The oldest main street in Brookfield, named in 1889 by village founder S.E. Gross, is Grand Boulevard, which comprises six long blocks.
These blocks extend from north of the railroad tracks to 31st Street. Five of the blocks are residential, except for a few small businesses. The 3700 block is the reverse, with only four houses on it, and one of those, at 3700 Grand Blvd., has been turned into a spa business.
On this block are some of the oldest business buildings in the entire village, and this tour begins on the west, even-numbered side of the street.
At 3742 Grand Blvd. is one of the first two business buildings erected in Brookfield during the early 1890s. It then served as Kniest and Stadler’s Grocery and Meat Market. During the Grossdale Pavilion fire of July 7, 1897, the roof caught fire and had to be replaced. The roof line you see from the street is not how it looked before that fire. It was an ordinary, slanted roof line, when seen from the street.
In January-February 1901, this was the meeting place for the renaming of Grossdale (Brookfield’s original name) into Montauk. This attempt failed, but four years later, Grossdale was officially renamed Brookfield.
At 3738 Grand Blvd. still exists the C.P. Rice building, which opened for business on April 5, 1909. Charles Rice was an enterprising barber who had pool tables in the back room and a bowling alley in the basement. For decades after, it was known as the Brookfield Card Shop, which also carried a line of toys in the back. Today this is the Brookfield Upholstery store.
The second of the boulevard’s first two business buildings, at 3730 Grand Blvd., still has underneath the layers of more modern asphalt shingling, wooden stick-style outer walls.
This building also dates to the early 1890s. In the late 1890s and early 1900s it was the C.A. Axelson Spot Cash Grocery, a competitor to Puscheck’s across the street. In 1913, Joseph Jecmen opened his Brookfield Hardware and Paint Store here. He prospered until 1965, when he sold the store to Charles Nortier. Around 1970, Nortier sold out to the Helping Hand Thrift Shop.
The house at 3710 Grand Blvd. was the home of Dr. Ella Camp, a member of the Brookfield Women’s Club, which led the effort to build the Brookfield Public Library, which opened on the next block in 1914.
She was a fastidious germ freak, who inspected children’s hands when they came into the library. During the influenza epidemic of 1918, she developed her own theory that it was dishwater that was responsible for spreading flu germs.
On the next block north, at 3630 Grand Blvd., is an excellent copy of “painted lady” Victorian architecture that draws attention away from the Queen Anne style home next door, at 3626 Grand Blvd.
In the 1990s, the residents at 3630 Grand renovated this rather plain, four-square home, built around 1908. They added to it much exterior gingerbread and trim, giving it an older, grander effect.
But 3626 Grand is the older of the two homes. Built in 1889, this was one of S.E. Gross’s five original “model” homes built for people visiting Grossdale on his free excursions.
Other than the replaced porch area and rear addition, the house looks very much as it did 119 years ago. People describing it, today, call it the “old house with the tower.”
Henry A. Cranwell, second village president of Grossdale and editor of the Grossdale Magnet newspaper, lived here with his family until 1900. He owned the first automobile in the village, and vanished from all U.S. census records by June, 1900.
The next house is also one of Gross’s first five models, at 3524 Grand Blvd. It is a very early example of a four-square, and appears to have been the most plain of them all.
It was only identifiable due to a woodcut drawing and location directions given in “Gross’s Tenth Illustrated Catalog of 1891.”
The chimney, side bay and window locations are all accurate to the woodcut. Some exterior renovation has occurred, possibly in the early 1930s.
Be careful crossing Eight Corners, which separates the 3400 and 3500 blocks of Grand Boulevard. Sometimes car drivers don’t appear to know where they’re going. Don’t assume a car will stop for you. Move quickly!
Jessie (Gerhardt) Jeter came here with her family in 1890, and recounted the story many times about how her father, Frank, followed Gross’s brass band going up the boulevard, and when it stopped, he decided that was where he wanted their new house, at 3424 Grand Blvd.
He may have been involved in its construction, since in 1894 he was advertising himself as a “contractor and builder.” This Queen Anne style house is not as ornate as it used to be. However, there is much natural charm here. Lining the sidewalk is a quaint, low, boulder fence, and on the property is a grove of oak trees, creating a shady woods for the homeowners.
Strolling up the boulevard, we find several kinds of residential architecture, ranging from old one story gabled homes to modern ranch-style Coronet Construction Company homes built in the 1950s and ’60s.
At 3340 Grand Blvd. is the home of Babetta Neumayer and her family. She was the village’s first midwife, delivering hundreds of local babies from the 1890s through 1920. A midwife was a substitute maternity doctor, much in demand for Victorian-age wives who did not want male doctors attending them.
Crossing the street to 3341 Grand Blvd., we have a typical Coronet house from the early 1950s. However, it is not the house, but the elm tree out front of it that is so noteworthy.
