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M E N U Homes Worth Having: A Place Worth Being: Historic Highlights of Highland Park The Highland Park Mailing List |
Christmas of 1937 in Highland Park by Dave Duricy
Highland Park resident Margaret Spoerl wrote a charming account of her neighbors' Christmas decorations for the Hamilton Journal and Daily News in 1937. Her colorful language and obvious pride for her hometown create a vivid image of how Highland Park celebrated the holidays in the Thirties. Even then we liked lights, lights, and more lights! Miss Spoerl carefully describes each decorated home, and often gives the owner's name and address. What house had Santa on the roof? Who hung a star from the chimney? Read on, and see if YOUR house is mentioned. Gala Holiday Decorations Abound on Exteriors of Hamilton Residences
The annual Christmas decorations on Hamilton's main thoroughfares have long been acclaimed the most beautiful and elaborate of any city in Ohio, but many individual homes also display adornment, symbolic of the season. The practice of illuminating trees and shrubs and ornamenting exteriors of private homes originated in Nela Park, Cleveland, and became popular in Hamilton about 10 years ago. The custom gained widespread popularity here and a tour of the Hamilton areas where the decorations abound is considered a necessary holiday engagement. Many streets of the West Side are emblazoned almost as brilliantly as the Great White Way, with practically every residence along Dick, Marcia, Emerson, Eaton, Park avenues, and crossing thoroughfares, exhibiting Christmas embellishments. This section was the first to adopt the custom and your corespondent, living in the neighborhood, naturally directed her tour of interest to this territory. Extensive trimming, however, may also be found in other sections with pretentious homes and smaller domains alike manifesting Christmas cheer and warmth, some with lavish light displays, other with the perennial wreath, or perhaps a modest candle flickers the Yuletide message, “Peace on earth, good will to men.” Fraught with deep religious meaning, and commemorating the true significance of Christmas, is a clever representation of the “Nativity Scene,” at the Webb funeral home, South D street and Ross avenue, the realistic plaster of paris figures depicting the Biblical characters. For three years [we] have admired the the artistic masterpiece, but received a pleasant surprise this season when the melodic strains of “Silent Night, Holy Night,” reached Hamiltonians ears. The music issues from the fourth floor of the house through a loud speaker. The molded figures are the work of Herbert Webb, whose skillful fingers fashioned their contours and each year added a new feature to the effective tableau. The home of Herbert Suter, Dick and Virginia avenues, is attractively decorated with numerous multi-colored lights adorning the small evergreen trees and shrubs surrounding the front of the house. The most unusal feature in the comprehensive scheme of embellishment is an enormous star, place high on a chimney. The family Christmas tree, laden with tinsel and trimmings, is disclosed the the sunporch doors. W. H. Wilmer, 431 Dick avenue, has also elaborates decorated the exterior of his home, using laurel boughs interspersed with gayly colored lights, surrounding the door way to his home. A tree, also strung with lights, contributes to the adornment. The home of C. B. Kobert, 601 Dick avenue, is lavishly decorated with five evergreen trees strung with bulbs, casting colored rays, on the white exterior. An enormous Christmas wreath with a red ribbon bow adorns the doorway. The home of Roy Conover, 960 Haldimand avenue, is artistically adorned and the residence of Dr. J. De la Croix, 315 Eaton Avenue, is emblazoned with white and colored lights decorating the doorway, illuminating the veranda, and adorning the two evergreens on either side of the porch steps. The home of Oscar Eberhardt, 216 Eaton avenue, is decorated annually with Christmas symbols, colored lights and holly wreaths, embellishing the exterior this year. The residence of Frank Sheley, 408 Marcia avenue, displays a lighted doorway, and a beautiful blue lighted cross on the chimney. A novel achievement of Christmas decoration was found at the home of Ed J. Bartels, 455 Emerson avenue. Enchanting children of the neighborhood is a cardboard Santa Claus about to descend the chimney. A pack is flung over his back with an evergreen tree and a variety of toys bulging from its depths. The chimney is attached to the porch roof, and so realistic is the floodlighted scene, that parents in the neighborhood have been amazed by the exemplary behavior of their offspring, ever since the first appearance of the lifelike Santa. Another unusual decoration is found at the home of J. W. Strange, 1005 Park avenue. The white silhouetted figures of the three shepherds, mounted against a blue background, and illuminated with blue lights, are exhibited near the second floor, at the side of the house. The doorway of the W. R. Sneed abode, 801 Gray avenue, is artistically decorated and at the residence of L. J. Smith, 308 Marcia avenue, a Christmas wreath and strips of holly are attractively arranged about the entrance. The simplicity and dignity of the decoration is unusually effecting, and a concealed floodlight illuminates the scene. At Carl Bartels' home, 208 Dick avenue, standing like wary sentinels in from of the pillars at either side of the piazza, guarding the Christmas spirit within, are two gigantic red candles. In Lindenwald much attention has been attached to the elaborate display at the home of Clarence D. Grosz, 2635 Freeman avenue. There, Mr. Grosz has erected and illuminated a crib scene, placed on a second floor balcony. This list of Yuletide decorations is by no means complete, and is chosen at random, it being impossible to include all the lovely and profuse adornments with which Christmas-spirited Hamiltonians fashion their houses during the holidays. |