13
Social Considerations
The clubhouse was a defining feature of the newspaper resorts. A vital element of the formula established by Bertram Mayo, clubhouses were erected by Mayo at his Beverly Glen, Lakewood, Beachwood, and Browns Mills resorts and nearly every Smadbeck newspaper colony was equipped with a clubhouse as well.
The building served a variety of purposes. Most evident was as a lure to the lot buyers. Not only did they obtain a piece of land for a modest sum of money, but it came with free use of a clubhouse. On the surface this appeared to be a generous handout from the developers, but a second function of the clubhouse was solely to their benefit. A sales office on site was needed and the clubhouse provided the perfect location. The design often included sleeping rooms where the sales staff could bunk overnight, at least in the warm summer months, making it more convenient to accommodate buyers late into the evening. At some colonies the clubhouse also served as a lodging facility for lot buyers. Once it was deeded over to the POA, it provided a space for organizational meetings and communal entertainment.
Clubhouses were built in a prominent location, often inland rather than directly on the waterfront, and frequently mounted on a hill or promontory. At least one clubhouse, that at Crystal Lakes in Ohio, was built on an island in the lake.1 Beginning in about 1926 many Smadbeck resorts had a road named Clubhouse Drive making it easier to now identify the original location of the building.
Most clubhouses were new construction, but in a few instances an existing building was adapted. Advertisements for Marshfield Estates proclaimed that “the famous old Peregrine White home is being remodeled into a clubhouse for the exclusive use of lot owners.”2 (Peregrine White was the first child born to the Mayflower pilgrims in America.) At Madron Lake, where a large farm formed the nucleus of the tract, a barn was remodeled for the clubhouse.3
Clubhouse structures were sometimes described as “rustic” which can be interpreted as simple or rough construction. Some were quite large and impressive looking even if not durably built. Designs varied and no two clubhouses appear to be identical.
Skyland’s clubhouse had a spacious clubroom centered with sleeping rooms for gentlemen on one side and ladies on the other. A large fireplace with a cobblestone chimney could accommodate four-foot logs and, in a promotional article, the building was described as being equipped for “telephonic communications with the outside world.” Running water was not mentioned, rather readers were told of a spring-well providing a source of unsurpassed “mountain fluid” in the rear of the lodge.4
Despite being dubbed the “white clubhouse,” the facility at Clear Lake Shores has a colorful history. It began life as the sales center for the resort and then functioned as the community center fitted out, according to one resident’s journal, with Persian rugs. Its location just off Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, subjected the building to hurricanes and tropical storms. At one time holes were drilled in the floor to let flood water drain out and keep it from floating away. In 1947 it was used as a temporary morgue and, on other occasions, as a storm shelter. When Clear Lake Shores incorporated as a city in November of 1962, the Smadbeck structure became the City Hall as well as a polling place. The oldest public building still in use in Galveston County, it was raised ten feet above its former elevation in 1990 and now perches on concrete blocks and steel beams.5
A number of clubhouses were left to decay and several, including the clubhouse at Nassau Lake Park, were destroyed by fire.6 Among the surviving clubhouses, at least one—the structure at Interlaken, with its portico entrance still in place—has become a private residence. Others maintain themselves as rental halls for weddings and other functions such as the clubhouse at Lake Como Beach which was renovated in 1993 for this purpose.7
The North Shore Beach clubhouse, damaged in a fire and extensively restored in 1979, still hosts monthly civic association meetings in addition to being available for party rental. Lake Parsippany advertises its clubhouse for rent, however, the fire department bought the original clubhouse grounds on Club House Court in 1996, and the present clubhouse occupies a building on the lakefront.8
The clubhouse at Pell Lake was constructed on eleven lots at the corner of Jasmine and Florence Roads. An unpretentious two-story building, it had open air porches on the upper level supported by squared stone pillars. A photo dated September of 1991, now on display at the clubhouse, shows the second-floor porches removed and the roof reconfigured with the two stone posts standing awkwardly apart from the building, and from each other.
The clubhouse at Pell Lake was modest by comparison with those at other newspaper colonies. The far right side of this 1927 photograph of the clubhouse depicts a narrow dirt road typical of the roads throughout the resort.
