3900 S. Michigan avenue in chicago
It’s a storage facility now, but the Bronzeville building has been home to two pretty notable businesses.
It was briefly a factory that made electric cars. No, not Teslas! These were made between 1910 and 1913 by the C.P. Kimball Carriage Company. Kimball had originally constructed the building in 1892 as a factory for horse-drawn carriages.
The Kimball family was a carriage-building dynasty dating back nine generations to the 1600s in New England. They were also famous for their sleighs.
The family opened its Chicago branch in 1876 when Charles Porter Kimball moved from the East Coast to take over a failing carriage manufacturer here. And while it was obviously not a business that was destined to last forever, they did thrive for decades. In the early days of the automobile they found a niche building finely crafted car bodies and tops for the chassis built by other companies like Cadillac, Marmon Packard and Peerless.
C.P. Kimball must have had some enthusiasm for the coming of the automobile, though, because he served as one of four judges in what is considered America’s first automobile race in November 1895, a grueling trek from Jackson Park to Evanston and back. Six cars started only two finished. It took the winner 10.5 hours.
The company did briefly make its own automobile, the Kimball Electric, but only for three years. The company went out of business in 1929.
A few years after Kimball went out of business, the building became home the Goldenrod Ice Cream Company. The company was started by Louis B. Olin, the son of a Lithuanian immigrant. Goldenrod moved into the Michigan Avenue building in 1937; Olin named the company after the Illinois state flower.
Their most famous brand was a luxury ice cream called Vala’s. It was advertised as “obscenely delicious” and “the world’s most expensive ice cream.” Each pint was hand-packed by women who added ingredients like whole nuts, layers of fudge and chunks of fruit. They would stamp the pint with their name, so your butter pecan would say “hand-packed by Ruth” on the bottom. But it was only a few years before the expensive hand-packing gave way to automation, and not long after, Goldenrod was acquired by Bresler’s Ice Cream in 1976.
Two fun side notes: Two of Louis Olin’s great-grandsons went on to success in the film industry – actor Ken Olin and director Chuck Olin. The Olins and their in-laws the Sang family are also widely known in Chicago’s Jewish community for the summer camp named for them, the Olin-Sang Ruby Institute or OSRUI, in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin.
Through the Lens: Our Family's Adventures
