, right. Well, Frank gonna get into that. What is that called? Dry.

SPEAKER_03 17:26

Yeah, dry.

SPEAKER_00 17:27

Yeah, dry, dry, dry town.

SPEAKER_03 17:28

Dry town.

SPEAKER_00 17:29

But when they moved to Chicago, uh to this area, 1837, it was only what 350, 400 people living in Chicago. Chicago had just become a city. Just become a city. Not even a city, yeah. And and and that was, you know, that's when they purchased the land. You know what I mean? Like so 1837, they were city. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They was a city. We don't know when in 1837, right? You know what I mean? Because if it was March, okay, cool. You know, I mean March, you know, but um, yeah, so not a lot of people there. They start building up their, you know, settling, I should say, and people kind of respected them and you know, small town.

SPEAKER_01 18:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:05

They moved away uh to Chicago in 1843 for the schools and for the culture. We talked about this, you know, when things were annexed. We talked about this when we talked about Austin. It's kind of why Austin was, and we go again, Frank is gonna talk about that, but like, oh, excuse me, y'all, Oak Park was the reason why they all you all moved to uh you know Chicago at the time or wanted the annexation. Uh so it's interesting that they wanted the culture, you know, and there's more to it, you know, the amenities that Chicago was offering at the time, you know, like water. Water, fire in like fire department, paved streets, yeah. You know what I mean? Like lights, you know, not lights, not yet.

SPEAKER_03 18:45

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 18:47

Not like you know, they had candles.

SPEAKER_03 18:51

I'm sure Oak Park had candles.

SPEAKER_00 18:54

Oak Park, if y'all listen to this, I'm sorry. This is the part of the podcast. We have fun. Um uh but then they came back to uh Oak Park, the area known as Oak Park, sound like Prince, um, in 1855. And this is where they really started to build the community. Sorry about that, Pop. Uh, they started to build the community with the uh the children that they had. A lot of kids, eleven kids.

SPEAKER_03 19:18

You have to populate.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

Eleven shorties. I don't know, man. That's a lot.

SPEAKER_03 19:22

You raise each other, you know. You have them far enough. You know, once the like 13-year-old is 13, now they can raise the two-year-old.

SPEAKER_00 19:29

Yeah, true. That's because Joe was on his building block, boy. Speaking of Joe Kettle String building up the block. Uh, the first official name, because they had start building up, they start parceling off land, like, you know, sub doing what subdividers do, right? You know, they start building up the land community and everything like that. But the first official, unofficial name of the town was Kettle Strings Grove. Oh. Yes, Kettle Strings Grove.

SPEAKER_03 19:54

Yeah. I mean, they all I would name shit up for myself if I could. If I if I everyone is in Grove.

SPEAKER_00 19:59

Durham Park.

SPEAKER_03 20:02

Durham There is already a Durham. You can't.

SPEAKER_00 20:05

No, not Durham, not Durham Park. And Durham is in North Carolina.

SPEAKER_03 20:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:10

So Durham, Illinois. There ain't no Durham, Illinois, is it?

SPEAKER_03 20:13

I'm sure there is.

SPEAKER_00 20:13

Nah, it can't be. Look it up. Look it up. Look it up. Look it up. Because if it is, man, then that's good. There's a Cairo, Illinois. Durham, Illinois. My family slacked.

SPEAKER_03 20:22

There is absolutely a Durham Illinois. Is it? Where is it at? It's four hours away.

SPEAKER_00 20:27

Oh, we gotta visit.

SPEAKER_03 20:28

It is. Do what?

SPEAKER_00 20:30

This ain't about Durham, Illinois, but we gotta.

SPEAKER_03 20:32

Oh wow. It's I mean, it's it's almost it's almost on the river. Really? Mississippi? I mean Ohio. Downtown. Don't piss me out. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 20:45

Fair. Fair. Anyway, Dorhammer. Yeah, it was Kettle Strings Grove. But they they wanted to name the city, and actually it kind of was for a little bit until they realized they couldn't do it anymore. It was called Oak Ridge.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 21:03

Yeah. It sounds familiar because there is no ridge. And that's what they found out. And I believe they found out like how all the places that were like what was it, Urban Park? Uh you wanted to name it to uh a different name and everything like that. You find out because there's a post office somewhere that had it, and that that's what happened in this case. There was an Oak Park, uh Oak Ridge post office, right? You know, and I guess that was like the stamping point of now, this is what we call it here. And so they couldn't do it. And they were called Oak Ridge. Now, the reason why I was called Oak Ridge is when the kettle strings and others started to settle in this area. They realized that there's a lot of oak in this area, and it was, again, over the ridge.

SPEAKER_03 21:43

They were that was a very I mean that's that's how people name places. That's normal. Yeah. Cottage groves, you know, like all of it. That's all that I could think of.

SPEAKER_00 21:52

Bronzeville, like No, Bronze Bronzeville is different though. No, it was like I guess it was a bunch of black people. They look brides. You know what I mean? You know, that's fair. That's a that's a good one. I give you that one. It's on the board. Um it's on the board. Um, but then they uh, you know, they they couldn't use Oprah Radio, so they changed it to Oak Park. Um now the second home they they started building up, you know, once they got this land money, you know, they they started building up. And they had a second home that was near today's uh Oak Park Public Library.

SPEAKER_03 22:28

Now my question is they're not too far, like the houses are not too far.

SPEAKER_00 22:32

Not too far, which I wanna be clear because like there's a kettle strings home uh that is being occupied by a family right now. But it was it's the kid, the son, I believe, uh of the kettle strings. So one of their sons had a home, and this is their house. The kettle strings never lived there. Or it was meant to be for the kettle strings. So it'd be interesting to people that live there. I don't know if we can go open that house. They they actually are renovating that house and living in it. Um which uh I don't know. But my question is the house that's at 820 Lake Street where the plaque is. Do you think that's the original? I think that might be the second home. The second spot. I don't know. It's it was unclear to me and uh thank you. We we're gonna do more research and figure it out. But um yeah, so that's that's all we have. Yeah, I mean we're gonna do more episodes. We're gonna be by the party.

SPEAKER_03 23:29

Um but uh now that's my little Yeah, so so now now this is our uh coming up is our interview with Frank uh Lebo, who is uh uh the director of the uh Oak Park Lake Forest Museum, which uh River Forest. River Forest Uh not Lake Forest, River Forest Museum, and he is just smart, this is like the funnest, the smartest, most enthusiastic person that we've ever spoken to. I just feel like he's so passionate about what he does, and you can tell. And it just makes the experience so much more fun to be there. Like I want to learn everything you're excited to teach, you know.

SPEAKER_00 24:08

Yeah, for real.

SPEAKER_03 24:09

And uh even the volunteers, I was speaking to one of the volunteers, and spoiler, I bought a bunch of Tarzan books from I bought one of them each because they were selling them for 50 cents. So and I was speaking to her, she had previously been on the board at their old location, and she says she's been part of the organization for like over a decade, I think, at this point, 15 years, I think she said. And so everyone there is just like passionate about what they're doing. Um, and I feel like just going like when you go there, if you're watching this might be one that worth watching the watch for you to watch the video because if you're listening on Spotify or Apple, you can have the video up. If you don't want to watch every single release of it, because already's gonna put you know, there's a B-roll in there, you can you can see parts of the museum.

