As part of a series on the influential, colorful, historic people, places and things along Illinois Route 66, we present The Riviera and the Streetcar/Diner.

Route 66 Association of Illinois Hall of Fame Class of 1993

District Six, Illinois State Police, Pontiac, IL

Here’s the story behind this Route 66 icon:

The Illinois State Police was formed in 1922 to serve the people of Illinois on the “new hard roads.” In 1942, District Six headquarters were established on Route 66 near Pontiac. In 1957, fresh out of the police training academy, 26-year-old Chester Henry reported to work there for the first time. From then on until his retirement in 1984, Route 66 was a daily part of his life.

“I was out there on Sundays, I was out there on holidays and I was out there on the graveyard shift,” he said. Frequenting their cafes, gas station and truck stops, he soon became a familiar sight to the citizens of all the little towns from Dwight to McLean. In the early days of radar, he and his partner also became familiar sights to motorists along the route – they set a record one year for the number of tickets written. This made motorists wary when they traveled through District Six, but it also kept the number of accidents well below average.

“Route 66 affected me by the lives of the people that I touched and the accidents that happened and the injuries I’ve seen.” Chester said. “Sometimes the snow would come down and Route 66 would be packed with ruts like an old country road. Accidents would happen, sometimes even fatal ones. I would go home and sometimes not sleep too good for a night or two remembering what I’d seen. The next morning, the sun would come out and the snow would start melting off and you’d wonder if it ever happened.”

“I’ve been there when trucks have turned over and closed the road and we’d have to run traffic both ways on the other side. That’s dangerous practice, but we’d put up cones and direct traffic around them. Sometimes those loaded semis weren’t too easy to move if they were upside down or had both lanes blocked. We had to caution everybody and stop traffic until we could get the road clear.”

In 1967, Chester was promoted to corporal. In 1972, he became a sergeant. And in 1979, he was promoted to lieutenant and became administrative officer for District Six.He held that post until his retirement in 1984, not too many years after Route 66 itself “retired.” During much of his career, his commanding officer was Captain Francis Mowery, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1990.

“A great portion of my life was spent out there amongst the people – out on 66 – helping them and handling different things. We were right out there with them and we were out there all the time. I was glad to be there during those times and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Route 66 was a grand old. Road.”

In 1995, Lieutenant Henry began preserving his memories of his time as an officer along Route 66 in written form. In 2014, his book, Route 66, My Home Away From Home, was published.

Friend of Route 66, Chester Henry, passed away at the age of 86 in 2018. His unique and profound experiences along the road remain a cherished piece of Route 66’s history.

Click to read stories about the ever-growing list of Hall of Fame inductees.

Ron Warnick over at Route 66 News unearthed a fantastic Route 66 segment that was featured on ABC’s Nightline program in 1992. It’s very enjoyable and informative with a great explanation of the road’s history and lasting appeal. You’re going to love the interviews with some iconic 66 personalities!

Click to watch the video.

Sangamon County Board Member John Lucchesi brought this interesting story to our attention. Enjoy!

This story of Frank Nuckolls of Auburn, IL who became the state’s first police officer appeared on the Sangamon County Historical Society website.

Read the entire article here.

As part of a series on the influential, colorful, historic people, places and things along Illinois Route 66, we present…

Brooks Catsup Bottle

The World’s Largest Catsup Bottle – Since 1949

Route 66 Association of Illinois Hall of Fame Class of 2008

800 South Morrison Avenue, Collinsville, Illinois

Brooks Catsup Bottle website

Here’s the story behind this historic landmark:

Businessmen raised $5,000 and created the Collinsville Canning and packing Co. The plant struggled and went through a few different owners/operators until 1908 when the Brooks brothers took over. They operated under the name of Triumph Catsup and Pickle Company. In . In 1920, the brothers sold out to American Cone and Pretzel Company, and in 1933, the G.S. Suppiger Company purchased the plant. The catsup factory had great success in those years, surviving the Great Depression and growing by leaps and bounds through the 1940s. They retained the Brooks label because it had acquired such an excellent reputation. After World War II, a fire protection sprinkler system needed to be installed throughout the plant. Since the plant already put a strain on the City of Collinsville’s water pressure, it was decided to build a new water tower for plant operations. The president of the company suggested the water tower should be built in the distinctive tapered shape of one of their catsup bottles, amusing everyone.