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Curiously, while the clubhouse was waved as a carrot to tantalize potential lot buyers, another structure provided by the developer at Pell Lake was not mentioned in the promotional verbiage. This building was likely an even stronger customer magnet yet Smadbeck called no attention to it, and while the clubhouse was specifically mentioned in the trust deed, this simple wooden building was left out. Built on the parkland along the lakeshore at the southern beach was a pavilion for dancing. A dance hall alongside a lake evokes romantic visions of music wafting over the water in the moonlight, but the pavilion may have served a shadier purpose.
Dance halls were common in the Prohibition era and were frequented by those looking for an opportunity to obtain illicit liquor. This was especially prevalent at country roadhouses that operated without regulation by city governments. Social welfare groups frowned upon rural dance halls and, in Wisconsin, Walworth County was at the forefront of efforts to stem the combination of moonshine and moonlit dancing.
Members of the County Ministerial Association met in early 1923 to shake fists at this social evil that imperiled the health and morals of young people.9 In an attempt to remedy the situation, the clergymen drafted a resolution and forwarded it to their state senator, a local physician from Elkhorn. Given his Quaker upbringing, his identification as a “Dry,” and his position as chairman of the senate committee on education and welfare, Eldo T. Ridgway, was the ideal person to champion the ministers’ cause in the state legislature.
Dance hall reform was one aspect of the national Progressive Movement that engulfed the country in the first few decades of the twentieth century. This trend toward social activism and reform motivated the enactment of laws regulating dance halls throughout the country which, in turn, enabled Ridgway to borrow preexisting language and ideas in formulating his proposed law.10
The resultant Ridgway Dance Hall bill received much attention in the press throughout the state. Its proponents employed alarmist rhetoric to urge passage of the bill describing country dance halls as places where young teenage girls became intoxicated and staggered home in the early morning hours. It was asserted that mothers no longer looked after their daughters, making it necessary for the state to extend a protecting hand to rein in the “dark picture of public dance halls running wild, moonshine parties and social diseases on the spread.”11 These claims were not without merit. Dance halls were reputed to be hangouts for gangsters and prostitutes. Naive, young working girls were lured to these roadhouses by the availability of liquor, sensuous new dances, and free or low-cost admission, often resulting in seduction.12
Supported by most of the socially progressive organizations in the state, the Ridgway bill wound its way through both houses of the state legislature, navigated many hearings and proposed amendments, and was signed into law by the governor in June of 1923. Basically, it was an enabling act, giving county boards the prerogative to license, inspect, and regulate carnivals, street fairs, and particularly, dance halls.13
Walworth County, as the birthplace of the law, enthusiastically embraced its new authority. On November 16, 1923, the Walworth County Board, backed by the Anti-Saloon League and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, passed a dance hall ordinance.14 Pursuant to the law a committee on dance hall supervision was formed, and it appointed a team of thirty supervisors of amusements who were issued badges, vested with the powers of deputy sheriffs, and charged with enforcing a set of rather drastic rules.
Intoxicants and intoxicated persons were, officially at least, prohibited. While the proprietor had the primary responsibility for complying with the rules, the amusement supervisors or inspectors were empowered to arrest anyone who became intoxicated or possessed liquor, and to seize the goods as evidence. Their authority extended to liquor provided by an automobile owner or driver outside the facility. Violations could result in license forfeitures and fines and jail terms for both the dance hall operators and any offending minors. The inspectors were duty bound to file a written report describing the circumstances of the dance party in order to collect their compensation.
Most of the seventy-two counties in Wisconsin passed similar ordinances and the lively, and sometimes contentious, county board discussions about dance hall regulations continued to be a favorite topic for the local newspapers. First came the arguments over whether the dance halls should be regulated at all. This was followed by squabbling over what provisions to include or exclude, how much to charge for license fees, during what hours and on which days of the week dance pavilions could be open, how the inspectors would be selected, and how much they would be paid.
A vigorously debated provision was whether to allow “pass out checks,” slips of paper that allowed customers to leave the hall for a short period of time, and then re-enter without having to pay again. The desire to prevent dancers from leaving to obtain alcohol from a vendor in the parking lot, was so strong that some county ordinances prohibited the use of pass out checks—even though many country roadhouses had no indoor toilets.15 Walworth County wisely chose to omit any reference to pass out checks in its regulations.
