Ron the Yarn Spinner

 

A Tale of Two Parks

And Walter E. Olson

                                     

                                      

Riverview.

If you are not on Medicare and a present or former resident of the Windy City, you probably don't remember the seventy-four-acre amusement park located at the corner of Belmont and Western avenues. The park was established by Williams Schmidt on the grounds of his private skeet shooting range in 1904. It closed in 1967.

Riverview was known for rides like Bobs, a wooden roller coaster. Other popular roller coasters were the Comet, the Silver Flash, the Fireball, and the Jet stream. Aladdin 's Castle was a popular fun house with a collapsing stairway, mazes and a turning barrel and there was Shoot the Shoots. I recall going to the park quite often. Public transportation took you right there. I really liked the Rotor, but I could never muster the nerve to go on the Pair-O-Chutes. In all, there were 120 rides and as you can see, ticket prices were paltry when compared to what amusement parks charge now.

There was another amusement park not that far away, however. It was only one-third the size of Riverview and it certainly was not as elaborate, but it was a fun place to go, and it was free. Olson Rug Park and the Waterfall.

The Olson Rug Company was established in 1874 with a manufacturing mill in Chicago at the corner of Diversey Avenue and Pulaski Road. (They called it Crawford back then.) The family-owned business eventually became the place to buy rugs for many years.

Company president, Walter E Olson, was community minded. He had a place in Wisconsin, and he thought it would be nice to bring a bit of the north woods to the crowded Chicago neighborhood where the company was located. So, he purchased 3500 perennials, numerous species of pine, juniper, spruce, and annuals. Olson used many of his own textile workers as makeshift garden builders, and he sourced the limestone and many of the trees and plants from local areas. When completed, the rock garden was 25 feet high, with three waterfalls cascading into a lily and duck pond at its base. An old dugout canoe was added to the scenery, along with sculptures of Native American figures. The park opened in September 1935, not just as a nice place for employees to have lunch, but it was open to the public as well without charge. Oldson Rug Park was a popular destination for family outings for decades. A trailer was on site offering hot dogs, lemonade, and snacks.

 

For Olson employees, especially with more and more women operating the looms during World War II, the gardens were as essential to their health and well-being as any of the modern amenities the company installed within the giant 1,000,000 square foot factory itself.

Walter Olson received regular “Good Neighbor” honors from the city of Chicago for his efforts in the relatively new movement of industrial beautification. He also became one of the more noteworthy and reliable philanthropic forces in the city.

 

During the war, Walter donated thousands of dollars to Army Emergency Relief, delivered 10,000 pounds of turkey to his workers for the holidays, and even had 30 special guest cottages built on his property in Wisconsin, which were set aside for the use of any Olson Rug employee looking to get away for a weekend—including working women dealing with the absences of their husbands or boyfriends fighting overseas.

 

One of Walter Olson’s favorite employee programs was something he called “Olson Guaranteed Notes”—workers could save up and purchase notes, at the cost of $100 each, and “loan” them to Mr. Olson, who’d put them in the bank to earn interest. Every July 1 and January 1, the employee would then earn 6% on their investment, with an option to renew and get new notes. Olson wanted to encourage his employees to be thrifty. “Thrift, he said, and work, made America great.”

 

Within twenty years, the park had over 200,000 visitors annually. The park’s decorations changed with the seasons. At Christmas, there was a Santa and at Easter, an Easter Bunny and at Halloween you saw a brilliant moon over the waterfall complete with a witch on a broomstick. On some All Hallows Eves, the company recreated McCutcheon’s famed “Injun Summer” cartoon. (I loved it and I still do. The Chicago Tribune published it annually for several years.) The park had an American Indian theme and Olson periodically invited Native American chiefs to come to the park and perform ceremonies, and they came.

The company’s entire business model was “eco-friendly” long before anyone really knew what that meant. A high volume of Olson rugs were literally produced from recycled materials, after all—sourced from the public, woven anew, and sold back to them at discount prices. “Beautiful New Rugs from Old,” as the slogan goes on the 1949 calendar. The company didn’t waste money and energy sending door-to-door salesmen across the country with carpet samples, either. They relied entirely on advertising, mail order catalogs, and a few classy showrooms. It all worked. The tiny mom-and-pop business, founded by a Norwegian immigrant just after the Great Chicago Fire, at one point had 2000 employees.

 

 

 Marshall Field & Company eventually bought the Olson Rug property in 1965, but it kept the park and waterfall open for another thirteen years.

Today, the Walter E Olson Memorial Library serves the community of Eagle River Wisconsin with quality resources, current technology, and equal access to information.

I really liked going to “Olson Rug”, especially during the summer months. What did I like best about the park?

It was a cheap date.