Every week we publish a historic photo highlighting a story from Naperville’s past from the history archives of Naper Settlement.
The more things change, the more they remain the same, or so the saying goes.
Consider today’s photo – believed to date from the 1940s – which looks north on Washington Street from Chicago Avenue.
Beidelman Furniture at 239 S. Washington St. is still in business but undertaking duties are no longer provided at the site.
Frederick Long, a cabinetmaker by trade, established a furniture business in 1861 at the corner of Washington Street and Jackson Avenue.
Since he worked with wood, he also received requests for coffins. As a result, he ran a dual business — furniture and undertaking — which was a fairly common in the 19th century.
Oliver J. Beidelman, Long’s nephew, started working for his uncle in the late 1800s. In 1911, he purchased the company from Long.
In 1928, Biedelman replaced the wooden store, which Long built in 1863, with a three-story brick building.
Owen “Dutch” Beidelman moved the funeral home from there to 117 W. Van Buren Ave. in 1966. Two years later, he closed the chapel that had been beside the furniture store.
Burgess Motors, 245 S. Washington, can be seen in the foreground of the photo.
In 1944, cousins Charles and Tom Burgess purchased the garage and service station. Tom withdrew from the partnership in 1949, leaving Charles to run the business.
On the east side of the street, you will find the Naperville Recreation Hall, 242 S. Washington St. It’s where the “bowling” sign is in the photo.
Albert Kienlen purchased an old garage, lengthened the structure and installed bowling alleys. In Genevieve Towsley’s Skylines, a newspaper column published between 1955 and 1956, Keinlen said he had started the business about 20 years previously.
William Feldott bought the Naperville Recreation Center from Keinlen in 1948. Two years later he purchased vacant land next to it — once occupied by an old church and later as a warehouse for F.S. Goestch & Sons — to enlarge the bowling alley and install more lanes, renaming it the Sports Bowl.
Feldott owned the Sports Bowl and the bar inside, known as the Elbow Room, for 47 years
South of the Sports Bowl, on the corner, stood F.S. Goetsch & Sons, which was a welding business, according to the 1944 Naperville phone directory.
Frank Goetsch was born on a farm just north of Naperville in 1849. His parents, Anthony and Felicitia Goetsch, had come to Naperville in 1843 from Alsace, France.
In the 1890s, Goetsch and Anthony Kochly established a blacksmith shop in a frame building at the site. When his sons, William and Ed, came of age, Goetsch bought out Kochly and went into business with his sons.
The brick building seen in the photo was erected in 1900 after the frame structure had been moved to the rear of the lot.
During World War II, the company did metal work on a contract basis. William V. Goetsch, William’s son, took over the business in 1946.
You won’t find any welders on the site now. Its location at the northeast corner of Washington Street and Chicago Avenue was occupied by the Barnes & Noble bookstore until last month.
Andrea Field is the curator of history at Naper Settlement. For more information, go to www.NaperSettlement.org. Steve Metsch is a freelance reporter for the Naperville Sun.