In 1947, W.E. Caldwell Tank Company of Louisville, KY, entered a contract to build this unique water tower. Final drawings for a 70-foot tall bottle atop 100-foot steel legs was approved. In October of 1949 the tower was in place, holding 100,00 gallons of water. By the early 1960s the plant was closed. The water tower was empty and the plant was used as a warehouse. After years of neglect, the rusted, timeworn tower seemed destined for demolition and the parent company decided to sell the property.

Larry and Jim Eckert of Bethel Eckert Enterprises purchased the factory site along with the Catsup bottle in June of 1994. A 14-member Preservation Group was formed to do what needed to be done to preserve the landmark. An engineering study to repair and repaint the structure was reviewed. The group began fund-raising events and raised over $100,000 for the project. By 1995 the completely restored red, white and blue landmark was unveiled to the public. In 1999, the 50th anniversary of the catsup bottle, a new logo was produced for memorabilia to be sold. In 2002, the World’s Largest Brooks Catsup Bottle was named to the National Register of Historic Places.

And in 2008, The World’s Largest (Brooks) Catsup Bottle was inducted to our Association’s Hall of Fame.

Click to read stories about the ever-growing list of Hall of Fame inductees.

by Joseph D. Kubal, Ruth D. Nelson and Maria R. Traska

Most Route 66 roadies are familiar with the purposefully rusted Cor-Ten steel sculpture of French explorers Père Jacques Marquette, Louis Jolliet (aka Joliet*) and a Native American guide that stands just west of 48th Street and Harlem Avenue, surrounded by a forest preserve near Lyons, IL and only a few blocks from Route 66/Joliet Road.  The Chicago Portage National Historic Site is located at the periphery of the famous Chicago Portage, a nine-mile long scrap of swampy land bordering Mud Lake that was the only thing separating the Great Lakes and the Chicago River from the Mississippi River system and the Gulf of Mexico via the Des Plaines and Illinois Rivers.  A canal through that area – an idea first conceived by Jolliet on the expedition with Marquette – would link the East Coast with the Gulf of Mexico, cutting through the heart of the continent.  Its economic and political value was literally incalculable.

Not far away, on the other side of the Chicago Sanitary & Ship Canal and Interstate 55, is another memorial to Père Marquette in Summit, IL.  Located in Summit Park at 5810 S. Archer Ave. is a large group of boulders that form a stone monument or cairn dedicated to the French priest and explorer.  Often overlooked on the busy road, which was once was an old Indian trail, the monument stands at the edge of the park and out of the view of passing vehicles.

The monument was relocated here in 1968 from its original historic site on a sandy ridge southwest of the spot known as Point aux Chenes, or Point of Oaks – the latter being literally the summit from which the village got its name. The promontory once overlooked the exaggerated eastward curve of the Des Plaines River, before construction of the Sanitary & Ship Canal more than two centuries later required that a straighter diversion channel be dug west of the curve (that permanently changed the path of the Des Plaines near Lyons, thereby also creating Prescott Island).

But let’s not get ahead of the story.

Marquette’s first trip through Chicago, 1673

Father Marquette, a Roman Catholic Jesuit missionary and himself a geographer and cartographer, first ventured into the Mississippi Valley in 1673 with fellow explorer Jolliet.  They set off from St. Ignace near the Mackinac Straits to find the elusive Mississippi River and traveled down the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers before they encountered the Great Water, as it was known to the natives.  Having paddled down as far as present-day Arkansas and returning from this circuitous trip, they were guided by local Illini to a shortcut back to Lake Michigan (known to the French as Lac des Illinois) via the Illinois River, then the Des Plaines River.  Marquette must have been miserable at the time, as he had developed dysentery during the return trip, so a shortcut was no doubt welcome.