With each county fashioning its own ordinance, there was a myriad of differing rules, a situation that resulted in claims of discrimination, appeals to the state attorney general for interpretations of the ordinances, and lawsuits. These local rules were unpopular with many segments of the community. The dance attendees would not report violations16 and jurors refused to return guilty verdicts against dance hall operators and dancers even in the face of conclusive evidence.17
Those operating the halls complained about being forced to pay for supervision of their events while many dances—those held at hotels, churches, and schools, or sponsored by farmers clubs—were exempt from the provisions.18 A variety of strategies were employed in an attempt to evade the restrictions and the fees. The definition of a dance hall was challenged by assertions that it did not include a roadhouse19 or an eating venue with a coin operated player piano.20 A few claimed that a dance was not open to the pubic if the hall was rented to an individual who issued indiscriminate invitations21 or if no admission fee was charged but the price of drinks was increased to compensate.22 County boards were kept busy trying to close these loopholes and the press was kept busy reporting on their efforts.
The job of dance hall inspector was often viewed as a political plum. The pay was good, around $5 a dance, and free beer and food was usually offered. Some overindulged becoming intoxicated themselves23 or used the promise of a favorable report to connive with the proprietor.24
The assignment also had its detractions. The supervisors were blamed if the ordinance was not accomplishing its purpose. The suspicions of one county board were raised when a group of inspectors wrote “none” on dance hall reports asking for the number of underage dancers, individuals denied admission, and intoxicated persons, but then appended requests for billy clubs to protect themselves.25 Elsewhere a second layer of inspection was added with the appointment of a special dance hall committee of the county board to visit dances and determine whether or not the inspectors were doing their duty.26 Some inspectors were criticized as being too lax in enforcing the regulations and others were chastised for being overly strict, as where inspectors stopped a quadrille because it was too noisy and expelled patrons for engaging in “fancy dancing.”27
The inspectors had their own gripes, complaining that the dance hall proprietors and local law enforcement tried to tell them how to do their job, that girls and women bobbed their hair making it difficult to judge whether they met the age requirement, and that the contortions performed by dancers interfered with determining whether or not they were intoxicated.28 The job could also be dangerous—more than one inspector was clobbered on the head with a beer bottle.29
Walworth County sought the help of the Ku Klux Klan in enforcing its ordinance. One hundred and fifty knights were deputized who, in one incident, swooped down on a dance hall and blocked the exits to prevent the drinking dancers from escaping. Twenty liquor flasks were strewn about the floor but, since it was impossible to determine ownership, no arrests were made.30 Another time the Klan lit a cross on fire causing dance attendees to attempt to extinguish the blaze. The inspector was blamed, at least in part, for the fight that ensued.31
Although concerned with nonenforcement of the ordinance during the summer of 1924, the county remained determined to persevere in the campaign to “clean out the nest of bootleggers.” To accomplish this objective the dance hall inspectors were summoned to a meeting in May of 1925 to be given a pep talk by the District Attorney, the county board members, and representatives of the civic-minded organizations that promoted the legislation.32
It was in this atmosphere that the Pell Lake pavilion held its first dance on Saturday, August 8, 1925.33 Since the facility was not mentioned in the trust deed granting the POA ownership of the land where the pavilion was located, its use was not restricted to lot buyers. As such, the dance hall was open to the public bringing it within the purview of the Ridgway bill and the rigid provisions set out in the county ordinance.
A rather plain, rectangular building (pictured on this book’s cover), the pavilion was built on stilts allowing it to extend out over the lake.34 The interior space was a large open room with a concession area at the front end where snacks were sold. A series of posts separated the dance floor proper from a string of benches lining the side wall where windows looked out over the lake. As required by the ordinance, there were no private rooms and the hall was brightly lit. A live orchestra, including a violinist, provided music35 until the mandatory midnight closing time.
The Pell Lake dance hall was presumably operated as a private enterprise charging an admission fee of twenty-five cents. Children under the age of sixteen were excluded unless accompanied by a parent or guardian. The proprietor paid the yearly $10 license fee plus a $5 per dance charge which covered the salary of the supervisor.