SPEAKER_00 24:54

I wish I could chapter this stuff off. You know what I you know what I can do is because you can't chapter a video, which is weird. Why why can't you do that? I'll put the timestamps on where you can skip to to see these different things. Uh I'll put a chapter list visibly. Yeah, no, no, visibly in the description and on the screen if you are watching. So um just so you can know what I'm gonna do.

SPEAKER_03 25:16

Um because I I think it's like I think there's a small like a smaller museum that uh holds so much history still. It's not a field and it's not a you know what I mean? Like it's not that giant, but it's it has so much of the the town's history in there.

SPEAKER_00 25:35

From the town.

SPEAKER_03 25:36

From the town. People have donated stuff, they constantly bring in things, they share their stories. There's a whole thing of archives that you can go through and Frank will talk about it in a little bit, but he says like people buy homes and then they come back and they're like, Can I look up the history of my the house that I just bought? It is such a rich town and um I just feel like you can feel that just by being in this one place, you know what I mean? Even if you've never walked around. So it was just such a pleasure to be there. I mean, it was it was so fun. I had a great time. I I want to go back. I want to go back and like actually walk again through because we were there for a few hours and we still didn't see everything. Right, you know, it's it's you know, it's small but mighty, but there's a lot to see in there.

SPEAKER_00 26:18

And there's uh a Lego scavenger.

SPEAKER_03 26:22

Like the mini the minifigures, you know. Um, and they do a lot of uh other uh uh programming in the neighborhoods too. So I know that they do uh like virginity that they had a bike a bike like uh guided trail. Like black folks that lived in the neighborhood that were like important to history. And we'll talk about one of them in the uh in the interview. You can take it any time, but you still have it. You can walk in and be like, where can I get the information from this to where you can take it at any time? So and it's like I think we'll take it in there. So it's a it's a good visit.

SPEAKER_00 27:01

Yeah, it's all good.

SPEAKER_03 27:02

But I can't wait for Frank to talk about this. I hope you learned something today. Let's get into it.

SPEAKER_00 27:07

Frank, take it away.

SPEAKER_04 27:14

And now you think about it, you're like, oh, that's genius. You know what they've uh last thought about that is the inspectors. Um Tim just said inspectors in today before they did the drywall and stuff. And they came in and they're like, Oh, this is so cool. Yeah. They're like, oh, because you know, there there's drop ceilings to just like nine, eight feet or something like that. And this is going up 13 feet. Yeah. So they're like, oh, that's super cool, cool, it's cool. And then they go, You'll probably have to cover it over though. And we're like, what? And and they said, for modern fire code, you shouldn't have this much wood exposed. And and they have like what's called like two-hour drywall. You should, especially for the staircase, you'd put on two-hour drywall over it. We're like, ah, it was such a gut punch because we said, Oh, and we found all this stuff. People, as you people walk in, they go, Oh, cool, I haven't really seen a space quite like this. And and and luckily, um, one of the architect maybe, or maybe one of the contractors was like, you know, I know there's a historic building code. So we follow the international building code. Right. But for historic buildings, they make some exceptions, and in there somewhere it says if it's sprinklered, there can be some exceptions. And since we're already putting sprinklers in, they're like, okay, now you don't have to cover all the guys that would have been horrible to cover it up.

SPEAKER_00 28:24

Because this is beautiful, so cool in here. Like it is gorgeous. I mean, like the I know you refinished it, but like just look how well preserved it is.

SPEAKER_04 28:32

You know, one of the things Oak Park's known for is some of the great old homes, and you know, individual people who especially have like really done like a really detailed job trying to like restore elements that are missing or damaged or whatever. And the guy who did a local painter, there's a bunch of great local painters. This guy, though, he's like he did a couple tests and he goes, Oh, there's like uh I can tell they're under the he just did a quick test, and it has um they call it orange shellac, and shellac is made from like beetle skins or um a shell or something like that. So it's kind of a natural product, and it's he goes, People don't use this much anymore because they use polyurethane, it's a real durable or he said, So do you mind if I try this? So he did a little section, and when he put it on, it had a little more of that golden tone. Because most of it is painted. There's some sections that weren't painted because they put drop ceiling before they painted it, but it was like, oh, it's we gotta do this now. Yeah, I should see it just more that's sort of budget-wise. We're like, oh, we have this much money, but but we don't have to pay as much for paint down here, right? Right.

SPEAKER_00 29:31

Uh so just so everybody knows, we are here with uh Frank Lipo, the historian. Lipo.

SPEAKER_04 29:37

Uh it's Lipo.

SPEAKER_00 29:39

Frank Lipo, uh at uh for OPARC Reinforce. So thank you for being on the episode. You might be one of the smartest uh people that we had on the podcast. Uh one of the top five, at least.

SPEAKER_04 29:52

Oh, that's what what a compliment.

SPEAKER_00 29:54

You differ there. Yeah, and that's probably it, actually. No, no, we've got a lot of people. Yeah, right. I know we got to get it. Yeah. Uh but so we'll get to this space right here, but we're, you know, Oak Park and Beyond, right? And so uh we know there's a lot of historic things that come from Oak Park. And are you from Oak Park from the area?

SPEAKER_04 30:13

No, I'm I'm like a fake native. My wife, my whoop my wife grew up um here and like graduate the high school with her four, you know, five kids who all graduate from high school. Um, and um my three daughters graduate from high school. So like I've been here for a long time now. But you're not gonna work at the historical society, work in a local history museum. You pick up so much stuff. Like everybody's research question you find out about when you're helping them, yeah. And all of a sudden you think, oh, I was there. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:38

It feels good to just be like, I was there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:40

Um, I'm I'm curious about the history of Oak Park itself because it's you're so close, like you're on the border of Austin, right? You're also Berwin is right there. So tell us a little bit about how Oak Park came to be its own thing today.