Previously unaware of this route to the Chicago Portage, Marquette and Jolliet paddled northeast through the great tallgrass prairie to the vicinity of Lyons and Summit, where the Des Plaines made an enormous curve east and north and a tiny tributary later called Portage Creek led them to Mud Lake.  There, they had to either paddle through mud the consistency of wet cement or portage around the bog, carrying their canoes over a minor continental divide that separates the Illinois/Mississippi basin from the Great Lakes basin.  Given the choice, they portaged.  From the eastern end, they took a meandering stream (the Chicago River and its South Branch) to the shore of Lake Michigan, then moved north along the lakeshore until they reached the mission of St. Francis Xavier at present-day Green Bay, Wisconsin.  At the mission, the travelers parted ways:  Marquette remained to report to his Jesuit superiors, while Jolliet returned to Quebec to report their findings to the new governor, the Comte de Frontenac.

Marquette had promised the Native Americans along the Illinois River that he would return to them some day.  He had hoped to establish another mission among the native inhabitants of the wide prairie.  During the winter of 1674-75, he kept that promise and got to Kaskaskia, where he founded the mission.  The plan was to go down to the River of the Portage (aka the Chicago River) in the autumn and camp on its banks through the winter, so as to be ready to return to Kaskaskia as soon as possible when the thaw and spring freshets came – high water would make traveling down the shallow Des Plaines easier.  Why Marquette chose to do this, however, risking more illness in the cold after it had taken him nearly a year to recover from the dysentery, nobody knows; but it was a decision that would kill him, and Marquette realized that too late.  Then again, the priest was all too willing to be a martyr.

Marquette’s second trip, 1674-75

Leaving the mission at Green Bay on October 25, 1674, Marquette and two companions (he was accompanied by two voyageurs, one of whom who had been with him on the expedition with Jolliet) traveled down the lakefront.  They encountered fierce snow, heavy winds, massive waves, and ice floes on the way south that forced them ashore several times.  After weeks of punishing weather and delays, Marquette’s dysentery returned and he could hardly sit up in the canoe.  By December 4, the travelers reached the then mouth of the Chicago River (near what is today the intersection of Madison Street and Michigan Avenue), where they camped for a week and killed game for food.  Then on December 11, they traveled six miles inland along the more sheltered South Branch and built a makeshift cabin on the north bank near what is now Damen Avenue and the Sanitary & Ship Canal, where they spent the worst of the winter – until the ravages of spring arrived.

There are those who suggest that Marquette occupied an abandoned cabin on the South Branch that someone else – either Indians or French trappers – had built, but this assertion is disproven by the narrative written by Fr. Claude Dablon, S.J., Marquette’s immediate superior and to whom he had reported after the expedition with Jolliet.  Dablon, who not only had Marquette’s original journal and had copies made that were sent to Jesuit houses in Quebec and France, also had the reports of all the voyageurs who had traveled with Marquette – including verbal reports from the two men who accompanied Father Marquette on his second trip in late 1674, Pierre Porteret and Jacques La Castor.  Dablon plainly states that “During a month of navigation on the Lake of the Illinois [Lake Michigan], he [Marquette] was tolerably well; but, as soon as the snow began to fall, he was again seized with his bloody flux, which compelled him to halt in the river [that] leads to the Illinois [i.e., on the Chicago River’s South Branch at Damen].  It was there that they constructed a cabin in which to pass the winter [emphasis added], amid such inconveniences that, his malady increasing more and more, he saw clearly that God was granting to him the favor which he had so many times besought from Him; and he even told his two companions very plainly that he would certainly die of that malady and during that voyage.”

