Downtown evolves with the times

KENDALLVILLE — Local historian Russell Frehse grimaces. The mystery baffles him.
“Where in the world did he get the money? Did he buy the land without looking at it? No streets, no stores, no homes, nothing but Indians. Not a single white man’s home between Fort Wayne and Fort Dearborn, Mich., in 1829. How did he do it? That’s what troubles me.”
The man Frehse finds so fascinating is William Mitchell, Kendallville’s founder, who bought the land and drew up the first plat in what would become the city’s downtown business district.
Encouraged by the Downtown Business Association campaign to get the three-block district on the National Register of Historic Places, The News-Sun is publishing an eight-part series on the district.

The Mitchell Legacy

In 1848, Luke Diggins built the first Main Street hotel, called the Callico House.
In 1849, Kendallville’s first doctor, Benjamin Cissel, began seeing patients at his Main Street office and Kendallville’s first attorney, James Haxby, counseled clients.
Joseph Berhalter came to Kendallville in 1860 to open the Arthur J. Berhalter Co. Furniture Store in Main Street’s first brick building at 227 S. Main St. (now Corunna Bedding Co.) Coffins and furniture were made there. The building remains the downtown business district’s oldest brick structure.
The three-story Kelly House at 101 S. Main St. (now Kendallville Auto Parts) was built in the mid-1860s by Harmon Krueger to accommodate visitors and newcomers departing the nearby Main Street train station.
Stephen Helmer first operated the hotel, and then John Kelly acquired the building after Helmer’s death.
The Kelly House became headquarters for many traveling salesmen frequenting northeast Indiana.
In 1919, the building was remodeled into a furniture store. Atz Furniture took over the building in 1937. It also housed Moore Furniture, Chappell Furniture and Mortuary (1922) and the Central Hotel owned by William Sprandel.
Fred G. Hess epitomizes the determination to succeed of Kendallville’s early Main Street business owners who started with practically nothing.
He came to the U.S. from Germany in 1882 with $3 in his pocket. He traveled from New York to Toledo, Ohio, and in 1885 came to Kendallville.
Hess worked for grocer Jacob Kaiser for three years before starting his own successful bakery at 211 S. Main St.
Besides the Fred Hess Bakery, this building where The Bargain Shop is currently located has housed: Marie Waggoner’s Dress Shop, Miss Irey’s Millinery & Gifts (1947), Guy Burger’s Tavern, the City Bakery (1927) and the J.W. Thompson Bakery (1916-1922).
Main Street prospered with livery stables, harness shops, general stores, saloons and taverns, men’s and women’s apparel stores, eating establishments and doctor’s offices.
Boarded sidewalks kept pedestrians out of the dirt street, and open ditches along the street collected stormwater.
Women wore bonnets and long skirts. They sometimes attached bits of leather to the inside of their skirt bottoms to prevent snagging in wooden walkways and to keep the skirts from blowing open in windy conditions.
Fine gentlemen wore wool trousers, vests, waist coats and tophats. Many had beards and mustaches.
William Mitchell, along with Henry Hitchcock, started the First National Bank in 1858 at 132 S. Main St. that became Campbell & Fetter Bank in 1894 when Archie Campbell, who married Kate Mitchell, and Jacob Fetter took over.