SPEAKER_04 30:56

Yeah, sure. So um when um land started being sold by the federal government in the 1830s, you know, people all over today's Metro Chicago and all over the city neighborhoods, they're all were like just buying up land, you know, a lot of farming, a lot of other, you know, small business or you know, a general sewer at a crossroads kind of thing. So all that just like you know that from a lot of your other work, you know, there's all these kind of common history of people just buying a chunk of land and you know, deciding to make a life of it and you know, build up a community. So a similar thing happened in Oak Park as it was happening all over, but in the earliest days, um, Oak Park wasn't its own independent municipality in an urban area with a fire station. We're talking about Old Fire Station. Yeah, oh yeah. But we um it was um not an independent village, its own municipality till 1902. Sometime around in the 1850s, Cicero Township was organized. And as you know, from like Metro Chicago, townships were like almost the first form of government, which is a bigger area, and often you see like New Trier Township High School or Proviso Township High School. And so Oak Park, what's now Oak Park, was part of the Cicero Township that actually stretched all the way like into Garfield Park. So that was this bigger Cicero Township. And of course, what happened as happened all around much uh all around the city of Chicago, um, the eastern part of Cicero gets annexed to Chicago, and then a little bit more of Cicero. So by the by the 1870s, um, Cicero Township consisted of today's Austin neighborhood of Chicago, today's Oak Park, today's Berwin, and today's Cicero. So that was the old Cicero. So 1870s on, Oak Park becomes much more of like a bedroom community, a stop on the the first train line that came out of Chicago happened to be the old Chicago Northwestern, which there was a stop in Oak Park. So as early as 1848, there started to be a train kind of to this area. And so by the 1870s, Oak Park started evolving to a little bit more um, again, it always had a diversity of people and different income levels and stuff, but a little more elite, you know, some of the grander homes were being built. And Austin and Oak Park, the people who were elected to Cicero board from those two communities, Austin was always a little bit bigger. And there started because in the as early as the 1870s, 80s, there started to be a little reset and that meant. You know, like we want to be our own town, right? Like the people in the Austin, so Oak Park's a place in the map, it's a post office, it's like, oh, the the first congregational church of Oak Park, but it's not its own government, it's part of Cicero Township, like almost like a hamlet within the area. And so, long story short, Austin Oak Park was squabbling for a while. And in 1899, the year after our 1898 firehouse was built in Old Cicero, Austin gets annexed to the city of Chicago. And the referendum where it happened, there's all their questions. They don't do that anymore. But they had like, should all Cicero be annexed in Chicago? Should just Austin, should Austin Oak Park and just Austin was annexed to the city of Chicago. And when you analyze the election results, Austin voters wanted to stay in Cicero. And Oak Park voters were the difference. Yeah because they just didn't, they weren't getting along anymore. And they said, we want to be our own town. And so if Austin's in Chicago, we kind of incorporate them. So within a couple years, Berwin and Oak Park be forming their own towns. And so moving forward from that point, the same election where Austin was annexed to the city of Chicago, Oak Park and River Force come together to form a high school. Prior to that, River Force had no high school, and Oak Park had like a high school as part of its like Cicero School. Yeah. Because Cicero Township also did schools. So it's kind of like a step-by-step thing, I think I'm saying. You know, there's like early kind of pioneer days, scattered houses. You know, there starts to be some finer, brander homes, and oh, that's a that's kind of a more of a bedroom community. People are taking the train in Chicago, and then it evolves into by the turn of the century by 1900. Oak Park is had grown from like 5,000 in 1890 to 10,000 in 1900, to 20,000 in 1910, to 40,000 in 1920, to 60,000 in 1930. So Oak Park was like doubling everything. And so all of this like farmland on today, what you know, for people who aren't familiar, North Avenue is our north border, Roosevelt Road's our south border, Austin Boulevard, the border with Austin, is to our east, and Harlem's the border to River Forest to the west. And um, that area was kind of central. Like we're right here on Lake Street, like in Lake at Lombarn Oak Park. That's where the Green Line is, you know, right behind Lake Street. That's where the Chicago Northwestern now, the Metro, you know, West Line is. So essentially, this central section really was building kind of from the center outward, north and south. So after 1900, the so-called South Prairie south of Madison to Roosevelt, and the North Prairie kind of north of Chicago Avenue, just kept on building up. And you know, different style housing, which is a real joyable part today, I think. Yeah, there's a diversity of people by choice, even compared to some communities, and also diversity of housing styles and types. Right. So we have these big 1920s courtyards buildings, we have you know really fine, grand single family homes, and also more modest single family homes, bungalows, and and um it I there's sections of town that were a little bit more like track housing, like happened like post-World War II. But even then, it was like smaller scale. It wasn't like um, you know, somebody maybe bought built 10 homes or somebody bought and bought a chunk of land and built you know individual homes down a block. So it's a little bit more um visual diversity in the housing styles and types. It's not like, you know, it goes on for miles and miles of all six similar buildings. It's kind of uh, and of course, since we're an older community, you know, essentially um mostly built up by World War II, but there's been a bunch of infill development or you know, tearing down of certain buildings. Um, but part of that's guided in our community, in Oak Park specifically, um, with a uh historic preservation ordinance since the 70s. So we have like three historic districts. And so it's not like some people think with historic districts that, oh, you can't ever change anything. It's more the change is guided. Right. You know, you can't just like put a big addition to the front of your house. The idea is almost like the common spaces when you walk the streets. Yeah. And it's not typically, unless it's an oak park landmark, um, inside. So, you know, you can now you can do you know a rehab and we take out the whole kitchen. It's not like, oh, it's an historic building. Yeah, that's the balancing act, I think, for all these things. It's how do you balance people's like individual property rights in their own taste with some of the common good? Because we we think I'll I'll speak for the whole community now. A lot of people think Oak Park has a very distinctive architectural style and type. And there's a fair amount of tourism, you know, here at O Park Ware Force Museum. But we have, of course, the Franklin Red Home Studio, we have the Ernest Hammerway birthplace. There's been some efforts recently related to the legacy of Dr. Percy Julian and what should be done with the Julian house or the Julian legacy. So it's the idea of like different, different stories, and that's the best part of my job is when you're asking me earlier if I'm a native, it's like, no, you to me, it's all the stories. You tell people stories, and it's like there's always a new story. Somebody's walking in with a cool story, and people are contacting me all the time and saying, Do you want this old scrapbook grandma had? And I was like, Oh, what is it? Oh, she graduated from the high school in 1924, and you know, there's all this original stuff. It's like, oh, we have this big exhibit on the high school history. Maybe we can put it right a case, right? You know, so to me, um, the story's going on because the people who are living today, you know, talking about your own family history, anybody talks about their family history, you know, you always look back to your folks, your grandfolks, and and I think a community is kind of like that. You look at what's happening like right now, and then you're saying, Oh, that's similar to what's happened in the past, or it's different. And so there's always that kind of touchstone of I think that you have some continuity over time, you don't want to have some continuity, but change isn't a bad thing, even when history, right? You want you don't want things to be locked in time, you want change, maybe be a little more gradual and more respectful. And I hope that Oak Park doesn't physically change as much as some communities. We sort of, because of the historic districts, there's a little bit less teardowns than some. And I think that's important because even though a building might be old and you need a lot of work, somebody can come in and put that work into it. All of a sudden you got this cool house. So that's kind of the trade, the trade-off, I think, sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 38:52

I feel I I love the fact that the you can work on history but kept it, keep it preserved. And it doesn't lose its status. You know, we know Chicago, the moment you change one thing in Chicago, they it loses the status in a heartbeat, right? Yeah. But do you find a lot of the residents, seeing that they're the community is close knit and they kind of look towards the elders, do they like the preservation of the way things were? Uh even though they have that flexibility to add on to maybe, or do they keep things together?

SPEAKER_04 39:20

Well, that's a really interesting question. I think this is true for probably a lot of communities, Belgius, you know, yeah, Special Park and what I know best related to some of this stuff, is the joking answer, but I think it's half serious, is yes, 10 different people, and there'll be 10 different opinions. I mean, you know, we're in a opinionated community, and there are a lot of people with different opinions. I think as a community as a whole, the fact that they passed the historic preservation ordinance, and even though there's some pushback over time on certain aspects of it, I think, and I find my personal experience that people will come here and say, I just bought this old house. Do you have any old photographs on it? Yeah, yeah. I want to do something with the porch, and it seems like it's kind of inappropriate the way the porch is now. Maybe you have an old photograph or a similar house. So I think there's a real enthusiasm by individual people and not just for the single family houses. Like some people live in some, you know, great old condo buildings, or even, you know, you're you're renting, but you really think it's a cool building you're renting in, right? So people will come by and ask about the history of, you know, wherever they're living. So to me, I think there's a lot of enthusiasm for the history. I think, like anything else, if if it took a little bit longer to get a permit because you had to have a meeting, sometimes people just get annoyed or like, well, I wanted to start construction in May and it's not till June now. So there's certainly some of that pushback. And I think it's legitimate that you know, you kind of say how fast the process can be. Um, I was talking to the person who runs like is a staff member at Village Hall, and they were doing some studying, and there's, you know, I it's a pretty high number. Over 90% of the permits are like issued for like changes, even without like a meeting or anything, because it's like, oh, it's this roof and you're replacing it for similar material. Boom. You know, you're just you know painting the existing, you know, wood or whatever. So some of the permits are pretty like routine. Yeah, yeah. Um, so I think a very focused answer to your question is I I think there's a difference of opinion, but I think there's I would say the majority of people and people over time have kind of sought out Oak Park a little bit for some of that history. Yeah, like I was looking to get a cool old house, and I looked in LeGrange, Evanston, Oak Park, maybe Ravenswood, you know, some Chicago neighborhood. So you kind of get that like if you're the type of person that like appreciates old sort of old structures, historic buildings, Oak Park's one of the places you kind of think about. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:31

Y'all, right now we are here in Hillside for their summer nights that's lasting five weeks, including this one that you're watching right now. They got four more weeks going on, but let me tell you, there's so much to do here. They really put on the night show. There's food, there's cars rolling by, there are the vintage cars. I mean, honestly, they got a McLaren here, they have a ton of Corvettes. I'm a Corvette stan. Very cool to be here. If you live out here in the Western suburbs, make sure you get out here and check them out. They also have a Prince night, which is pretty cool.