When the thaw came, it was brutal.  On the night of March 30th, 1675, the floods on the South Branch were so bad that Marquette’s party had to climb up into the trees to avoid being swept away by the rising water; in the morning, the men set off further up the South Branch toward Mud Lake until they found significantly higher ground upon which to camp.  That ground was on the ridge at Point of Oaks.  With the floodwaters so high, they evidently didn’t need to portage around Mud Lake but were able to paddle through the area.  However, the weather was so bad that they were stuck at that third winter campsite for several days.  Eventually, they were able to continue southwest on the flooded Des Plaines River and past the oxbow and rapids between there and the Romeoville bend.

An inscription on the Summit cairn’s original plaque explained the reason for the monument near Point of Oaks:  “On March 31, 1675, Fr. Marquette was flooded out of his winter quarters at Robey St. (now Damen Avenue), Chicago, and next day camped at this point, which is located by a comparison of his Journal with the original Engineers’ levels and surveys of the Country.”  This plaque no longer exists, having been stolen and replaced twice – the first time before 1920, when it was replaced by Robert Somerville of the Chicago & Alton Railroad at his own expense, the second time at some point after 1924.

Marquette and his party relocated their campsite to the Point of Oaks area, near the southwestern tip of the portage in what is now suburban Summit.  This is just northeast of the present day intersection of Center and 54th Street, not far from a Metra/Amtrak train platform near which the memorial cairn was later erected.  From here, they traveled down past the Des Plaines rapids and the confluence with the Kankakee River to the Illinois River and Kaskaskia, arriving during Holy Week.  There, the missionary founded the promised mission, preached and said Easter Mass, and realized he was at last dying, thus hastening his return to St. Ignace even though the natives begged him to stay and be cared for there.  At that point, Marquette was so feeble that he had to be carried everywhere, including into the canoe.  He died on the way back, near the mouth of the river named for him at present-day Ludington, Michigan.

The memorial cairn is built

In 1895, a monument championed by Ossian Guthrie was erected at the Point of Oaks landing site by the Chicago & Alton Railroad Company, on grounds that the railway then owned.  This was done at the urging of Guthrie, then chief engineer of the I&M Canal Bridgeport Pumping Works, and Edward G. Mason, president of the Chicago Historical Society, with the approval of Somerville, who was general agent of the C&A’s passenger department.  According to author Robert Kott (2009), “Originally located across from the old Chicago and Alton Railroad station, this monument commemorates one of three spots researched over a lifetime by Guthrie:  the 1673 portage route, the 1674 Damen Avenue (Robey Street) Marquette cabin site, and the [1675] temporary Marquette encampment.”  Guthrie decided on these sites by studying Marquette’s journal, the interviews conducted after 1847 regarding the area’s original topography, and fieldwork and surveys ordered by the commissioners of the Chicago Drainage Canal, as the Sanitary & Ship Canal was then known.  As of 2016, the original monument’s foundation still stands near the train station.

Later in 1895, the C&A Railroad published a tourist booklet about notable sites along the newly dug Chicago Drainage Canal that riders on the Summit line could see from the train.  One of the sites mentioned was the recently constructed Marquette memorial, a photo of which was featured on the booklet’s cover.  Page 7 of the booklet notes that “This monument consists of granite boulders of various kinds brought from the Lake Superior region by the glacial stream and deposited in this valley.  The monument is, therefore, of great geological as well as historical interest.”  Another photo shows two large boulders; an accompanying explanation notes that “the smaller boulder is of granite, weighing 7 or 8 tons, smoothed and scored by glacial action (also somewhat affected by water), and now forms the capstone of the Alton’s Marquette Monument at Summit” (Chicago & Alton Railroad, 1895).

On May 31, 1937, the village of Summit held a celebration at the memorial site to honor Marquette’s 300th birthday anniversary. Led by master of ceremonies Henry C. Wahl and village president E.H. Wilson, attendees gathered “to pay honor and homage” to and “in contemplation of the example thus afforded” by the great French explorer.  In honor of the occasion, the Père Marquette Memorial Association of Ludington, Michigan sent a letter in advance to the mayor of Summit, along with a “small chest of consecrated sand taken from the revered spot where, on May 18, 1675, Père Marquette died.” The association’s pageant committee requested that the sand be sprinkled on the Summit memorial during the tricentennial celebration.  It is presumed that this request was carried out.

