Made In Chicago: Edgewater Historical Society
(CBS) -- The Edgewater Historical Society was founded in 1988.
Its president was Kathy Gemperle.
"I gave a rip-roaring speech: 'Don't Take Your History from Your Attic to the Alley.'"
And they started accumulating Edgewater memorabilia.
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"There were some people on the board and they said, 'We can't just keep everything at your house, Kathy. We're going to have to find a place.'"
And in 2002 they opened a museum in what had been a firehouse.
One of the displays: the Edgewater Beach Hotel, built 99 years ago.
"We'll go over there and look at it. This case is the Edgewater Beach Hotel collection. I was so amused when it turned out we had so many ashtrays. Because that's the thing people steal from hotels, isn't it?"
"The hotel, of course, had a wonderful reputation in Chicago and many people went there. People got married there."
"It was demolished by 1970... Chicago was a stopover on trains for many celebrities. You couldn't go coast to coast. And suddenly when airplane travel became easy, they could just skip Chicago... So a lot of the big hotels didn't have the same cachet."
The pink Edgewater Beach Apartments - built in 1928 - still stand. And that building - like the hotel - used to be much closer to the lake.
"This gentleman told me that he didn't live very high up, maybe the third floor. And the lake was so close to the end of the building that he swore he could throw a fishing line out into the lake, and he would just leave it there during the day and he'd get a bite and he'd reel it in and throw the fish in his bathtub."
Kathy Gemperle, founding president of the Edgewater Historical Society and Museum, on Ashland at Balmoral.