SPEAKER_02 42:00

Okay, the girl that runs this roof is really good at printing. I got this train, and then I got this purse that matches my outfit. How perfect is this?

SPEAKER_00 42:10

They do this for four more weeks uh from this video. And uh yeah, make sure you get out here. It's only a 25-minute trip from Chicago, and you can still party, kick it, and uh see some really cool cars. Watch the Corvette fly by.

SPEAKER_02 42:26

I love that.

SPEAKER_00 42:27

Yeah, I mean, we speaking of older and historic places, we're in one, right? We're in one. This is uh firehouse number two, you say? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:34

And I don't think we even mentioned where we're at.

SPEAKER_00 42:37

Yeah, right. So we are at the uh Opart River Forest Museum, and this was the old uh firehouse number two.

SPEAKER_04 42:43

Yeah. Cicero Firehouse. Cicero Firehouse. Yeah, because when it was built, it was part of Cicero Town. So this was built in a different time. Yeah, right, yeah, right, yeah, right, yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 42:50

I guess it wasn't even but the reason why I bring it up, this is a remarkable restoration here. Um, you want to tell us about how they flipped the boards and and that is just gorgeous. You know, I love telling the story.

SPEAKER_04 43:01

Yes, I know, yeah. I'm I'm loving this and I'm I'm actually um, you mean when you when you work at a place like this, you watch people come in and I do see a lot of people like it's a unique space because what we did is um the village world park when when that was created in 1902 after Cicero Austin was annexed and they kind of got their own independence. Um, of course, the first building they had was this four-year-old firehouse. So this was the firehouse, and there's a meeting hall upstairs. And so what the village did is use it for all these different purposes through the years. But by uh around 2005, six, in that period of time, it was like, well, we're not gonna use it for public works purposes anymore because they built a big new public works building on the other side of the tracks. So they're trying to figure out to do with this. And so we had some discussions, and so we essentially signed a 30 year lease with a 20 year option that would allow us to use this at that point pretty dilapidated building, old systems, no sprinklers. There had been at least two minor fires in this old firehouse over the years. And so we agreed to raise money privately. So there wouldn't be tax dollars for it in exchange for the ability to be here that long. So no local taxes were used in terms of building this out. And so we basically overtook it took a period of time, actually from start to finish, almost 10 years of like fundraising. And we were able to raise upward of a million bucks. And we kind of did a gut rehab, except um, gut rehab of the systems, because there was no sprinklers, so we put in sprinklers. There was an old boiler in the basement from the 50s, and so no air conditioning, so we put in the new modern ductwork, and we put geothermal HVAC, dug three 500-foot wells outside. So all new systems, but to your question, very focused in a focused way, is we found under all these drop ceilings, because they'd use it for different purposes through the years after stopping a firehouse in 1916, found all of this wood, um, walls, ceilings, floor, but the floor wood was really damaged. You know, and it's been brown for more than a day a hundred you know, plus years. And so we had a uh a guy come in um Elm Floor in River Forest, and he's like, he comes in, he goes, Have you considered flipping the floors? And we're like, What? Well, flipping the floors, they're thick plank boards because when this was built in 1898, it was kind of like a barn-like space because it was horse-drawn fire wagons. So he we we kind of had some trepidation. He's like, Do you have a crowbar? And we pried up one of the boards, and you can see the underside because they're thick planks, they're literally this thick. And um, so by flipping them over, we're able to refinish, and you find it's like 1898 wood that has this warm, kind of honey, yeah, honey brown, golden kind of tone. And so um, so we have the walls, this, the the ceiling, and the floors are the original wood. And yet, we kind of said old and new, right? Even though we're, you know, a museum and we focus on history, you have the modern systems, but within the structure. Yeah, and we hope eventually, I was mentioning, um, we're actually adding an elevator to the building, which will be ready by this fall, and some extra restrooms, a little more, you know, accommodate some more of the public's visits. And we someday hope to do some more restoration work on the exterior because there's some missing kind of cornice details across the front. Um, but even sort of step-by-step as we can afford it, um, we're gonna replace some glass on the second floor that's like beautiful, like arched glass that's been gone since we think the six, pardon me, the sixties or early seventies. So it's kind of fun to also because you can afford it that way. Yeah, and also do it step by step because you know, we couldn't afford to put an elevator in right away. Right. And we felt badly, and we were using the first floor for like meetings and stuff because we want people to not be able to get to the second floor. Yeah. So now the whole space gets activated, which is really exciting.

SPEAKER_02 46:40

That's amazing. And there's you found whole the pole poles. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 46:44

So under I was talking about the like drop ceilings down to like eight or nine feet in some places, and we got to that top layer. Um, one day I was uh I was walking into the building, and in addition to the money we raised, Lake Theater, which is a big theater here in town, you know, um owned by Classic Cinemas, the owners of the time, Willis and Sheryl Johnson, we talked about funding, and they said, How about if we fund some of the demolition? Because we knew there's always drop cities. Oh yeah, because oh, but you got a crew, you could do that for a period of time. So I come in one morning and they're prying off the drywall, and it's like half of it, you see a board over the circle. And we're like, oh, we we knew there must have been fire pole, right? And so, um, and then we found the second one. We thought, oh, there's one, but we figured out from some historical material in the newspaper, there's probably like a sleeping room and a break room, or like a um, and so there's two rooms, so they probably each had their own fire pole. So people could be sleeping on one side and you know, playing cards on the other side or whatever. And so um, it wasn't until a couple years ago now that we we researched it and made a replica fire pole. So it wasn't original. People say, it's so good you found the fire pole. I'm like, no, it's been gone since 1960. But we worked with some good craftspeople who were able to like figure out like what would actually you know be historically accurate. So yeah, it's it's really fun now. You have kids coming. Of course, everyone wants to slide down and we're like, oh yeah. Our insurance isn't that good. Even firefighters uh now they're getting they've gotten away from them.

SPEAKER_02 48:08

And so you know they don't want to have like bad knees and broken ankles or um there's a ton like a ton of cases. There's so we're walking around and I'm like, I need five hours in here to look at everything. I feel like even though it's um it just feels like you're covering so much of the town's history in just like this one is is all cookbooks.

SPEAKER_03 48:32

And like and that that's the one I gravitated towards. I love I love to cook. So I'm like, um what's what's your favorite kind of like case or exhibit that you've had recently?

