Postcard collectors serve local history

BRINGING BACK MEMORIES

By Alicia Smith ~ LaSalle News-Tribune

LASALLE, Ill. -- Many years ago, Russ Mathews worked for Illinois Bell telephone company. One of his first jobs was to pull out all the telephone equipment from the Hotel Francis before it was torn down after a 1968 fire.

Now, all that is left of the hotel are some memories and old postcards. Mathews has some of them.

"My boy was born in 70. He's never seen the hotel, but he can look at this postcard and see what it used to look like," said Mathews, 58, of Sandwich.

He has been collecting postcards of local areas since 1975.

Born and raised in and around Utica, Mathews is particularly interested in the Starved Rock area. He has more than 350 postcards from the Utica and Starved Rock area, and 33 postcards just of LaSalle, among others.

Mathews said he began collecting local postcards because they serve as a "pictorial history" of the area. That's the exact phrase also used by Phil Klabel, 68, of Peru, during a separate interview about postcards.

Klabel started collecting local area postcards 30 years ago, and by now has easily 300 postcards of LaSalle.

"I discovered the pictures brought back memories," he said.

One such memory involves a building that now houses Theodore Realty, Klabel said.

He remembers when Orsinger's Bakery used to be in that same building. During the 1950s and 1960s, it was a popular teenage hangout nicknamed the "Robin Hood."

He has some postcards of the exterior of the bakery as well as of the interior, with its marble soda fountain and huge chandeliers hanging from the ceiling.

"It was real fancy, quite a place," Klabel said.

Like Klabel, Mathews gets a memory jog from many of his postcards, including those of the former Westclox Factory building.

Mathews worked there for "two years, two months and three days" and says it was his first full-time job.

The factory made alarm clocks and wristwatches, among other products. It also produced mechanical fuse parts during World War II under government contract, Mathews said.

He said Westclox once was the basis for the cost of living in LaSalle.

"Everything used to be based on Westclox," Mathews said. "That factory fed and clothed a lot of kids and families in this area."

Mathews also identifies with his postcards of Hotel Kaskaskia, where his father lived six or eight years ago.

Along with renting out regular rooms, the hotel also rented out some to senior citizens at a set monthly rate, which paid for their house cleaning and meals in the dining hall, Mathews said.

"It was just a nice place for the senior citizens that were on their own mobility to live," he said.

Hotel Kaskaskia closed down more than a year ago, but Mathews has the postcards to prove it once was open and thriving.

One of his postcards is of the hotel's dining hall, the Wedgwood Room. There is a typed entry on the back of the undated postcard that reads: "Modern; fireproof; 110 rooms; $1.50 and up; with bath, $2.50 and up; within six miles of Starved Rock State Park; Good meals at reasonable prices."

Mathews also has 10 postcards of LaSalle-Peru High School, from which he graduated in 1961. Three are of the former manual training building and three are of the old three-story school.

On one of the manual training building postcards postmarked in 1907 from LaSalle, the person who mailed it wrote on the front, "This is where they teach the girls to cook."