While giving tours in the George Martin, Caroline Martin Mitchell home Pinecraig at Naper Settlement this past month, a comment concerning the doorknobs was made. The door knobs facing public-view vantage points such as hallways and exterior doors, are made of brass. The pattern was identified as oriental manufactured by the Branford Lock Works Company, Branford, CT. The interior doorknobs, those the public could not see, were made of hemacite, a moldable substance used like plastic. Hemacite is made from the blood collected at stockyards, mixed with lacquer and sawdust and pressed into molds at great pressures. This hard substance was used for doorknobs, telephone receivers and roller skate wheels!
Roller skating was new to Naperville when the Pinecraig was built in 1883. From 1885 newspapers in our collection, I found advertisements for the Naperville Roller Skating Academy. The academy was held in a large wooden building at 20 E. Jefferson Avenue. A curious photograph in the collection shows Frank Grimes and Walter Givler dressed colorfully wearing roller skates. The “fad” was short-lived. Some congregations objected to roller skating. The building would eventually be converted in to the Naperville Lounge Company, the forerunner of The Kroehler Manufacturing Company.
It wasn’t until l955 that roller skating would be revived in Naperville. That is when Don and Mabel Stump moved from Downers Grove to Naperville to open an outdoor skating rink. The rink was called Rollerville. Though neither husband nor wife were fond of roller skating, they made Rollerville successful. Mabel even played the organ for the skater’s music. The rink closed in the 1970s. Does anyone know where Rollerville was located?