(Note:  Marquette died at and was initially laid to rest near Ludington.  However, two years after his death, a hunting party of local Christian tribesmen found his remains.  They washed and dried the bones, and, singing their funeral chants in a procession of nearly 30 canoes, returned them in a birch box to St. Ignace, where they were reburied by the Jesuits beneath the mission’s church – and were apparently forgotten for many years after the mission burned down.  Marquette’s grave at St. Ignace was rediscovered on the former mission site in 1877, but by that time only a few bones remained.  According to historian Donald L. Miller, “the rest were believed to have been taken by Indians who considered him a forest spirit.  His remaining relics are at Marquette University, under the care of his order.  And this gentle missionary who dreamed of the glory of martyrdom in the wilderness became, in time, the closest thing to a patron saint that gritty Chicago would ever have.”  In 1920, Chicago mayor William Dever officially declared December 4th to be Marquette Day in Chicago.)

The Marquette cairn is moved

Flash forward to 1968.  The C&A had by now become part of the Gulf, Mobile & Ohio Railroad, and the company wanted to develop the Summit site where the Marquette monument stood.  The 11,000-pound cairn was moved to its present location on June 8th that year at a cost of $2,000.  It was rededicated a month later during the village’s July 14th Marquette Days celebration (on Bastille Day; how very French).  In attendance were many state and local dignitaries and officials, including Illinois Secretary of State Paul Powell.  In 1973, the village of Summit celebrated another tercentenary – the anniversary of the Marquette-Joliet expedition.

In its initial location near the train station, the Marquette monument was maintained by the railroad, even though the first two plaques were stolen.  At the time, it was thought that they were most likely sold for their metal content; but without knowing precisely when the thefts occurred – for example, whether one or both of the thefts took place during the Great Depression or a major recession – it’s difficult to judge whether the thefts were simple vandalism or something more.  The current plaque reads:

Father Marquette landed here
1675
This monument is constructed of boulders brought by glaciers from
the Lake Superior region and deposited in this valley, having traversed
the route later followed by the earl[y] French explorers
LaSalle, Joliet
and
Father Marquette
Erected by the Chicago & Alton Railroad Co.
August 1895

It’s curious that LaSalle is mentioned at all on the most recent plaque, let alone named first – considering that his travels through the area occurred nine years the Marquette-Jolliet expedition – whereas Jacques Marquette is mentioned last, even though the cairn is his monument.  Did those who approved the third plaque’s wording realize that they were effectively demoting Father Marquette to an also-ran on his own memorial?  Moreover, this third plaque doesn’t even bother to explain why Marquette landed at Point of Oaks in the first place.  One is tempted to wonder whether the third plaque was a rushed replacement for its predecessor, ordered by someone whose interest in Marquette didn’t equal that of Ossian Guthrie.

History buffs will appreciate knowing that engineer Guthrie (1826-1908), considered the “Father of Chicago’s Drainage System,” was the grandson of Dr. Samuel Guthrie, the discoverer of chloroform.  In 1885, the younger Guthrie found a granite boulder in southwest suburban Worth, IL that was later used as a monument to his famous relative.  Apparently, Ossian Guthrie was a real geology buff and saw no point in wasting a good boulder.

The stone currently sits on the east side of a small park and helipad on Harrison Street, across from both Rush Medical Center and the former Cook County Hospital; the park sits just east of Route 66/Ogden Avenue in the Illinois Medical District.  That same vest-pocket park includes a monument to scientist Louis Pasteur, the inventor of vaccination and pasteurization.  However, the Guthrie memorial was previously located in Grant Park – as was the Pasteur monument – next to the Art Institute of Chicago and near the starting point of Route 66 at Michigan Avenue and Jackson Boulevard.  It’s interesting that the boulder remains near the route today, on a different stretch of the Mother Road but still within the city.

