Photos by Scott Smith

Across the street from Get ‘er Done loan and check cashing on and helping reshape Main Street is a new place called Las Delicias.

The PjStar describes it as this:

They serve all-natural Mexican popsicles in flavors that range from mango-chili to strawberries and cream to hibiscus flower to guava. Among the 20 homemade ice cream flavors are coconut, rum raisin, pina colada, coffee and pistachio.

The frozen treats are created in a large ice cream maker the size of a storage freezer that came straight from Mexico.

The store has a juice bar and sells chicharrons (fried dough prepared with cream, pork skins, tomato and hot sauce); papas fritas (fried chips); mangoneadas (a frozen, sweet-sour mango concoction); and rotating flavors of horchata, a water made from sugar and water (recently they offered a milky ricte water with vanilla, and a tart-sweet lime flavor).

I’ve heard noting but great things so far; if you have visited, please leave your reviews here.

Not much to say here, taken at the April 30 blogger bash inside the Bullpen Bar & Grill @ Landmark.  It should be noted that besides running his own blog, the Peoria Blogfather (a name I christened him years ago with a nod to the Modfather) created BlogPeoria.com to encourage local blogging which hosts this site and many others including David P. Jordan’s excellent Peoria Station.

This is the Modfather… note the resemblance.

Click here to view the embedded video.

http://peoriapundit.blogpeoria.com/

(1) 28.80 ft on 05/23/1943
(2) 28.70 ft on 03/23/1979
(3) 28.40 ft on 03/07/1985
(4) 27.94 ft on 03/14/2009
(5) 27.40 ft on 12/09/1982

As of this writing, the river sits at 28.27ft and a record crest of 30ft is predicted mid-day Tuesday the 23rd.  (update: it hit 29.35ft)

http://water.weather.gov/ahps2/hydrograph.php?wfo=ilx&gage=piai2

Dry Run Creek in Bradley Park, 04/19/13

Junkyard on Southport Rd, 04/19/13

Mangled railroad tracks along Southport Rd, 04/19/13

One of two entry roads to a riverfront community near Spring Bay at a river height of 25ft, 04/20/13.  A mandatory evacuation was issued.

Downtown Peoria, morning of 04/21/13, river nearing 28ft.

The official “about us” page on Maui Jim’s website doesn’t mention anything about Peoria, and at the bottom of their web site it says “© 2012 Maui Jim, Inc. Lahaina, Hawaii”

Their Wikipedia entry tells the rest of the story…

Maui Jim originally had its headquarters in Lahaina, Hawaii, but moved to Peoria after buying RLI Vision, the original vision insurance and vision care products unit of RLI Corp., in December 1996. The transaction was structured so that RLI Corp. became a major shareholder in Maui Jim, which has continued to the present.

I don’t blame them though, Peoria isn’t exactly a sexy place to for a swanky sunglass company to hail from.

Thanks for everyone’s comments.  Put together and they give a pretty thorough history of this place, so instead of reprinting them, I’ll share a couple of interesting Journal Star articles about the hotel’s demise.

August 16, 1991: END APPEARS NEAR FOR FORMERK VETERANS HOTEL >CITY LIABILITY FACTOR IN PUSH TO RAZE 92-YEAR-OLD STRUCTURE

The former Veterans Hotel apparently has a date with a wrecking ball, City Manager Peter Korn said Thursday after meeting with representatives of the Central Illinois Landmarks Foundation.

The 92-year-old structure has withstood four years of legal wrangling over its demolition, but despite efforts to preserve the structure, the end appears near.

“It is an interesting building,” Korn said following the meeting at City Hall. “If somebody had started on (renovation) two or three years ago, there might have been some hope.”

The former Lee Hotel , owned by Brian Johnson of Rockford, was posted as a dangerous building in 1987. The demolition process led through the circuit, appellate and Illinois Supreme courts, clearing the last hurdle in November 1990. The Landmarks Foundation obtained an informal agreement from city officials to hold off on demolition until Nov. 1, according to foundation president Leslie Kenyon, but Korn pushed the council this week to proceed with the demolition after an adjacent business pressed the issue.

Jim Spence, a vice president of Spence Tool and Rubber Co., 704 SW Adams, said the company’s attorney conveyed two potential liabilities to the city: a fire originating in the Veterans and spreading to the adjacent business, and the danger that falling debris poses to the business.