SPEAKER_04 48:41

Um two two favorites or bigger ones. Interesting thing for like local history museums in general or museums, um, you know, you have almost more off-display, well, you definitely have like more off display. And we have this big research center, people research for their homes and their families and other topics. But the exhibits are tricky because I fall in love with it after we do it. You know, usually the staff, we have two full-time staff or a part-time staff, you know, we have we have dozens of volunteers. When you came in, there's a volunteer sitting here. And there's like when I'm working with them or a volunteer is working, and and we sometimes have had like some outside consultants do it certain things, you fall in love with entirely, but you know it's gonna come down because you gotta have some changes, et cetera.

SPEAKER_01 49:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 49:21

So I we just took down right before you came just this week, uh, this exhibit we had called um called Open House: The Legacy of Fear Housing. Yeah. Now we're gonna still tell those stories, you know, in the community, but we had it up since 2018, and it was time for a change. And we're also kind of redoing as part of this elevator project, uh making like this meeting space upstairs. So I just fell in love and I was kind of the co-curator with um Sarah Doherty, who's a professor at North Park University, Liz grew up in Oak Park and was on our board at that time. And it was just so fun, like going down and because I think sometimes like the more difficult history stories, you know, it's like people like my grandfather lived around here. Was he one of the more racist people that didn't want black people living? You know, like people have like those kinds of thoughts. And so it was good kind of really just shedding light on, you know, good people, sometimes less than good people, but over time, how the community kind of chose to be more diverse community. And so that that you know, that we're still gonna tell some of those stories, but I it's it's taking down the house up there. We built like a house to show off that story was like kind of hard for me for a couple of days. I'm like, oh man, but then you go, Oh, the space is kind of nice now. On to the next story, you know, there's so much in this. The other thing we're kind of sitting in the space here. Um, the um we work with O Park River Force High School, where and we're right down, we're just down Lake Street, you know, just really a few blocks. And we have high school students walk over and volunteer here. This summer we have about seven high school students who are volunteering. And one of the things that's amazing is we just talking to the administration, they had such great history that was kind of in one closet that they didn't access that much. And they knew it was important. They saved it. Yeah. And so we work with them to first get the archives of the high school. So we have now, and um, you know, part of our edition, we have some extra storage space. We're gonna be moving that stuff in that new storage space, is um, and then at the same time talking about the approaching 150th anniversary, which was the school's established in 1873 with three students. Um three students in 1873. And so the first graduate class wasn't until 1877 with those three students. So we um we said, oh, we're gonna do this in time for 2023, but we're gonna keep it up for several years, kind of looking ahead to that hundredth anniversary 150th anniversary of the first graduating class in 2027. And so that's been a really cool thing for me is my wife, I mentioned her my my in-laws, my you know, brother-in-law, sister-in-laws, my three daughters are all graduates of Oprah. And so you learn a lot looking through those old scrapbooks and you know, memorabilia, everyone likes a cool like t-shirt or uniform from a you know, the baseball team from the 60s or whatever. But stories like having a timeline or having some like pro stories, it's like, so yeah, I've told you, you ask me one answer, I give one for answer, I give you two. Through housing and the exhibit one's gone, but again, we still have those artifacts, we're still gonna tell those stories, and then the exhibit is still up. And you start to see people who maybe are just visiting relatives and they're like, Oh, I was a graduate of OPRF, I've been gone for years. Yeah, and then all of a sudden they have they can, I can see if I can find myself in the yearbook. We have a bunch of the yearbooks I didn't show you on the shelf over there. Um, on top of the card catalog, the last card catalog of Oak Park River Force High School. Oh, we gotta run through that, yeah. Um so it's kind of fun going through there and yeah, seeing um, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:19

So that's that's I mean, it feels like it's that's I I like the high school because that's you don't really see that as something that is kind of recent in when you talk about the history sake of it, yeah, um, aspect of it. Uh, but the people of Oak Park is something that, you know, I don't know, maybe our viewers and listeners may not know a whole bunch of this, but there's some really notable people from Oak Park or that have lived in Oak Park. You want to talk about that?

SPEAKER_04 52:44

Yeah, it's um it's a it's a it's a long list, and so um everyone has some of their favorites. Um the uh I think I'll start with the obvious ones, and people I think more people know about them is you know, Frank Lloyd Wright, the architect, you know, number of homes here, the largest concentration of homes and other buildings in Oak Park workforce. So wow, big local story, lived here for 20 plus years, etc. And then and then a little subsidiary story that you were pointing out on our wall is um John Lloyd Wright, his son, was the inventor of Lincoln Logs, right? So you have like father and son, like two little creative stories. Then the other person's probably most commonly talked about as far as like famous Oak Parkers, is Ernest Hemingway. Um was born here. His his his um parents were both graduates of Oak Park High School. Um both came, like both sides of the family came like 1870s, like after the Civil War. Yeah, so there's a real rich deep story. His pat his uh grandfather, paternal grandfather Ansa Hemingway, was a Civil War um soldier, as a lot of people were there. He actually was an officer with um with with uh black troops. They at that point, unfortunately, they had like white officers out for black troops, but they you know, so he was actually tied to the Civil War era and had so you have like all these stories that you start getting into these big national stories, right? So Hemingway Wright, boom, that's people talking, and and Hemingway's birthplaces opened for tours too, just like the Frank Ludwright Home and Studios opened for doors and Unity Temple, his buildings open for tours. But then um is beautiful. Um, yeah, just really beautiful spaces. Um, we do a fair amount. We have upstairs an exhibit on is the guy who wrote the Tarzan books, Edgar Rice Burroughs, lived here for not quite 10 years in like four different houses. He wrote this first Tarzan story on the West Side, kind of by today's United Center. He grew up in that neighborhood and then uh moved to Park for a time, moved back there, wrote the first story, then came out here and lived in several places. So there's a lot of interesting, you know, you can look at the the work of Tarzan, but also he was known for John Carter of Mars. He was a very early science fiction writer that people, when they start looking to his story, they're like, I had no idea. He was like kind of a pioneer in that field, too. So that's another person that there's historic sites around town. There's a couple of the homes that we lived in that have markers on them. Um, we're working more with the community as a whole and you know with other partners and stuff, talking about the legacy of Dr. Percy Julian, um, African-American chemist, uh hundred plus. Um I think I'm I'm I'm I'm shooting it short here. I um might be closer to 200, 150 patents in chemical operations of various sorts, uh helping develop cheaper and better and um uh uh compounds that led to glaucoma um um um medication, um rheumatoid arthritis medication that was really expensive. And he got a version of it as much expensive. So Dr. Julian, great figure, moved here with his family in 1950, twice his house was attacked. And bad moment in O Park history because as a black person moved into a community which did have a black population very small, but even had its own black church from 1905 to 1930. So there was uh this idea of he's moving to the estate section. Whoever attacked his house twice, or it was the same person twice, we don't know that nobody was caught. Bad news is that it happened. Good news is people that's almost the start of our modern civil rights movement that people were like, that's not right. The week after the first time I was attacked, um, a couple hundred people, a little bit less than that, and then it grew, showed up at village the village board meeting and said he should be protected. Dr. Julian's uh treasurer. He had been named the Chicago Sometimes Man of the Year in 1950, right before he moved in because people were aware of the accomplishments. He was about 50 years old at that time, kind of on the peak of his career. He was working for a Glydon Paint Company, he was head of the research division, and within a year or two, he opened up his own research lab in Franklin Park, talking about the broader area of the West Suburbs are connected, Westcoe County. So, Dr. Julian, phenomenal, his his wife was uh he had a PhD, um, uh, went to um DePye University in Greencastle, Indiana, what got his master's from Harvard, went to the University of Vienna, got his PhD. He chose Oak Park and lived here from 1950 to 1975 when he died. We have a middle school name for him now, one of our two middle schools. Um, and his wife Anna Julian was an incredible um, she was one of the first women to get a PhD in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania. So, you know, really accomplished people. Um, but there's a lot of fun stories too, people like just like goofy stories. In River Forest, the Jap family, J A P P were the founders of Jay's Potato Chip. And after Pearl Harbor, uh December 7th, 1941, Japs as became a pejorative term for Japanese because of you know the snake attack at Pearl Harbor. And so they changed it to Jay's Potato Chips, but still brought by the family who lived in River Forest. Um, the guy who invented Twinkie, uh Twinkies, yeah, lived in Oak Park and then River Forest later. And the plant on Lake Street and River Forest was Continental Bakery, had a couple different names to it. Um they they had these golden cakes, they'd put like straw fresh strawberries in, like strawberry shortcake.