As fascinated as he was by geology, Ossian Guthrie was an even greater admirer of Father Marquette and during his lifetime collected a large amount of research about the Jesuit missionary.  In his will, Guthrie bequeathed all his research and papers regarding Marquette to the City of Chicago.

For more information about the monument and other memorials to Marquette, we suggest reading Ruth D. Nelson’s book, Searching for Marquette: A Pilgrimage in Art, listed below.

Joseph D. Kubal is a Naperville, IL-based geographer, data analyst, and amateur historian.  The information in this article has been excerpted in part from the upcoming book, The Curious Traveler’s Guide: Route 66 in Metro Chicago, by Maria R. Traska, Joseph D. Kubal and Keith Yearman.

Ruth D. Nelson is a suburban Chicago-based art historian, author of the 2013 book Searching for Marquette: A Pilgrimage in Art, and adjunct faculty at College of DuPage, Glen Ellyn, IL.

(The late) Maria R. Traska is a Chicago-based journalist, author, historian, blogger, editor of the Route 66 blog CuriousTraveler66.com, and editor and co-author of the upcoming book, The Curious Traveler’s Guide: Route 66 in Metro Chicago, by Maria R. Traska, Joseph D. Kubal and Keith Yearman.

Bibliography

Brennan, Edward P., “The Only Monument to Father Marquette in Illinois,” Illinois Catholic Historical
            Review, July 1924, vol. 7, Chicago: 1924

Chicago & Alton Railroad, A Guide to the Chicago Drainage Canal with Geological and Historical Notes to Accompany the Tourist via the Chicago & Alton Railroad, Chicago: Rand McNally and Company, 1895

Dablon, Claude, S.J., excerpts from “Account of the Second Voyage and the Death of Father Jacques Marquette,” reprinted in Illinois Catholic Historical Review, October 1924, vol. 7, Chicago: 1924

“Death Calls Ossian Guthrie,” Chicago Daily Tribune, October 26, 1908: 5

Early Chicago, Inc., “Marquette Boulder Monument,” Early Chicago website at http://www.earlychicago.com/monuments.php?letter=M  (accessed October 28, 2015)

Kott, Robert, Summit, Chicago, Charleston, SC, Portsmouth, NH and San Francisco: Arcadia Publishing, 2009

Kubal, Joseph D, ”A Continental Divide in Illinois?,” Route 66 Magazine, Fall 2014, vol 14-4: 14

MacLaren, Agnes E., Letter from the Père Marquette Memorial Association to the Village of Summit, IL, Ludington, MI: May 13, 1937

Miller, Donald L., City Of The Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America, New York: Simon
            & Schuster Inc., 1996

Nelson, Ruth D., Searching for Marquette: A Pilgrimage in Art, Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2013

Thompson, Joseph J., “Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary History of Illinois,” Illinois Catholic Historical
           Review, October 1924, vol. 7, Chicago: 1924

Thanks to local historian and author, Joseph D. Kubal, for submitting the following article to us for publication:

By Joseph D. Kubal

Ogden Avenue in Berwyn, IL may not look like it today, but it was once one of the major sales areas for automobiles in the near southwest suburbs and the nearby section of Chicago. During the earliest days of U.S. Route 66, Ogden became what was soon dubbed “Automobile Row.”

From the very beginning, Route 66 ran along Ogden between the near west side of Chicago and the suburb of Lyons, just west of Berwyn. Even before Route 66, however, there were Berwyn businesses on Ogden that served horse carriage owners. As automobiles grew in popularity with the introduction of the Model-T Ford – which made owning a car more affordable for average Americans – some of these businesses transitioned to serving automobile owners. Moreover, as Ogden was already a major thoroughfare between the city and Joliet Road, even before Route 66, it made sense for auto dealers to locate on Ogden, too: the dealers went where the drivers were.

In his 2005 book Berwyn, author Douglas Deuchler notes that car-related businesses increased on Ogden Avenue as the traffic on Route 66 grew: “[T]his former Indian trail, now a thriving commercial strip, was populated with filling stations, auto dealerships, and roadside diners. People came from all over Cook County to purchase automobiles from the dealerships in Berwyn.”

