Downtown had it all

GUESTWORK | Phil Bradley

When my Grandmother Platt put on her white linen dress and the hat that made her look like a duchess and announced that we were going shopping, it only meant one thing – a day of adventure “downtown.”

As we were getting ready, we could hear occasional whistles blowing in the distance, steam whistles announcing the start of the working day at breweries, factories and mines around town. The air was full of the smell of coal smoke, all those places powered by steam heated by coal, and people were shoveling coal into the furnaces that heated their homes. This was in the late ’40s, before many homes were converted to natural gas heat.

Going downtown meant we were heading to department stores, bookshops, dress shops, hotels, good restaurants, bars, shoeshine stands and unique sights. In short, excitement.

And sidewalks full of people. We always “people-watched” at lunch from a table in the front window of Maldaner’s’. Lunch for me was always a minced chicken sandwich, crusts cut off. In the back was a big round table where lawyers came and went for lunch with their colleagues. Maldaners’ change was always shiny polished coins and, on special days, I got maple sugar candy as we were leaving.

The department stores were the big attraction. First, Bressmer’s, the grandest of all, and the first to have escalators. Then Roland’s, and then Myers Brothers. Sometimes down to Herndon’s.

Grandmother went downtown to buy clothes. Each of the big stores had buyers who knew what their customers liked and who picked clothes for them on buying trips to New York. Grandmother never tried garments on in the stores. Instead she had things sent to the house. She made her selections and called the store to have the rejects picked up.

We also spent time in the dime stores:

Woolworth, Kresge, W.T.Grant. Other stops included Suttons for gifts. Dirksen’s had very classy furniture and Robert’s Bros. wonderful men’s clothing, especially in the very cool Gaslight Room.

In those days places were run by the owners, not by young kids trying to manage their way up to a bigger city. Even if there wasn’t an owner working at an establishment, we knew who the owners were. There was the Bunns’ Marine Bank, for instance, one of three big banks on the square. At Westenberger’s Dry Goods store, a multi-story establishment, Bud Westenberger himself showed fine fabrics to the ladies. There was a Broadwell running Broadwell’s Drugstore and so on.

One of my favorite places was MacDonald’s art store, where the parking lot for the Sangamo Club is now. Lots of artists’ supplies, but the basement was packed with used books on offer. It was owned by an old Socialist who had run for Vice President of the United States a couple of times. On the Eugene Debs ticket, I believe.

Springfield was a southern city in many ways. It was very segregated. The bus Grandmother and I rode downtown went from the white southwest side to the center of town, then on to the heart of the black section. So when we got on at our stop, many black women had just gotten off to go to their jobs as maids in the neighborhood. And they had ridden in the back of the bus to get there.

All those department stores unfortunately had one thing in common, no black sales clerks. Bressmer’s had black employees. They were elevator operators. And they had to wear white gloves.

There were a few commercial strips away from the center of town: South Grand and MacArthur, South Grand at Eleventh, and North Grand at Eighth, but most businesses were in downtown. Each neighborhood had its own corner grocery and drug store within walking distance, but downtown had everything – stores, restaurants, theaters, car dealerships, hotels, dairies, brokerage houses, banks, churches, chilli parlors and tall buildings full of offices.

Restaurants included the Colonial, Strong’s Cafeteria, Steak ’n’ Shake, and two cigar stores that had lunch counters, Art Bensch’s and Allen’s, a cozy little cigar and pipe shop where Congressman Schock’s office is today. The owner called everyone “Cuz” as he served his famous Coney dog.

Hotels included the Leland, whose Red Lion Room was the birthplace of the horseshoe, the Abe Lincoln where Republican legislators stayed, and the St. Nicholas, home of Democratic lawmakers and the Glade, one of our first Chinese menus, as well as purveyor of real Caesar salads mixed at your table by Em, the hostess herself.

At the center of it all was “The Square.”

What is now a reconstruction of the Old State Capitol was the working Sangamon County Courthouse, a floor taller and a lot shabbier. The streets were not closed to traffic. Instead, for diversion, people would often drive around the square at night to “see the bright lights.”

The upper floors of buildings were occupied by office workers. There were medical offices, law offices, insurance companies and lots of state workers.

At the end of the shopping day we would walk to the McCoy Laundry, a large enterprise on North Fourth which Grandfather owned, for a ride home. Grandmother, like many ladies of the day, never learned to drive.

Yes, downtown had it all. Activity around the clock, a wide choice of shopping, services and entertainment. Everything to make a successful state capital.

And two blocks south of the square there was a house where Adlai Stevenson, the governor, actually lived.

Phil Bradley, a lifelong Springfield resident, has many fond memories of a smaller, more closely knit city.