“We have a large interest in seeing that building removed,” Spence said.

Korn reminded City Council members this week of the $120,000 out-of-court settlement paid to a Peoria furniture store operator, resulting from a fire spreading from a vacant building to Ed Kaufman’s store on Southwest Adams.

“We don’t want to get into that situation again,” Korn said.

Kenyon said although the foundation recognizes the city’s legal liabilities, there remains hope that the building _ a Romanesque Revival structure built in 1899 by Peoria dentist John Wesley Van Sant _ can be saved.

“It’s a fine building. It really is an example of Peoria’s early history,” he said. “There’s still some hope … if we can, we will find a way to save it.”

The Landmarks Foundation did not formally withdraw its request to hold off on demolition, Korn said, but the meeting Thursday produced “a recognition on the part of everybody, while it had potential at one time, it looks as if it’s too far gone at this time.”

If the city carries out the razing, a lien of approximately $80,000 _ the estimated demolition cost _ will be placed against the property, Korn said. The city could end up swallowing that cost if the property is sold at a tax sale next month, as scheduled

September 21, 1992: ARSON BLAMED IN HOTEL FIRE

Fire gutted the interior of the former Veterans Hotel Friday, possibly speeding its scheduled demolition.

Flames fanned throughout the building, located at State and Adams streets, and thick smoke billowed high overhead.

No one was injured in the blaze but arson has been blamed.

“At least at this point in time it’s arson,” said Ernie Russell, division chief for the Peoria Fire Department. “A neighbor saw someone kicking the door in just before the fire broke out.”

The fire department was alerted at 4:15 p.m. and the building was burning uncontrollably when the first engine arrived on the scene.

Dave Sier, arson investigator with the Peoria Police Department, agreed with Russell.

“The fire spread too quickly and was burning too hot,” Sier said. “But we won’t know anything until we get inside.”

Sier said the fire started in what used to be the cafeteria of the hotel , located in the rear northeast corner of the building. It quickly spread.

Twenty firefighters battled the blaze in the four-story vacant building for at least 5 1/2 hours. Firefighters entered the building once, but because of the condition of the building inside decided to fight the flames from the streets.

The blaze was contained to the vacant structure but its proximity to other businesses caused concern.

City officials in August cited the possibility of being held liable for damages to other businesses as a reason to tear down the old hotel .

The fire did not spread to the adjacent Spence Tool and Rubber Co., but firefighters had to climb onto the roof of the business to keep the flames in check.

The 92-year-old structure, however, apparently has run out of time.

Brian Johnson of Rockford and his family have owned the building for the past 10 years or so, he said Friday. Bitter about losing the four-year fight to keep the building from being destroyed, Johnson said the building’s dilapidated condition was a direct result of actions taken by city officials.

“It’s a direct result of (Mayor Jim) Maloof closing the business,” Johnson said. “Frankly, the city has been uncooperative; not interested in expanding businesses in that area. Whether you’re right or wrong, you can’t fight City Hall.”

Assistant City Manager Michael McKnight said the fire may have hastened the demolition schedule. The only holdup, he said, has been the removal of asbestos in the building.

“Obviously we’ve been trying to bring it down,” McKnight said. “This facilitates it.

The hotel is used by vagrants and the homeless as shelter. Firefighters were called to the hotel twice one night last month to put out fire caused by the carelessness of some people sleeping inside.

“We’ve boarded it up three times,” McKnight said. “Each time they’ve pulled the wood down.”

The hotel _ formerly the Lee Hotel _ was posted as a dangerous building in 1987. It was set to be sold for back taxes before the fire destroyed it.

February 4, 1996: HARD-LUCK HOTEL> ONCE VIEWED WITH DISDAIN, SINGLE-ROOM OCCUPANCY HOTELS LIKE THE JULIAN ARE NOW BEING EMBRACED IN SOME CIRCLES AS A WAY TO HELP CURB HOMELESSNESS

One drunken patron tried to call Jerusalem from a pay phone in the lobby of the Julian Hotel because he wanted to talk to Jesus Christ.

Another guest who was mentally deranged would wait each month for his Social Security disability check, pay for his hotel room and blow the rest feeding the parking meters on his walks downtown.