In the 50th anniversary issue of the Suburban Life newspaper, Berwyn Motor Sales (BMS) touted itself as the oldest auto dealership in Berwyn, having opened there in 1922. It may well have been: BMS was listed in the 1923 suburban telephone directory with an Ogden Avenue address and was the only auto dealership listed that year. A Chicago Tribune newspaper ad published October 28, 1923 listed BMS as a community dealer in Berwyn for the Gambill Motor Company (2230 Michigan Avenue, Chicago), a distributor of Hupmobiles. Hupmobile was an auto brand that competed heavily against Ford and Chevrolet during the early days of the U.S. auto industry.

BMS wasn’t the only automobile-related business on Ogden at the time. Ogden Top and Trim had begun in 1919 as a horse-drawn carriage service center, specializing in carriage tops, harness making, and buggy whips. It had switched over to automobiles, however, by the time Route 66 was designated in 1926. Today, Ogden Top and Trim is the only remaining original automotive business left on Auto Row in Berwyn – and it’s still owned by the same family – the Nesladeks. It’s also been in two different locations on Ogden (its original location is now a State Farm Insurance agency) and currently prides itself in auto customization concentrating on vehicle interiors.

According to local telephone directories of the era, by 1926 there were four new car dealerships on Ogden in Berwyn. From northeast to southwest, they were: Anderson Brothers Motor Company (6539 Ogden), which sold Willys-Knight/Overlands models;2 Berwyn Motor Sales (6631-33 Ogden), the Hupmobile dealer; R&N Motor Sales/Chevrolet Motor Company (6829 Ogden), which, clearly, sold Chevrolets; and L. Clark Aubrey (7200 Ogden), a Ford dealership. A Hudson dealer and an Essex dealer (Essex was by then a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hudson) were located southwest on Ogden in nearby Lyons. It isn’t known whether there were any used car dealers on Auto Row during the 1920s; none were listed in the phone directories during that time. However, new car dealerships often do sell used automobiles, and local dealers on Auto Row back then may have done so as well.

There were also several major auto dealerships located in Berwyn and Cicero along 22nd Street (Cermak Road), and a few others were scattered elsewhere throughout Berwyn. “Most dealers were either on Cermak Road or in the town center along the Burlington Railroad commuter tracks” to start, says Jon Fey, director of the Berwyn Route 66 Museum. In fact, the original Auto Row was located on Cermak, even then a major commercial street for most of its length through Chicago, Cicero, Berwyn, and suburbs further west. The cost of property on Ogden Avenue was less expensive than on Cermak, however, and car dealerships soon began moving to Ogden as a result.

By the 1950s, Berwyn’s Auto Row was at the height of its popularity. In 1952, there were 13 new car dealerships and 12 independent (used car) vendors stretching along Ogden between the town borders. Beside familiar names like Chevrolet, Dodge, Ford, Jeep, and Lincoln were several lesser known and/or now defunct car companies – DeSoto, Kaiser-Frazer, Hudson, Nash, Willys/Overland, and Studebaker – and secondary car model lines like Mercury, Plymouth and Pontiac. Sandwiched in between were a great variety of related businesses. Travelers along Ogden Avenue could find nearly every automotive-related service they could ever need.

Route 66 began dropping in popularity locally during the early 1960s as it was slowly replaced in sections by Interstate 55. Although Route 66 officially lost its designation in 1985 nationally, it had been de facto fully replaced by I-55 between Chicago and Joliet by the early 1970s. Similarly, Auto Row in Berwyn began a slow decline after the 1950s. By 1982, there were only seven new car dealers and six used car sales firms remaining on Ogden. The remaining new-car dealerships offered AMC, Buick, Chevrolet, Dodge, Ford, Jeep, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, and Saab models. Until the 1970s, Auto Row boasted an all-American lineup, offering only cars made by the big three Detroit manufacturers; but by 1977, the Pontiac dealership on Ogden also sold new Saabs, built in Sweden. Saab was the first foreign franchise on the strip.

