Category — Cedric Rose

Go There is a feature in which our writers tell you about tourist attractions and other places of interest around the city.

The annual American Insurance Co. holiday model railroad display at Central Station has delighted kids since 1952. Each year, Warner Mendelsohn hunches over his soldering gun and recreates the city, in ever-increasing scope and staggering detail. More than eight hundred model train cars, locomotives, and automobiles follow two miles of track and miniature interstate highway, above which model aircraft circle. Though he retired from the insurance company thirteen years ago, it’s still Mendelsohn’s project.

The display has not been without controversy, beginning in 1962 when American Insurance (now American Insurance Mutual, Ltd.) fired Mendelsohn for an alleged conflict of interest after he privately sold advertising on the sides of the model train cars, including American’s competitor, Provident Mutual Insurance, Ltd. So popular was the display at that time that Mendelsohn took in thousands in advertising revenue. Thanks to community pressure, American allowed Mendelsohn to stay on, provided he turn over the revenue to American.

In 1972, a prankster called in a bomb threat to “the model Old City Hall”, police staked out the display. Several Black Cat firecrackers connected to an elaborate digital timer were discovered in the tiny seat of city government, but caught well before detonation. Mendelsohn’s electronics expertise came into play, allowing him to cut the correct wire (red) before a rapt audience. Allegations arose that Mendelsohn himself had staged the threat in order to get attention.

It was almost shut down for good in 2005, following a kidnapping scare in and safety concerns over the display, which then occupied fifteen-hundred square feet of the Central Station’s sweeping Art Deco dome. Five-year-old Jeter Holmes was found three hours after his hysterical mother reported him missing, unconscious in the labyrinthine underside of the holiday display. His brother later admitted that, after sneaking under the display, he dared his brother to lick the train tracks. The shock caused Jeter to lose consciousness. Despite Mendelsohn’s claims that childproofing the display would ruin it, he came back with lower voltage tracks and more additions including the Rockstead International Airport (complete with glide path) and the proposed CSTA streetcar loop, scheduled to begin operations in 2009.

Fun Fact: The smallest moving models in the display are picketers, “walking” an oval loop, carrying signs voicing opposition to the 1994 sales tax increase, of which Mendelsohn is an outspoken foe.

American Insurance Holiday Railroad
:: City-Suburban Transit Authority Central Station, 2 Main Avenue
:: Operating M-Sa, 6:30am-9:30pm, through Jan. 5
- Cedric Rose

:: The 33rd Gourd Festival this weekend will include gourd carving, a gourd/squash bake off, gourd costume contest and prize for largest gourd (last year’s winner, with a 4lb, 3oz gourd received $25 TGI Friday’s gift card).

:: The first incarnation of the Gourd Festival was held in 1943. Pumpkins were in short supply due to the war effort (Pumpkin seed oil being vital for making incendiary explosives), so the annual Pumpkin Days Octoberfestival was changed to Gourd Days.

:: The Gourd Festival was revived in 1974 during the Great Pumpkin Blight. Over 4,500 people showed up (as opposed to 1973’s anemic Pumpkin Palace Carve-Off, which featured only three contestants). The festival has been celebrated ever since.

:: In 1996, the festival was boycotted by local Indian tribes and the ACLU, who objected to the “Chief Gourd Head” character, who is represented with peace pipe, headdress and frighteningly oversized papier-mâché gourd head. This did nothing to deter visitors- in fact, 1996 was the most popular year to date. The Chief remains a popular attraction, well known for his gourd war cries and “red-man gourd chop.”

:: Tons of copper stolen from air-conditioning units, construction sites, and electrical conduits annually: 12 (also, beer kegs- ed.)
:: Value of 12 tons of copper: $88,080
:: Crystal meth-buying power of 12 tons of copper: 1,111 grams (est. current market conditions)

:: Number of residents in the Bentham Hills neighborhood complaining of “vivid, disturbing technicolor dreams” following the installation of a new Doppler weather radar station, according to a NewsCenter 7 report this week: 23

:: Fading colored stickers found on some houses and rowhomes date back to the mid-20th century, part of the Fire Department’s plan to help firefighters more easily identify the number of children and pets in a home. Blue circles were for kids, green squares for dogs and orange triangles for cats. The department started the program in the late 30s and stopped handing the stickers out in the mid-60s.
- Cedric Rose, Matt Vermeulen, RJ White

After a 73-year banishment, local brand Deux Élans returns to the city as part of an urban core revitalization effort by entrepreneurs planning to convert derelict breweries into brew-pubs. The popular libation brewed by Lemuel Clevinger, nephew of brewer Voornaam Goossens, was officially banished in 1934 one year after the repeal of prohibition. Then-Mayor “Boss” Wilcox is said to have taken umbrage with the potent brew after blaming it for the conception of his ninth child, an event putting him out of favor with his wife, Nellie Stetson Wilcox. As a result, he revoked the brewery’s license. Clevinger moved his brewery to Pittsburgh, where his renamed product, Dewy Lands, remains popular with regional sports fans, especially members of local feather bowling teams.

There will be a ceremony this Friday, inaugurating new copper brew vessels in the long-derelict Deux Élans brewery at 2577 N. Grote Ave., the centerpiece of what Brewery Quarter Development Association president Ed Weissman calls “bottling row,” a series of warehouses in the old Belgian Quarter. But the ambition of Brewery Quarter members doesn’t stop with beer, Weissman said. Also slated is a combined velodrome and feather bowling alley on the site of the old Deacon & Sons Bicycle Works. When asked whether there was any truth to rumors about a planned re-hydration of the now dry Wooster Creek bed, Weissman said, “No comment. But I will say, we haven’t ruled it out as a possibility.”
- Cedric Rose