County boards continued to reevaluate whether the dance hall ordinances were a good idea after all, providing more fodder for the press as succinctly expressed in a news article headline: “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp: County Board Marks Time with Dance Ordinance and Renews Griefs of Yester Year.”36 Sauk County enacted its dance hall ordinance and then rescinded it at the next meeting.37 Another handful of counties repealed their laws after a year or two.38 In some cases a particular provision, or even the entire ordinance, was revoked only to be reinstated a short time later.39
A few months after the Pell Lake dance hall opened, the Walworth County Board met to assess the effectiveness of its ordinance. The county clerk felt it was a matter of personal opinion as to the success or failure of the enforcement provisions while E.T. Ridgway defended the legislation he had championed. He attributed its success to the hiring of competent inspectors while encouraging stricter enforcement and better inspection. During 1924, the only full year for which figures were available, a profit of $400 was realized on the 650 dances held in the county. This excess revenue, Ridgway argued, rendered the ordinance both morally and financially prudent, and he credited it with preventing venereal disease and illegitimate children which would incur costs for the taxpayers. None of the dance halls in the county had sustained any license revocations. This flawless record was cited as proof that the ordinance was a success while overlooking the possibility that the lack of license revocations could also be evidence of look-the-other-way enforcement. In the end, Walworth County was not among those willing to forgo dance hall control and the result of the review was to leave the ordinance in effect.40
It was clever of Warren Smadbeck to include the pavilion as an added attraction for customers while not calling attention to it or becoming involved with its operation. Clearly this was done because of the illegal drinking that took place in such venues.
Although not mentioned in the advertisements, the other Smadbeck colonies throughout the United States surely had dance pavilions. A news item described the construction of a dance pavilion on an island in Laurel Lake.41 A dance hall is also documented at Lake Louisvilla but only because it is mentioned in the caption of a 1932 aerial view of the resort.42 It is noteworthy that the only advertisement for a newspaper subscription colony to mention a dance pavilion is one for the resort of Plage Laval in the Canadian province of Quebec,43 an area unaffected by the prohibition of alcohol during the 1920s.
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Initially the POAs were the social arbiters of the summer communities. Sometimes a distinct women’s club was incorporated as well, but usually such groups were organized informally as subsets of the POA. These women’s contingents enthusiastically arranged dances, dinners, card and bunco games, costume parties, and other functions. Some had boat races, swimming races, and beauty contests.
At Pell Lake bake sales, auctions, and bingo games were conducted as money raisers by the Women’s Club while the Highlands Sunshine Club held weekly card parties to help pay for lake improvements.44
Other groups connected to the newspaper resorts were formed as well and a survey of these organizations in Walworth County shows that club activities parallel the progression of societal change. In the beginning years of the colonies, clubs were designed to extend the camaraderie into the winter months, meeting off-season in city neighborhoods. Pell Lake lot owners who lived in the Chicago Garfield neighborhood and those in the suburb of Oak Park held winter card parties to get together with their friends seen otherwise only at the lake. Pel-Lakens, a group for young people, was organized in 1928. It held meetings in Chicago during the fall and winter months and grew to over seventy members. The Pell Lake Baseball Association was yet another social group that arranged winter dances in the city to maintain interest in summertime sports activities45 and the Women’s Club even had a sub-contingent called the Women’s Winter Club.46
The deterioration of the economy in the 1930s altered the character of the resorts when some city dwellers without prospects for work moved to their summer cottages to save money. At some colonies trailers were brought in for cheap housing. Abandoned cottages provided opportunities to squatters, while at a few of the colonies people lived outdoors in the woods. The organizations reacted by redirecting socialization to financial assistance for needy individuals, giving rise to a new round of club activity.