The decline continued as Anderson Brothers Ford, founded in 1924, was forced by Ford Motor Company to close it doors on November 4, 2009. The closure was part of a national trend by the Detroit auto makers to consolidate their dealerships. Anderson was the last of the new car dealers on Auto Row to close.

Why did Auto Row on Ogden die? The reasons were many. Robert Anderson, Jr. notes that the Detroit auto makers pushed their dealers “to increase their footprints of property, and city dealerships were/are landlocked” in Berwyn. Local property lots along Ogden were and remain narrow and not very deep, which was probably one of several reasons they were less expensive than lots along Cermak Road. Several car dealers are now located further down old Route 66 (there named Joliet Road) in nearby Countryside, where bigger lots were readily available to accommodate larger dealerships. Tax incentives from other communities and reduced competition were also contributing factors.

In the 2010 and 2011-2012 local phone directories, there were only four used car dealers listed along the once popular Auto Row. These listings, however, were misleading. Three of the used car dealers were erroneously listed in the 2011-2012 directory as selling both new and used cars. The directory also listed Castle Buick-Pontiac as a new dealership even though it had stopped doing business on Ogden before 2009 (the directory ad seems to have been a marketing ploy designed to draw former Castle customers to other nearby franchises).

Auto Row regained one new-car dealership in March 2011 when Berwyn Kia (7050 Ogden) opened in the building once occupied by Suburban Dodge, which itself had been located in the former Suburban Nash outlet. Kia is the second largest automobile manufacturer in South Korea, just behind Hyundai.

The Kia dealership isn’t completely starved for automotive company on Ogden. In addition to Ogden Top and Trim, Auto Row still has a number of automotive support services, including tire sellers, muffler and repair shops, auto parts stores, insurance agencies, and other related businesses. Also, most of the buildings that once housed car dealerships and related services are still there on Auto Row, repurposed and remodeled for more recent occupants. Cassidy Tires, for example, is in a building that previously housed a Lincoln-Mercury dealership, followed by a used car dealer and then an auto glass firm, according to the Route 66 Museum’s Fey. A car wash down the street was once a Hudson dealership.

Finally, the museum itself is at 7003 Ogden, a few blocks east of Harlem Avenue. Once located in a few display cases at Anderson Ford, the museum at its present location has a growing collection of automobile memorabilia related to Ogden Avenue’s past. And for as long as the Route 66 Museum remains, so will evidence of the former glory of Berwyn’s Auto Row.

The information in this article has been excerpted in part from the upcoming book, The Curious Traveler’s Guide: Route 66 in Metro Chicago, by Maria R. Traska, Joseph D. Kubal and Keith Yearman.

P.S. – A special thank you goes to Michael Da Pisa and Mary Frank of the Berwyn Public Library and the research staff of the Chicago History Museum for providing source materials for this document, and to Robert L. Anderson, Jr. and Jon Fey for their valued input.

Sources:

AT&T Real Yellow Pages, Near West Suburbs – Riverside/Berwyn Edition, Dex Publishers, November 2010
Bell Telephone Directory of Chicago Suburban Exchanges, June 1923
Bell Telephone Directory of Berwyn including Lyons and Riverside, Reuben H. Donnelley Corp., Chicago, 1926
Berwyn-Cicero-Lyons-Riverside Telephone Directory, Illinois Bell Telephone Company, Chicago, 1952
Berwyn-Cicero-Lyon-Riverside and Nearby Communities Telephone Directory, Illinois Bell, Chicago, 1982
Chicago Tribune, October 28, 1923, p. A8
Interview with Jon Fey by Maria R. Traska, August, 2011
Near West Suburbs Yellow Book, 2011-2012, Yellowbook, 2011
Personal communication with Robert L. Anderson, Jr., October, 2011
Suburban Life, 50th Anniversary Issue, September 1976