This is life at the Julian, a shabby, three-story hotel at 724 SW Adams St. housing those on the way down and folks one step away from living on the streets.

For decades, such skid-row hotels have been disappearing, often in the name of urban renewal or in fires set by transients.

The Straton Hotel, where a handicapped man died in a 1974 fire set by a hotel resident angry about being thrown out for not paying, is gone. So are the Lee Hotel , where part of a movie based on comedian Richard Pryor’s life was filmed, and the Liberty Hotel.

The Julian, too, could have had a date with the wrecking ball after a November 1992 fire caused by a tenant who said he left a hot plate on to heat his room. But in recent years, housing advocates and government officials have embraced these aging flophouses — also known as single-room occupancy hotels, or SROs for short — as a way to try to stem homelessness.

In 1994, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development spent $350 million to help not-for-profit groups build and run SROs, more than quadruple its spending on SROs the year before.

Last year, the Julian — one of only three SROs in Peoria — received a $2.03 million, 10-year grant from HUD for a long- needed face lift. The city and state also contributed $191,000 in loans in 1993. The other SROs in Peoria are Phoenix House, 225 Pecan, managed by South Side Office of Concern, and Upgrade Companies’ SRO building at 500 Monroe.

The Julian’s owner, Carl Giden of Brimfield, has installed a sprinkler system and is bringing the building’s electrical system up to code. The building will be tuck-pointed, and doors and walls have been built to limit the spread of a fire.

Part of the HUD grant will subsidize the rent for the Julian’s tenants, with the hotel dwellers paying 30 percent of their income a month for yearlong leases. Many of the hotel’s guests stay for months and even years in the hotel’s 60 rooms.

“They (SROs) are desperately needed,” Giden said. “The people who live in their little ivory towers don’t realize that we have an upper class, a lower class and there’s going to be something below that now. . . . We have young men (who) are working minimum-wage jobs. We have old people (who) won’t put up with going to a nursing home — they’re too independent. We have some people who have mild retardation. They can handle a room, but they can’t handle an apartment. We have people who had been living under a dock.”

The heyday of SROs was roughly from 1880 to 1915, when they served as no-frills lodging for unmarried working men, said Jim Baumohl, associate professor at Bryn Mawr College’s Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research in Bryn Mawr, Pa.

“The men who lived in them ate in local restaurants and drank in local saloons,” Baumohl said. “In short, they used the surrounding community as the living room their quarters lacked.”

Between 1890 and 1910, it wasn’t unusual for SROs to have rooms that had been converted to opium dens, Baumohl said. Prostitution also flourished.

“Their use reflected, in short, the recreations of young, single men of the so-called lower orders,” Baumohl said.

In Peoria, the Julian — then operating under a different name — catered to traveling salesmen who would rent two rooms, one for sleeping and another for showing their wares, Giden said.

“In the 1890s, Peoria used to be quite the town for selling proprietary medicine — snake oil,” Giden said. “You would go from town to town selling to the various pharmacies — not that the stuff was any good.”

An ad in the 1903 city directory boasted that the Julian, then known as the Hotel Mitchell, was “New, modern and up-to-date at reasonable prices.”

Legendary Peoria boxer Kid Farmer lived in the hotel about the turn of the century and trained downstairs, desk clerk Ron Fidler said. Farmer, a chronic drinker, lost only 11 times in his almost 24 years of fighting but ended up in an unmarked grave in St. Mary’s cemetery.

Zack Monroe, 89, the former supervisor for Peoria Township, lived at the Julian — then called the Ray Hotel — when he was a barber in 1923 working over Meyer’s Three-Cent Lunch Counter and was hard- pressed to come with the $2.50 a week the hotel cost.

“You had a bed and a chair, and that was all,” Monroe said. “That was the only place downtown that you could get that was reasonable that you could afford.”

The Giden family entered the hotel business in 1945 when Giden’s grandmother, Margaret Julian, bought it with money from the sale of stockpiled Canadian whiskey.

Julian, a heavyset woman who could speak seven languages and packed a .38-caliber pistol, was committed to keeping the Julian as a hotel for the poor, especially after the response she got when she once tried to sell it.