SPEAKER_01 57:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 57:46

And that time, we're talking about um 75 years ago and a little bit more um actually pushing 100 years ago now. I'm sorry. They they basically didn't have the kind of refrigeration to get fresh strawberries year-round. So like the they'd have these cake and they uh they what are we we gotta fill it with something else off season? And they came up with like cream filling. Oh, and now they say, well, Twinkies might last forever. Oh wow. And so he he said um he was traveling across the country. The story he told goes uh it was on a train and he's he saw like this billboard for twinkle toe shoes, and he's like, Twinkies, like he just came up with the name. And so wow, like this thing that you know everyone's whether you love them or hate him or have no opinion, people know about Twinkies. And right here in Oak Park, this guy lived from the in the 1920s all the way till he passed in the 70s, maybe early 80s. So you have these people who did a bunch of interesting things. I mentioned um talking about um this sort of wall of fame we have, and we have a painting of his on the wall. The guy who's one of the most famous University of Illinois football coaches, um uh a guy named Bob Zupke, Z-U-P-P-K-E Zupke. He was a legend at University of Illinois. The field is still like Bob Zupke field. He started out as a high school coach in Michigan, came to um Oak Park Wareforce High School in 1910, and in 1910, 11, and 12, undefeated teams. And they're saying, oh, they even did like barnstorming. They went to like they played Fenway Park in Boston with the high school. They went to the West Coast and played in the Seattle area. They'd hop on a train, they were just like barnstorming era. And after three years at this really big public high school, Oak Park was, you know, what Metro Chicago, we were the in the 20s, we were the third largest population behind Chicago, Cicero, and Oak Park was number three in all of Metro Chicago. Wow. So, I mean, because we were 60,000 plus population then. Naperville was a few thousand. Yeah, Aurora was a, you know, there were very small communities in, you know, at these satellites, you know, out further out away from Chicago. And so Zapke got snatched up. It's like, it's pretty rare to have a coach go from high school to college. But they say this guy really is, you know, a great guy. And uh, so it's like these stories of people who kind of left their mark in different ways. Um, I mentioned the guy, um, um Johnny Lattner, um, the guy who uh won the Heisman Trophy at when he's at Nerd Aim, started out and was a star at Fenwick High School here in Oak Park. So, in addition to all the O Park World Four stuff, Fenwick High School is another high school um in that you know obviously has a legacy of its own. And so you think about people who lived here briefly, Betty White. Yeah. Um people talk around Betty White, right? She was born here in Oak Park, lived in an apartment for about three to four years of her life, the start of her life, and then her dad got a job in California. She never came back to live, but she visited because she had like grandparents and a favorite aunt, and she'd come back and forth. And years ago, before I was even working here, there's correspondence with my predecessor, reached out to her, like, tell us about what you remember of Oak Park. And she goes, I still probably say I was born in Oak Park. My aunt and uncle and my grandparents used to visit. And I a lot of people say you were born in Chicago, but like, no, I I this Oak Park's part of Chicago, but different. And so she, you know, she really, you know, lived to be 99 years old. And after she died, we had a little, um, we had like an event in front of the Lake Theater, the community did, because there was talk about having a hundredth birthday party to see if she could come back. She didn't make that, but we had a nice celebration of her life. So, you know, these people that um are here for their whole lives or just a few years. Um, John Mahoney, the actor who died a few years ago, star Frasier movies like he was in movies like Moonstruck. Um, he chose to live at O Park. He was a founder of Steppenwolf, and he he just like liked living, he liked the town. He liked the Midwest friendliness. He would say that he didn't want to like hang out in California. He just wasn't his thing. He'd like to come back and sort of being semi-anonymous. I mean, people knew he was in Living Town, but people kind of respected his privacy, and so he could, you know, go to a bookstore, have dinner out. So I think it's that like not just those ancient figures, people who lived here, you know, 100 years ago, but people who like are choosing to live here now, and that's the fun part of any community, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:49

You know, I think what just listening to you speak and just like knowing even more about you know, outside of Chicago's four walls, Oak Park still kind of has that mentality of we're still Oak Park, you know, from back in the you know, late 1800s, right? And and and still moving with in that capacity, right? Yeah, um and has given a lot to society into the greater country. Um, I mean, Ernest Hemway, Tarzan, Tarzan is still blowing my mind, actually. Like, like Tarzan being made right here is like, I mean, we had that and um uh Wizard of Oz is it's crazy to me. And among other things. Do you still feel like Oak Park is uh and River Force are kind of like those old, the the old figures of themselves that said, hey, we we want to kind of go to Chicago, but also we want to be ourselves.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:38