Two such groups were founded in Pell Lake in 1934, patterned after immigrant confraternities. The Pell Lake Social Club was incorporated in August and the Pell Lake Friendship Club in November. The reason for two clubs is not obvious as many of the same people appear as officers and directors of both associations. Additionally, both clubs had the same declared purpose of promoting sociability and giving financial aid to members: $1.50 in the event of sickness and $2.50 in the case of death. Any person could apply for membership but had to be voted in by the board of directors which could also expel members who failed to pay the yearly dues of 25 cents or “in cases where members become troublesome.”47
The end of Prohibition, like the deteriorating economy, had its effect on the social structure of the resorts. The ban on alcohol was repealed on December 5, 1933, with the ratification of the Twenty-First Amendment but state laws restricting or prohibiting the sale alcohol were not affected unless the legislatures took action to accommodate the change in mores. A Walworth County survey on whether to remain dry or wet resulted in all but one of the townships voting for wet. The Wisconsin legislature acted quickly to revise its laws but not before applications for permits to sell alcohol were filed and tavern keepers began stocking liquor.48
With the imminent threat of the availability of legal liquor the conservative welfare groups again became aroused. In January of 1934 the dance hall rules in Walworth County were stiffened to require inspectors to visibly sport a badge or star and to wear caps designating them as officers of the law. Supervisors would be assigned to dances alphabetically rather than by proximity to the hall.49
At the June Walworth County board meeting thirty-five members of the Temperance Union and representatives of the Ministerial Association came armed with resolutions, amendments, and new ideas for the “control of evil” in county dance halls. One reporter described the meeting as “a mess” where the board of supervisors passed, reconsidered, and rescinded action for the control of dance halls and the sale of liquor. As a result of this wild session, those in attendance had no idea what had taken place, which motions were carried, and which demands were deferred.50
Since dance hall ordinances specifically prohibited the presence of alcoholic beverages, taverns with dancing rooms were initially denied permission to sell liquor. This unpopular application of the law caused most county dance hall ordinances to either be amended, repealed, or ignored. Legal liquor effectively put the dance hall inspectors out of work but created new business opportunities and transferred the locus of socialization to the tavern.
In the spring of 1934 seven liquor license applications were filed in the township, four for taverns within Pell Lake itself and the others for bars located around the edges. Stanley Walby operated the Green Dragon just off the Lake Geneva highway, W.O. Steffens had a place on Clover Road near the railroad tracks, and Herbert Schow ran a bar on Clover Road farther north.51 William Hand operated a grocery, tavern, dance hall, gas pumps, icehouse, and restaurant at the north beach.52 Mathew Welter, and later William Bishop, had a similar assemblage of businesses at the southern beach.
The Pell Lake pavilion continued functioning as a dance hall but, faced with competition from these taverns, most if not all with their own dancing rooms,53 the popularity of the pavilion waned after only a few more years. On July 1, 1937, the pavilion was transformed into a roller rink with an admission price of 25 cents.54
Remnants of the Ridgway law remain in Wisconsin statutes as Sec. 59.56 (12), and, in the chapter titled Miscellaneous Police Provisions, Sec. 175.20.
Although dance halls are still mentioned, the fee income is now directed toward compensating the county for extraordinary governmental services involved with block parties, street fairs, or other public events such as extra police protection, traffic control, and refuse collection rather than for the hiring of inspectors.
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A third wave of clubs appeared after World War II when resort communities experienced a resurgence of popularity. The middle and lower classes were once more able to afford a summer home and a second generation of families bought the cottages others had aged out of. The cost of repairs and improvements could be financed by renting the cottage out for a few weeks in the summer.
A new consumerist attitude was noticeable. Stone barbecue pits were constructed in the back yards and neighbors competed with each other for the most impressive table umbrella. Once again mothers and children stayed at the cottage all summer while the fathers toiled in the city and joined the family after work on Friday. On Saturday and Sunday, friends and relatives who did not have a summer place at Pell Lake descended on those who did.
The Pell Lake POA rebuilt the beach shelters, piers, and rafts to accommodate the constant stream of kids walking down the roads, carrying their pails and shovels and rolling inner tubes, on their way to the lake for a day of sunning and swimming. By the 1950s the pavilion had been renamed the Pelladium, was used for an occasional dance,55 and continued to function as a roller rink most afternoons and evenings.56 The roof of the aging building leaked but the teenagers skillfully skated around the puddles when it rained. A military surplus quonset hut, erected on North Lake Shore Drive half way between the beach and Saint Mary’s church, became a snack shop called The Hut and Clover Road became home to a motor court with about half a dozen detached cabins for rent.