“People would come over to look at it, and when they see this place, they say, `Oh, this is beautiful,’ ” Julian told the Journal Star in 1974. “But they say, if they bought it, they wouldn’t keep people old and on public aid in the hotel — they would get a different kind of people. People tell me, `I’m going to kick all these old alcoholic people out. ‘ But I ask myself, where would all these people go?” Julian ran the hotel until the mid-1970s, when Giden, a stocky, bearded man who favors plaid shirts and quotes Scottish poet Robert Burns, took over.

The prices have increased some — from $1 a day or $25 a month to $20 a day for a single or $160 a month. Much of the furniture is the same, moldering twin beds and stand-alone closets stuffed in cramped rooms.

Some of the tenants are the same, too.

Fidler, 64, was sitting in the lobby of the Julian 25 years ago when Margaret Julian fired the desk clerk. She asked him if he wanted a job, and he’s been at the Julian on and off since then.

Vanessa Baer, 36, was a street teen-ager whose boyfriend was hitting her when a Julian tenant intervened. She came to the Julian and stayed on for 17 years.

Fidler, Baer and other tenants congregate in the hotel’s lobby, cooled by ceiling fans hanging from a tin ceiling. The Salvation Army delivers meals here five days a week. Two pay phones are in the lobby. The tenants use those for all their calls because none of the rooms have telephones.

On the walls are murals of what appear at first glance to be scenes of pastoral tranquillity. They were painted in 1945 by Oscar Korph, an alcoholic who worked for the price of a room and a bottle of booze a day. Korph also painted murals for many Peoria taverns, but Fidler said the Julian is the last of his work remaining.

One wall bears a picture of what appears to be a farmer walking down a rural lane with a dog and his staff in hand. Margaret Julian was proud of that one, pointing it out to the Journal Star in 1974. What she didn’t notice was that the mural showed the farmer urinating, Giden said.

Julian did catch a pair of copulating bunnies observed by a dog. That section of the mural was painted over, Giden said.

The hotel’s small rooms have seen many deaths, some from old age and some by suicide. Many of the desk clerks have opened the door of a room to find a body. In August 1994, Richard Bakken, who had threatened to jump off a bridge because his wife no longer loved him, hanged himself in his hotel room. Baer’s former boyfriend — the one who had beat her — hanged himself in the basement.

Giden said he is constantly kicking out prostitutes and drug dealers.

“Around here, you rent a room to somebody and all of a sudden they get an awful lot of visitors in the middle of the night,” he said. “As soon as you get rid of one, there comes another one right behind him who thinks this would be an awfully good place to deal out of.”

But tenants like Fidler, the desk clerk, have no plans to leave. He spends 12 to 13 hours a day answering the phone, settling arguments and helping jobless tenants find a church or agency to pay their rent. At night he retires to his small room, where he listens to big- band oldies on his stereo and sleeps. The room also contains a bed, a dresser and a cabinet filled with canned goods for the weekends when the Salvation Army doesn’t deliver meals.

“There’s no reason to move,” Fidler said. “It’s my home.”

Below is a current view from the street from the approximate same angle (I realize it doesn’t look like it though) and from studying it in person, I’m pretty sure the tree on the right is the same one as shown in the old picture, albeit grown up a bit.

Original photo and text courtesy of Sue Grawey.

Constance Hall, Bradley Polytechnic Institute
College Avenue, Peoria
Contractor: V. Jobst & Sons
Permit: November 28, 1930, value: $55,000
Blueprints and specifications: July 1930
Groundbreaking ceremony: October 1, 1930
Dedicated June 9, 1931.

Constance Hall, a memorial to a beloved English professor, was the first dormitory on Bradley University’s campus constructed specifically for female students. Previously, a small frame building, Laura Cottage, housed twenty-two young women.

Jennie Meta Constance, born in 1885 in Cumberland, Wisconsin graduated from Cumberland High School in 1904. She attended Hamline University in St. Paul and then taught English in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Constance began her career at Bradley Polytechnic Institute in 1919. Three years later she received a Master of Arts degree from Columbia University. At the age of thirty-seven, she was appointed head of the English Department at Bradley.