This historic tree has survived bugs, blight, weather, street widening and sewer construction from the year 1889 to the present day. It is the last one of Gross’s original American elms planted along Grand Boulevard. Its continued life is overseen by Elaine Zelinski and her neighbors.
Moving southeast, the building at 3451 Grand Blvd. was built as a two-flat after the turn of the century. It had quite a different life back in the early 1980s as the business CUD’S Great Expectations: “Where Time and Money Is Always Well Spent.”
The store had a cow as its logo and one painted on its storage shed out back. Its ad sheet offered: “Boots, coats, ties, pleasant company, necklaces, rings, kids’ games, good humor, kids’ books, kids’ clothes, warmth, shoes, dresses, sweaters, blouses, dishes, hospitality, kitchen items, tools, antiques, fish tanks, drums, curling irons, bargains, appliances, fishing gear, mirrors, doilies, and good deals.” Today it is a residence again.
Go around Eight Corners to the east side of Grand Boulevard, and walk down to the house at 3529 Grand Blvd.
Over the years, there has been much renovation to its exterior. This was one of Gross’ original five. Look up to the attic section and take note of the two, unchanged, little attic windows there, which have looked down on the boulevard since 1889.
At 3609 Grand Blvd. is the current incarnation of the Brookfield Public Library. Step inside for a breather, a drink of water, and a sit-down, if you wish. Scan a magazine, browse the stacks and take out a book. The original building here was a donation by Andrew Carnegie who, in the early 1900s, paid for free libraries all across the United States.
Brookfield’s first free public library opened on June 27, 1914, and was demolished in June 1985. It was one-story high and had a basement that became the children’s library.
Generations of children tramped up and down the stairs to take out their favorite books. Little did they know that underneath them, a flowing clear water stream was capped before the library was built.
This E.B. Graham-built Dutch Colonial style house at 3647 Grand Blvd. had some real problems in 1932 and 1950.
According to the April 7, 1932 Brookfield Magnet, Joseph G. Gamber, former state fire marshal for 11 years, testified that flames and fumes from a defective coal furnace were responsible for five deaths of the Sneathen family, early Sunday morning, April 3.
The headline called it “the worst fire tragedy in [the] history of [the] village.”
The Brookfield Enterprise reported on August 10, 1950 that another fire occurred here on Sunday, Aug. 6, with an oil furnace as the culprit. No one died this time, but there was a great deal of interior damage.
Curiously, the Enterprise reports that the 1932 fire had been cause by spontaneously-ignited paint rags, unmentioned in the 1932 news story. Since 1950, nothing else has happened, and the circa 1900 house is no longer heated by oil.
In 1916, the Seventh Day Adventists built 3713 Grand Blvd. as their publishing house, sending religious leaflets and books all across the United States. In the 1960s it was the home of Fisher and Willms, a house building and remodeling business.
By 1990, the Regdon Company had moved out, making electrical components elsewhere. After overcoming money problems, the Pacific Press Condominiums were opened in 1992. Over the doorway are still the original words “Pacific Press.”
The building at 3723 Grand Blvd. was Brookfield’s Strand Theater, which opened in the summer of 1915. Showing silent movies, this was also a vaudeville house.
The interior was remodeled and expanded closer to the alley after a fire in 1946, and survived until 1952, when it was sold at auction.
In early 1953 it was no more, and has been occupied by a succession of businesses. Today the facade has been restored, except for the entranceway, which was added in the 1960s.
The limestone block-fronted building at 3729-31 Grand Blvd. has been around since 1897, when it began life as Puscheck’s Grocery and Meat Market.
Puscheck was the village’s postmaster here from 1903-12. Take note of the original round “CLOW” metal plates in the sidewalk, once used to let loads of coal down to the basement furnaces. Today Weber’s Travel is at 3729 Grand, the former site of the Sugar Bowl, a favorite eating and meeting place for Brookfield teens in the 1950s and early 60s.
I call the dark-brick structure at 3735 Grand Blvd. “the mystery building.” Built in 1912, it must have been home to many businesses, but I have never run across any of their names, which is unusual. Maybe they just didn’t like to advertise in papers. Since the 1960s it has been home to beauty shops.
The land that Trattoria Gemelli’s Italian restaurant is on today had on it, from 1930-34, a small, one story cement block “house.” This was the office where realtor James Aylesworth sold and rented houses and also rented apartments.
Behind it, to 3745 Grand Blvd., was a small park with a bandshell in the 1920s and 30s. Also, according to the remembrances of Ruth Fanning Speidel, there was a miniature golf course here, owned by village Trustee Frank B. Fanning and John Mikulasek. Fanning’s children used to help run the course, with son Aubrey acting as ticket taker. As the Depression deepened, no one was spending money, and the course closed.
But no matter the state of the economy, Grand Boulevard has survived, due to interesting architecture and interesting people. This may end the tour, but it doesn’t end the stories which are still waiting to be found and to be told.