A Lutheran congregation was formed at a clubhouse meeting in 1947 and initially services were held in the garage of the Antemann home on Juneau Road. In the 1950s the Catholics enlarged Saint Mary’s57 and the Lutherans replaced the garage by purchasing an old schoolhouse, moving it to Clover Road, and refitting it for use as a church.58 Steffans, having relocated his tavern business to the intersection of Thistle and Juneau, sold it to Hungarian immigrant Henry Karbiner and his wife Katie in 1947.59 The name was changed to Henry’s Tavern and the big building and its cement stairway entrance were painted a definitive green. When fathers arrived from the city on Friday evenings, families celebrated at Henry’s with fish fry, beer, and a game of Skee-Ball.
The revived enthusiasm in resort activities bolstered the POAs and was reflected in the clubs. September of 1955 saw the formation of the Silver Lake Property Owners Improvement Association, a splinter group of the Interlaken POA. Renewed interest in the Pell Lake Friendship Club surfaced in 1959 when a resident wrote to the Secretary of State inquiring about the articles of incorporation. Some newly formed groups evinced a purpose more serious than mere socialization, such as the Social and Civic Club incorporated in 1949 to encourage active participation in civic as well as social activities at Lake Como Beach and the Pell Lake Businessmen’s Association formed in 1952 to encourage business development and advocate for civic betterment.60
In these postwar years the resorts once again flourished as family getaways in warm weather. But the summer resort concept could not keep up with the continually evolving social picture. By the time Warren Smadbeck died in 1965, the original concept of the newspaper resort had long since run its course.
Owners grew older, making winter homes in Arizona or Florida more attractive than a cottage at a lake. Their children and grandchildren had other, more enticing alternatives for vacation dollars. The 1970s introduced theme parks, waterparks, and swappable time-shares. A condo at a ski resort provided a different option for a second home. Changes in transportation also contributed to the decline of the resorts as summer enclaves. Interstate highways made lakes farther north more accessible. At Pell Lake Marinette Road was renamed Pell Lake Road when Highway 12, the main approach from Illinois, was rerouted to the northeast and upgraded to super highway status, reducing Pell Lake to a name on an exit ramp for those passing by.
Constructed by the C and NW railroad in 1924, the Pell Lake depot was an impressive building measuring 20' × 50'.61 But the growing use of automobiles resulted in fewer train passengers and, in 1941, the railroad was allowed to remove the depot and substitute a small, frame structure that was little more than a wooden shack.62
The original train depot at Pell Lake was handsomely constructed of frame and stucco with a red tile roof and a canopy at each end.
When ridership declined, the Pell Lake depot building was sold and relocated to become a private residence. It was replaced with a simple wooden shed, shown here in the early 1950s, bearing merely the name of the stop and a phone number.
When the train speed slowed to fifteen miles per hour due to poor track conditions, weekday commuters between Chicago and Pell Lake dropped to an average of six per day.63 The railroad could not justify the expense of maintaining the tracks, the depots, and the train cars and engines and terminated the run to Pell Lake and Lake Geneva on August 9, 1975. By then even the replacement depot had disappeared and the passengers stepped out of the train into the weeds.64
Many cottage owners with limited retirement income sold the house in the city and moved to the summer home, winterized with indoor plumbing, a garage, an insulated attic, and a furnace. Younger workers with low income jobs found the cottages to be an inexpensive housing choice. A 1969 planning report for Pell Lake counted about 500 homes around the lake and characterized it as primarily a retirement community.65 Pell Lake had lost its status as a summer resort.
This reshaping of the character of the communities is again mirrored in the history of the Walworth County newspaper resort clubs. When the office of the Wisconsin secretary of state purged inactive associations in 1985 the Pell Lake Businessmen’s Association, Pell Lake Friendship Club, Pell Lake Social Club, and the Lake Como Beach Social and Civic Club, all fell victim and were involuntarily dissolved.
Local neighborhood clubs were no longer relevant. The POAs survived out of necessity but struggled to fulfill their community obligations to maintain the clubhouse and parkland. The Secretary of State declared both the Pell Lake POA and the Interlaken POA in bad standing in 1987 for failure to file yearly reports, and both were involuntarily dissolved in 1993. Interlaken restored its rank in 1995 and has been delinquent only twice since. The Lake Como Beach POA defaulted three times between 1998 and 2015 but in each case recovered its reputation. It took the Pell Lake POA eleven years to regain good standing.66
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The transformation into a viable year-round community was not achieved gracefully by the newspaper colonies. The small lot size was a major handicap. Purchasers of two lots who waited too long to put up a cottage were confronted with zoning laws that rendered the lots unbuildable. Some were sold to adjacent land owners while others were just usurped by the neighbors. Here and there at Pell Lake a few of these orphaned lots still remain, often unkempt.