Constance, an authority on English literature, conducted several European lecture tours of England, Belgium, Switzerland, France, and Italy. Sculptor Lorado Taft was an art lecturer on those tours. A Chicago newspaper noted she also made several trips to England to visit the “homes and haunts of the authors whose works she studied and taught.” She authored numerous articles for education publications, as well as an autobiography, Reminiscences of School Days.

In the summer of 1928, Constance attended Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, to complete her Ph.D. The evening of August 8, while walking home from the library, she was robbed and murdered. Within weeks of her death, Mary Batchelder and Georgia Chubbuck organized Peoria women’s groups to establish a memorial. Because Constance had often been concerned about safe lodging for female students, the committee chose a fitting tribute—a women’s dormitory. By the fall of 1929 the Constance Memorial Association, chaired by Julia Proctor White, received $65,000 in pledges.
A reception room, parlor with a fireplace, dining room, kitchen, living room, and quarters for the dorm matron occupied the first floor. Bedrooms and kitchenettes for thirty-three students were on the second and third floors.

In 1962 the Music Department moved into the building.

I won’t reprint it here, but David P Jordan’s link is pretty interesting.  Click here.

The photo itself comes from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Lock Performance Monitoring System where you can check the status of waterways throughout the country.  As of the latest update, “03/7/2013 Our Dam is up. Ice couplings remain a requirement for all doubles.”

I don’t know how often they update the information but here are the current photos available for viewing:

Postcard of the old band stand:

Postcard of the Bradley Park Pavilion Building:

… and yes, it is the first hole of the disk golf course, which I didn’t realize until “jerry”‘s comment.  {course map}

When and why these structures were torn down, I have no idea and won’t even begin to speculate.

Let the snarkiness begin!

(site was down for a bit over the weekend)

This is the Peoria Symphony Orchestra during the 1933/34 season, either at the Rialto or Avon theatre, says Scott Smith who is an expert of some sorts regarding these types of things.

More importantly, look at the backdrop.  That is called an Olio Drop.  It’s of a Victorian type garden scene, handpainted and used at the Rialto during the 1920′s vaudeville era.  It measures approximately 25×40 feet.

http://www.controlbooth.com/wiki/olio:

Olio Acts – Vaudeville numbers that were performed between the between the acts of the principal show. In the early days of Vaudeville, specialty acts did their numbers in front of an oilcloth curtain while the stage was being set for the next part of the show. The word “olio” is Italian for oil. Also sometimes used to refer to the supporting acts in a vaudeville bill.

Olio curtain – Also called the “in-one curtain” or in today’s lingo the “mid-stage traveller.” In a vaudeville theatre the Olio curtain was set about ten feet back from the footlights. The olio curtain often had advertising painted on it.

I have reason to believe this still exists … somewhere … along with its companion, “Sometimes also called an ‘Ad Drop’ because often in vaudeville theatres, the drop was used as the backing for ‘in one’ scenes and the theatre owner sold advertisements for local businesses, which were painted on the drop.”

It would look like this example from the Lincoln Theatre in Belleville, Il, but with advertisements from Peoria businesses circa 1920.

Here’s a closeup of the center portion:

If you have seen them or have any information regarding these, please leave a comment or email me.

Snow, as requested by Scott Smith on #456

It’s pretty obvious what this is and I don’t have much to say about it, but for those that don’t know, after some remodeling, the Peoria Park District offices are moving in and vacating the Glen Oak park pavilion building to make way for the long awaited Peoria PlayHouse Children’s Museum.

Safety First!

“Coal train crossing Mendenhall Road heading towards Mendenhall Park along the Illinois River south of Bartonville” – Chef Kevin.

That’s pretty much how I would describe it.  If you’re wondering why I’m there so often, there’s always a lot of waterfoul, including a Bald Eagle who likes to hang out there recently, and it’s closer than Chitauqua and Banner Marsh.  It’s got a great view of the river too.  Oddly, nearly every time I’m there a Bartonville police officer drives through, waves, and leaves, so I don’t know what goes on there that a cop patrols it so often, and maybe I don’t want to know.

Free plug: David P. Jordan’s Transportation Blog

As I mentioned in the comments, this is from the Spalding newsletter called “The Institute”; the cover of it actually.  First identified by Kathleen Close.

Inside is a funny article called “Today’s Music.”  Yes, parents, the Beatles are here to stay.