How does that because it feels like well though this this is funny because uh you know, I obviously a lot of communities, you you gotta be careful because it's either too much too much stripic pride in a bad way or like arrogance or something. Because of course, people like in every community, there's people come back and sometimes multi-generational people. I think there's a large percentage of people who come back. Um, somebody was researching their house at one time and they, oh, where are you from? You know, they just said bought a house and I was helping them with research at that point. And they said, like, oh, Columbus, Ohio, I think it was. So it sticks my mind. And I said, Oh, Columbus Ohio, that's a nice place I've been, you know, I've only been through there, never been there. I said, Well, what brings Joe Park? Well, actually, I'm coming home. I had different corporate jobs, and I got a chance to come to Chicago, and I thought it'd be fun to raise my family, you know, back in back in my hometown. I really have fond memories. So there's that kind of um, but I think this is a real interesting thing. I'll crowd in my brother-in-law, um, before he was my brother-in-law, I think, like, you know, you know, before my wife, now my wife and I were married. And I think I was like, he was talking about we were talking about doing something, and he said, Oh, I can't help. I'm moving, I'm helping my I can't, you know, do what we're talking about doing. I'm gonna be moving my friend out to the suburbs, like helping move, you know, friend move, right? Out to the suburbs. And I'm like, oh, like, where's he moving from? And he's like, Oak. I'm like, relatively new to O Park, then I'm like, Oak Park's a suburb too. But he's the the idea of like city, city, yeah, Chicago, and then Oak Park, and then other suburbs. There's truth, I think, in a couple levels, in the sense of we're an urban suburb, we're connected. We have the the green line, the blue line, the metric line. Obviously, a lot of bus lines can be a little bit more than a lot of things. You can see the skyline from like the edge of Oak Park. Well, you guys walk outside the museum and you know, see the skyline, as you're saying, right? So to me, it's like that's the beauty, and it's a kind of a balancing act of Oak Park. One of the beautiful things about it is that we have some blocks and neighborhoods that are like more like spacious lawns and like bigger homes. We have rather more modest homes with smaller yards. We have like two flats and three flats, you know, Chicago, you know, Chicago in through and through. We have um, you know, more modern and downtown O Park apartment buildings built in the last 20 years that people really want, you know, contemporary. We have um uh a lot of 1920s courtyard buildings, which I'm partial to, those big, you know, big they're bigger buildings, but they have the big central courtyard and you know, the breathing space, right? Um, so I think it's like, and then there's infill like later. I mean, I personally don't I hope that O Park doesn't like wholesale raise neighborhoods for new stuff. I think it's gotta be like a little more cautiously done. But you know, a house will burn down if burns down, or you know, things happen. Yeah, and I think this idea of old and new, like I like walking some blocks and you're like, you go like, oh, there's uh some great, like classic, all from the same era, and then oh, that's kind of a cool house from a slightly different era. So it's sometimes because it was a side yard that it took decades for somebody to sell off and somebody built something later. Um, so yeah, I think Oak Park is that the balancing act of being part of Chicago and proud of it, yes, but also a little bit separate from Chicago and proud of that too. Yeah, you know, it's it's so it's a little bit um you're kind of holding those two things in your mind that are a little bit to some people, maybe it's a little bit like are you part of Chicago or not? Well, yes, both. Yeah. Like we're not, but we also are. And I think um through the years, it wasn't just one time back in the you know, the Austin days when Austin got annexed to Chicago, there's a couple other Efforts through the years, maybe we should just annex to Chicago. You know, um, and when Evanston, like, you know, stopped annexation that direction, O Park did a similar thing because west of us in Cook County, there's some of the towns hillside, you know, I can just go through that. There's some settlement, but there's still some farmland and stuff. So O Park sort of became a little bit of again, maybe this is too arrogant, but a little bit more of the capital of West Cook County, the bigger town, the older town, and our neighbors to the west. We there's connections. I was, it's when you look to the history of it, Westchester. There's a bunch of Oak Park investors who are like buying land out there to build homes, right? So there's a connection among us. And back in the height, when that Marshall Field building, I was we were showing, uh looking earlier that this new Barnes Noble just opened up in the old Marshall Fields building that we had. Oak Park and Evanston had these branch, uh suburban branches of uh Marshall Fields, and we just got Barnes and Noble because it'd been vacant for years, and everyone's excited about you know having a bookstore back in that building. And I'm like, yeah, when Marshall Field went in in the late 20s, right before the depression, from the 20s to the 50s or even to the 60s, people talk about Oak Park as being sort of the West suburban shopping district. Yeah, you know, even people would come from like Elmhurst, which is established town, they come because you can get with the branches of the Chicago Department store across the street in River Forest was Webolts. Yeah, they had a number of other branches of Chicago bonds for men's clothing, and you know, you had like so it was the city stores. And they said sometimes like Austinites or West Garfield Park folks or you know, people might go west instead of east instead of going to all the state street stores. Oh, I can go to fields there. I mean, you're real close.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:39

Yeah, I mean, like it's closer. If you're in Austin, I mean it much rather come out this way instead of go what almost 10 miles to the center than I feel like.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:47

No, and I think that's really true about um our connectedness. I mean, again, that's that's why I try to hesitate, even though my my my day job is you know the director of Oak Park River Forest Museum, I still like you see the connections, and I think sometimes we don't want to be so narrow. Yeah like there is connections, um, you know, obviously Oak Park River Forest, we do that kind of history together, but you know, we're touching Berwin and Cicero still on our south border. Um, you know, River Forest touches Maywood and Old Park and River Forest, besides touching Chicago on the east and the north side of the of Oak Park, you also touch Elmwood Park, right? And so, you know, sometimes neighbors, and I think there's a lot of extended family. Oh, my brother lives in Forest Park, my you know, which also we also touch Forest Park. My cousin lives in, you know, two towns over. Because I think sometimes people tend to, it doesn't always happen, but people who live in the west side sometimes keep on to come out to the west suburbs if they're looking for a suburban lifestyle, or nor, you know, people who grew up in Rogers Park sometimes move to Evanston. You know, you kind of get the the nearby area you know, and I think there's a lot of that kind of connectedness that I'll I'll I'll tell you some more Oak Park trivia and say how great Oak Park Rear Forest is. But I get all these other towns have their own histories, and you know, we're connected in a way that we shouldn't be like too much, you know, too over proud proud of any one town. I I like the regional approach to things, you know, because we all should take advantage and we're hearing Chicago. I think Chicago has to offer, and you know, sometimes you you know you hear people like, I haven't been downtown in decades. Like, what? Yeah, right, yeah. Yeah, it's nice to be connected and you know, um, kind of know that there's different things. Every community is not like a little island, yeah, you know, which is which is important. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:21

Well, you you gave us a whole bunch. Uh, let me tell you, because this is a wormhole uh about that. I feel like we're about to go down. I already got a connection that I think we could explore Murz Apothecary with uh Juliet Perf uh Perse uh uh Percy Julian. Uh so he right around that time frame, there was a uh Pullman Porter worker that one that had, they didn't know at the time, glaucoma. And there was a doctor, Murz Apothecary, Murs, who I don't know if you know Murz Apothecary. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's 150 years old. Uh and they're in Lincoln Square. That's fine.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:56

We did research that the optometrist for the Pullman Porters, his son became a pharmacist and opened MERS Apothecary.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:07

And so the catch is that he he realized wait a minute, we can cure him of this, what is glaucoma now?

SPEAKER_03 1:10:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:14

Where did he get that cure from?

SPEAKER_03 1:10:16

It was like in the 30s or something.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:17

Yeah, and that's that's around the time. That's true.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:20

So you said that I'm like, I wonder if we researched if he got information from Prince Julie. Yeah, and one of the things about uh Julie and besides some like real like breakthroughs, there's some di existing compounds that were just really they call it like synthesizing proteins in the building blocks, like amino acids and stuff. You synthesize that, and then you can make the the drug you need from those proteins. And they were like synthesizing things from like kind of rare compounds. Yeah. And he he came to Indiana to go to college from Alabama, and he was kind of had a some of his past was agrarian. So he started looking at soybeans. He realized the types of proteins in soybeans, because soybeans are a form of protein, right? That you could like make quantities of drugs at a real affordable thing. So that rheumatoid arthritis had been a cure, but it was like I'm making this the exact number up, but you know, this much is gonna cost you $200 kind of thing. Yeah, and he was able to like mass-produce it using the chemistry that he developed. So I I it wouldn't surprise me, and glaucoma was another one of the things that he really made a big stride forward. And the thing about Dr. Julian then is now, he was very aware and tied to his roots and his community. He lived in Maywood for 20 years before he moved to a park. Maywood always had a sort of a strong black community, it was always racially integrated, but had a black neighborhood and um community there too. And people like some of the um the you know, Chicago Defender and black publications, you know, took a special pride in these, you know, like we all do if the people are particularly successful and like a role model. And so people were very aware of of these stories, what Julian was doing. Because I think it was for people of any color, background, you know, race creator, color, should have been proud and happy that there's like breakthroughs in a medical sense. Yeah, but particularly if it's like, oh, that's that's my people or that's somebody at connection. And I think that's uh um it was it was funny one of the letters, not funny, but sad, but funny in a weird sort of way, is like even when when Dr. Julian's house got attacked, somebody wrote a letter and said in like the local paper and said, I don't know who did this, but would you not accept the treatment for glaucoma or rheumature arthritis if you found that the scientists' color of the skin wasn't to your liking? Exactly. Right? And so I think that's I mean sometimes accomplishments like Julian did also just help just the right thing to do anyway, but like you know, it helps people really break through and go, oh, okay. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah. I need you. We need each other. Thanks for helping me.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:51