Some of the newspaper colonies became quite run down. Orienta Park, the 1909 development in Wichita, Kansas, exemplifies the situation. An article in the Catholic Advance in the mid–1960s deemed Orienta Park the “Poor Corner” of Wichita67 and it was soon slated for urban renewal.
A redevelopment approach similar to urban renewal was employed in 1981 at Coon Lake Beach in Minnesota. The nearby city of East Bethel acquired seventeen lots through tax forfeitures and obtained a federal grant to remove old cottages and clear abandoned lots. The lots were then offered to adjoining property owners for purchase or else combined to form large 125' × 100' parcels that sold for $7,500.68 At least the Smadbeck grid pattern and most of the street names were preserved.
At another Minnesota resort a more drastic reconfiguration took place. A comparison of the original plat map of Carver Beach with a current map shows the street layout redesigned with completely different names. Only Highland Park Drive and Violet Road, retain both their original course and label. Even the lake was renamed, with Long Lake becoming Lotus Lake, although this change probably occurred in the 1930s.
Urban redevelopment was pursued too aggressively at the early Smadbeck vacation colony of Lakewood Pines. Warren Smadbeck had sold his leftover lots to an investment partner, Maximillian Hirshberg, in the 1950s. The land, acquired by the township through a wholesale tax foreclosure action in 1973, was bundled with other properties to become sites for affordable housing, schools, and an industrial park. This made it impossible to locate the original parcels on the tax rolls or on newly created property maps. After decades of unsuccessfully trying to identify Hirshberg’s land, his descendants asserted ownership claims and obtained a ruling in their favor, exposing the township to the considerable expense of buying off their rights.69
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No dramatic renewal changes have been attempted at Pell Lake. Some cottages remain summer homes although the lake is now little used for swimming. The year-round residents are a mix of retirees and wage earners. The land platted in the 1920s is not attractive for the building of modern, larger homes, even assuming enough adjoining lots can be obtained, since neighboring houses would be decades old and of inexpensive construction. As a result, fresh housing is mainly restricted to the fringes and Ira Pell’s original farm acreage is today blanketed with newer homes.
Henry’s Tavern was shuttered in 1964 when the Karbiners retired and, in time, the building was torn down leaving only the green cement steps. Those too have since disappeared. Both the big oak tree and the triangular island the tree sat on in front of the tavern at the intersection of Thistle and Juneau are gone.
The roller rink closed and was demolished in 1961.70 The site of the original dance pavilion is now home to a few picnic tables and swing sets and bears a sign identifying it as the old Roller Rink Park. Saint Mary’s parish dissolved a few years ago and the church building became a food bank and day care center. The Lutherans were more successful in sustaining their congregation and built a large new church on Pell Lake Road.
Although altered in appearance, the clubhouse still survives and continues to be used as the headquarters of the Pell Lake POA. Relieved of any function, the stone pillars remain in the yard thickly shrouded in flowering vines as if trying to hide in embarrassment.
Another puzzlement sits nearby. A dedication plaque mounted on a rock in the clubhouse yard reads, “In the 1800’s this landmark was the Ira A. Pell’s family homestead.” Ira Pell never owned the land where Warren Smadbeck built the clubhouse nor did Smadbeck purchase any part of the Pell farm. The peculiar wording on the plaque serves both to confuse and to contribute to the history of Pell Lake.
1. Display Ad, Dayton Herald, August 9, 1927, 5.
2. Display Ad, Boston Post, June 2, 1920, 2. In Marshfield, a Town of Villages, 1640–1990, the authors identify the home converted to the Marshfield Estates clubhouse as the “old Kent house.” Cynthia Hagar Krusell and Betty Magoun Bates (Historical Research Associates, Marshfield Hills, Massachusetts, 1990), 128.
3. “Barn Becomes Clubhouse,” Herald-Press, June 28, 1928, 10.
4. “Skyland to Be Community Mountain Camp Village 135 Miles from Here,” El Paso Herald, April 4, 1928. The building now houses the Ruidoso Women’s Club. Stallings, “Skyland Development Reflects Ruidoso History.”