Jacobs’ son, Abraham M. Jacobs, was born in Kendallville in 1864 and sent to Germany for his education. He returned to Kendallville, married Jacob Keller’s daughter, and eventually became president of Noble County Bank.
Fourteen-year-old Casper Vetter left Germany in 1877 to join his mother in Kendallville. He traveled alone by ship across the Atlantic Ocean to New York, then by train to Chicago.
In Chicago, the young Vetter needed help in finding his way to Kendallville. A conductor attempted to help, but didn’t speak German. He found an interpreter who explained the teen-age boy’s destination was Kendallville.
The conductor wrote “Kendallville” on a piece of paper and strung it around the young Vetter’s neck.
He found his way to Kendallville and became a prominent businessman and civic promoter.
Casper Vetter operated a saloon with his brother Ed, and then a bakery at 104 S. Main St. (now Friendship Crafts) in the early 1900s. He also played the tuba in the city band for holidays, special celebrations and weekly free community concerts in the band shell in the 100 block of West William Street.
Irene Schenher, 79, of Kendallville, Vetter’s granddaughter, recalls the bakery’s sweet delights when she was a young girl.
“I enjoyed the big sugar cookies and German coffee cakes, that nobody makes anymore,” she said.
At least 11 barbers operated downtown at one time, according to Bob Frick, owner of the Family Shears, 130 S. Main St., and the only Main Street barber today still cutting hair.
The first City Hall was built in 1904 at the northwest corner of Main and Rush streets. A fire destroyed the building in 1914 and it was rebuilt in 1915.
About this time Main Street became a brick north-south thoroughfare. The early Model T Fords bumped along at 15-20 mph. The brick is still visible in a few areas where some of today’s asphalt surface has cracked.
In the Sept. 16, 1936, issue of The News-Sun, Frank S. Weber, a Kendallville resident for 50 years, described Main Street in the 1880s: “In those days our streets were a mass of mud, our walkways were wooden and our street lamps were oil burners. Later came the arc lights, then the boulevard lights, miles of paved streets and a sewage system.”

The Great Depression
Kendallville’s downtown business district, like the whole country, suffered through the Great Depression in the early 1930s.
Unemployment was high, financial institutions like Noble County Bank & Trust Co. closed, and people lost their life savings.
The Citizens National Bank on Main Street paid its depositors in full, then closed.
Retailers survived by lowering their prices. Pork chops sold for 8 cents a pound in 1933 and 4 pounds of hamburger costs 19 cents.
City Council created the Welfare Council to aid depression-stricken citizens with low-interest loans.
After World War II, returning soldiers started new businesses in downtown Kendallville, and the city enjoyed a population boom.
Christianson Jewelers (1949), Westphal’s Cafe (1948), Diehl’s Sporting Goods (1951), Culligan Water Conditioning (1948), Selleck’s Department Store (1954), G.C. Murphy (1951), Kirkwood’s (1952), Barker’s Jewelry (1956) and Gamble’s (1953) were just some of the new stores that opened in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

’63 Centennial event
In the summer of 1963, Kendallville’s Centennial Celebration took place downtown with carnival rides, a pet parade, the Kendallville High School Marching Band under the direction of Clyde Copeland, citizens dressed in 19th century garb, a beard contest, a kangaroo court and jail, and a beauty pageant with Susan Taylor being crowned Centennial Queen and Paul King, WAWK–AM 1140’s morning celebrity, as master of ceremonies.
“One of the old-fashioned pieces of Americana we don’t see too often anymore is the town centennial,” said the narrator of a WANE-TV “Vista ’63” television program on Kendallville’s centennial celebration.
“For most of the other communities which make up the Midwest and East that once-in-a-lifetime celebration has come and gone, but there are a few left. One of these occurred a few weeks ago in Kendallville.”
When asked about the Centennial Celebration, Mayor Rudolph Rehwinkel said on the program, “It’s an outstanding example of what people can do when working together for one purpose.”
At one time there were two popcorn wagons and a popcorn stand on Kendallville’s Main Street. It was easier to go downtown and buy popcorn than it was to pop it at home.
The best-known popcorn stand was located at the northwest corner of the Main and William street intersection.
Wade Baughman operated the stand in the 1920s and 1930s.
A large bag of buttered popcorn costs 10 cents and a small bag was 5 cents. A scoop of peanuts, usually “redskins” on top, was an extra 5 cents.
“I remember getting hard tack (cooked but unpopped popcorn) for free at the popcorn stand with my sisters and girlfriends before going to a concert at the band shell,” said Edythe (Franze) Nartker.
“The butter would soak through the paper bag,” said Phil W. Kaufman in his book “In the Beginning: Memories of an Indiana Boyhood.”
The popcorn stand continued operating through the 1950s and 1960s with a drive-up window for vehicle convenience. Many local residents in their 40s and 50s will remember Mrs. Cogan, the smiling, gray-haired elderly woman who bagged the popcorn in the 1950s and 1960s.
The stand was removed in the late 1960s because it became a traffic hazard. So many vehicles stopped at the stand they caused a traffic jam, according to resident John Cain.