Yeah, I feel like we could talk for 52 million hours about all of this, but it's cool that this is the start of uh uh Oak Park and Beyond. Yeah, this is this is a great so we're just so you know, we're naming uh 77 for these next several episodes, uh 77 and beyond. So yeah, we we've changed that name uh to for the next few episodes. This is this I this is gonna be fun. Yeah, we gotta like to Frank. Thank you so much for being here.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:15

My pleasure. And anytime we can, you know, if any questions, it doesn't have to be a formal show if there's anything you can help with or you know we can help with here. Um love to do that. Oh, yeah, yeah, you you'll be back on here because we got I got questions. Thank you so much. Uh well, going in, sorry, it took you so many directions, but uh you know this stuff is exciting. Um I'm yeah I'm one of those people who's lucky enough to work in a field that you actually enjoy a lot. You know, there's some people who just have to do the job, and you're gonna be not as much into the top content, but it's it's fun. I mean, it it is storytelling, right? Yeah, it's storytelling.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:41

It's it's storytelling and it's like the explor exploration of it. Yeah, you know, you're putting these stories together that we know over the last five years what you tell us, and now let's go out into the field.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:55

Um, as I mentioned earlier, when we first kind of came into the, you know, we we worked out this deal with the Villageville Park to that we would renovate it and raise the money to do so. Um, and so when we did that, you know, we were took a little bit of a leap of faith because we couldn't see stuff like underneath the walls. There's like drop ceilings and some areas you couldn't see too well. We knew all the utilities, you know, like the electrical and plumbing stuff needed to be replaced. But one day I came in and they were demolishing, just kind of prying old drywall off the ceiling, and underneath it there was half exposed a circle, the you know, where the frame was, where one of the fire pole holes was. And then later on, we found the second fire pole hole. Um, and since we decided to not make this like a firehouse museum per se, it's about O Park River Forest, not just about the firefighting aspect of it, but we said we gotta put a fire pole back. So, so just a couple years ago now we put a fire pole back in the in the one hole, we left the other one open. Um, and so at this point, it was so fun. And actually, um, we dedicated, I slid down. I borrowed from the local gymnastics center so I wouldn't break my ankle. So that was fun. Um, but they actually during the process of construction, I was mentioning earlier um a um a floor guy, um flooring in River Forest, he actually was from Poland originally, and he said, you know, these floors are so beat up, but they're cool wood. And long story short, he added a pry, we gave him permission to pry up a board, and he's like, Look, look at the underside. And so that's what you finished was the underside of the board. So essentially, um, the other thing I didn't tell you yet, but I'll just show you. Oh, and this is what I was talking about how uh Dan was um punching out like the scrap wood so that we could fill in the screw holes. But what I didn't tell you fully, uh to get too complicated, but I'll just tell you now because it's right here, is we ran out of some of the original wood after doing three quarters of the space. And um we there's a place in uh the Calumet City area, or actually Lake Calumet area, it's still in the borders of Chicago, and they have like a essentially a sawmill still, like they said their last, you know, last sawmill in Chicago, and they had like a bunch of different like types of wood and they harvested it. This is called number two grade pine. And what they did is when we ran out of woods right in this area, the from here to the wall is new wood, but this had to be stained to match this. That side of the room, a three-quarters of the room, is just the original wood with polyurethane to you know preserve it and to put a coating. This had to have just a little bit of color added because you could see it was new wood. So the difference between 1898 wood versus wood that had been um darkening, you know, underneath for all these decades. So that was the other kind of fun thing about this whole project is we didn't know exactly what we'd find underneath, and we knew we'd find some things. We also found like a horse buggy, because this is horse-drawn wagon. So we found horse buggy. We found a little like uh wheat chaff um because there the horses stayed in the back of the building and there was in one of the joists. They must have used it as kind of a grain bin. And so um, so it was, and we put on display here like a few of the original, like really long nails that held the floor together. So it it's fun for us, like our our home, our headquarters, the museum, that the building itself is like part of the story. And uh, yeah, I think the overall O Park River 4 stories we're trying to tell, that's what we're leading with. It's not just about the firehouse, but it's kind of great. People don't know it's an old firehouse when they come in, they go, Oh, check this out. Um, and we were concerned, I mentioned earlier, you know, the fire department initially or like the code people are like, I don't know, you know, there's a fire code about like how much wood you have exposed. But luckily, because we were putting all new sprinklers in, that was able to, you know, to make it safe. Um, so if we didn't, if we hadn't put sprinklers in, they might have had a we might have had to cover up a lot of the wood, you know, for fire safety. So yeah, it's it's uh it's a great uh a great story.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:58

That was so good. I hope you loved it as much as I did.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:02

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:02

I really do.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:03

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:03

Uh because yeah, it was I could I could have talked to him for like 50 more hours. Yeah. And you can tell that like we were enjoying it because we weren't saying anything.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:12

I mean, like I was just sitting there like listening. Well, you know what was going through. I'm like, please tell me more.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:17

You know what was going through my head. What was going through my head was the connections to everything that we already talked about in Chicago, how it actually affected what he was talking about. Right. You know, we talked about the train station, you know, Galena. I knew that. We talked about that. We did a whole episode on that. Um, you know, where how that train uh rail rail line came to be. What was that three years ago now? Yeah. We we talked about that. Um and then the annexation of of how that happened. We did a whole thing. We talked about Austin, you know what I mean? Like, so I but that's what was going through my mind. And then at the same time, like he knows a lot, bro. He knows a lot. Like he he knows a lot.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:53

And and that was the his his energy. Is that what we look like? I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:58

Is that what we look like? All history nerds that hyperfixate on something probably sound the same.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:05

Yeah, probably. Just rattling all stuff.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:07

Yeah, just really here's the thing you don't want to be in a car ride with us if you don't want to learn. No, no, no. Because it's there's no room for you to speak and it's educational the whole way.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:17

Uh Jeffrey Bayer, Frank Liepo. Uh I'm gonna throw Bonnie in there. Bonnie McDonald's from South Cooking Controlers. That car ride, ear muff the whole time. You're gonna get annoyed. You're gonna get annoyed.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:31

I would love that car. We would we would love it. Of course we would. But the blunt is historical fact. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Someone that does not partake. I need it to be rolled up historical facts.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:46

Yeah, yeah. You know, sponsored episodes always go crazy. I know. We love it. Um all right.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:51

Well, uh, thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. There is uh next week is Hillside, so you'll learn a little bit more about Hillside. We interview Mayor Tamborino. Yes. Phenomenal guy, by the way. Uh, and I can't wait for you to hear that one. Oh, we got a lot of work to do. Yeah. I'm loving it. I know. This is good. Uh, if you did enjoy this episode, please check it with someone you love. You can leave us a review too. We'd love to hear from you. Only if it's positive. I'm just playing. Okay. Uh email us if it's negative, leave it publicly if it's positive. It takes five seconds. It really helps push our stuff out there for more people to find it. But that is all I have for you today.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:27

Oh, Park's Beyond. Thank you. We appreciate y'all.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:29

We'll see you next week.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:30

Peace.