5. Alicia Gooden, “‘If the Walls Could Talk,’” Galveston Daily News, March 20, 1999, 1, 12.
6. The Village Green, Nassau Village Beautification Committee (New York), August 2016, accessed February 25, 2020: http://nebula.wsimg.com/a0d05874ae59450a2ba506a80bd8944c?AccessKeyId=3150E8AC5058496F1B24&disposition=0&alloworigin=1.
7. Linda Godfrey, “The Como Clubhouse,” (Delevan, Wisconsin) Week, June 13, 1993, 36–38.
8. Purzycki v. Lake Parsippany, Amended Complaint.
9. “Ridgway Dance Bill Passed by Supervisors,” Elkhorn Independent, November 22, 1923, 1,10.
10. Elisabeth I. Perry, “‘The General Motherhood of the Commonwealth’: Dance Hall Reform in the Progressive Era,” American Quarterly 37, no. 5 (Winter 1985), 719–33.
11. “Moonshine, Social Diseases in Trail of Unregulated Dance Hall is Told to Committee,” Capital Times, February 14, 1923, 2.
12. Perry, “‘The General Motherhood of the Commonwealth,’” 721.
13. “Blaine Signs Bill Giving to Counties Rule of Dance Hall,” Stevens Point (Wisconsin) Daily Journal, June 7, 1923, 6. The Ridgway bill became codified in Wisconsin statutes as Sec. 59.08 (8) in the chapter on counties, and as Secs. 351.57 and 351.58 in the chapter titled “Offenses on Chastity, Morality and Decency.”
14. Proceedings of the Walworth County Board of Supervisors for the Year 1923, November Session, 23–26.
15. “Argument Seems To Be All Against ‘Pass-out’ Checks in the Rural Dance Halls,” Sheboygan (Wisconsin) Press-Telegram, November 26, 1923, 3.
16. “Women Score Conditions in Dance Halls,” Capital Times, June 25, 1924, 8.
17. “Board Asks Repeal of State Blue Laws,” (Neenah, Wisconsin) Daily News Times, November 19, 1925, 1.
18. “Dance Inspectors Hold Meeting Saturday P.M.” Elkhorn Independent, May 14, 1925, 1.
19. “Roadhouses to Come Under County Dance Hall Measure,” Green Bay (Wisconsin) Press Gazette, May 27, 1925, 1.
20. “Master Legal Minds Define Roadhouses,” (Neenah, Wisconsin) Daily News, January 19, 1924, 3.
21. “Dance Regulation,” (Hurley, Wisconsin) Montreal River Miner, February 18, 1927, 2.
22. “Shearer Knocks Blaine Tactics,” Racine (Wisconsin) Journal News, June 13, 1925, 5.
23. “Inspector Was Drunk at Dance,” Menasha (Wisconsin) Record, November 17, 1927, 1.
24. “Improve Dance Halls by Inspection,” Montreal River Miner, December 25, 1925, 1.
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26. “Roadhouses to Come Under County Dance Hall Measure,” Green Bay Press Gazette, May 27, 1925, 1.
27. “Moonshine, Social Diseases,” Capital Times, February 14, 1923, 2; “Kewaunee County Will Not Repeal,” Green Bay Press Gazette, April 7, 1925, 4.
28. “Dance Regulation,” Montreal River Miner, February 18, 1927, 2.
29. “Insure Dance Inspectors—A Risky Job,” Sheboygan (Wisconsin) Press, November 20, 1925, 13.
30. “Klansmen Raid Dutch Mill at Delavan Lake,” Lake Geneva News, July 10, 1924, l.
31. “Call Sheriff to Stop Zenda Dance Fight,” Lake Geneva News Tribune, March 19, 1925, 1.
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34. W.P. 211 and W.P. 209, Stipulation, WCRD, Mortgages, March 27, 1925, 147:409.
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36. Eau Claire (Wisconsin) Leader, November 18, 1925, 2.
37. “Sauk County Repeals Dance Restrictions,” Capital Times, January 18, 1924, 9.
38. “Improve Dance Halls by Inspection,” Montreal River Miner, December 25, 1925, 1.
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41. “Laurel Lake Is Beautiful Spot,” Millville Daily Republican, May 23, 1927, 1.
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