Riding the Bumper Cars at Kiddieland. 1973.

After 80 years, the cherished local amusement park Kiddieland gave its last ride on September 27th.  Located just west of Elmwood Park at North and 1st Avenue in Maywood Park, Kiddieland has served as a getaway for area children since the Great Depression.  Started by Arthur Fritz in 1929, Kiddieland began with only a few ponies but eventually added bumper cars, scooters, and the famous Little Dipper rollercoaster.  Kiddieland will certainly be missed.  We have more pictures of Kiddieland on our Flickr page for you to enoy.  Please  share your Kiddieland memories in our comments section.

Our LSTA Digitization Grant Project is now online and complete.  A Villiage Grows: Fifty Years of Life in Elmwood Park is our collection of 408 photographs and artifacts from the first 50 years of the Village of Elmwood Park.  We hope that you enjoy the collection and if you have any stories or can supply any missing information about any of the items, please let us know in the comments section.  We would love to hear from you.  We would like to thank the Illinois State Library for all their help putting the collection online.

Through the generous donation of Jonathan Charnes of Elmwood Park, the Library recently received several World War II uniform pieces belonging to his father, Alvin Charnes. Lt. Alvin E. Charnes was a U.S. Army Air Force pilot of a B-24 bomber in missions over Germany, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Austria and Italy. He was a member of the 719^th Bombardment Squadron and 449^th Bombardment Group (H), United States Army. Lt. Charnes’ World War II A-2 jacket, U.S. Army Air Corps khaki dress coat, U.S. Army Air Corps blue dress coat and a life preserver vest with inflatable gas cartridges worn by the air crew on his B-24 bomber. Lt. Charnes’ crew flew a complete combat tour of 50 missions from October 1944 through April 1945. Alvin Charnes resided at 908 Linden Avenue in Oak Park, Il. You may view several of these World War II photos right here at this site.

The Elmwood Park Public Library is planning a special Veterans Program on Wednesday, November 11, 2009, at 7:00 PM in the John Ferrentino Meeting Room. Our special guests will be local veterans from all wars and conflicts. Many of our veterans will speak about their wartime experiences. If you would like to participate as a speaker, please notify Russ Parker, (708) 395-1218, at the Library. In attendance will also be several members of our local John R. Beck VFW Post 1891. This is an excellent opportunity to see and hear first-hand what our local heroes had to endure in the trying times of war. You can view the documentaries and read the books, but do not miss this rare opportunity to witness true accounts of battle-time activities. Several of Lt. Charnes’ military memorabilia will also be on display. See you on the ^11th!!!

We are working on adding more metadata to the photographs, so we’ve taken the project down for a while. In the meantime, you can still view 150 photographs from our collection on our Flickr page.  We should have Fifty Years back up in about a month.  We will keep you posted on our pr0gress.

The Elmwood Park Local History Center is always looking for any items pertaining to our Village history.  Items such as area newspapers (pre-1971), telephone books (pre-1985), pictures of streets, buildings, people from the past, or any other interesting bits of local history are always welcome and appreciated.  If you wish to donate or lend to us, please contact Russ at (708) 395-1217 or rparker@elmwoodparklibary.org.

Russ has scheduled more open hours for April and May.  Feel free to stop by and visit him.  Of course the Local History Room will remain open by appointment as well.

Tuesday April 7th 2-5 pm

Wednesday April 8th 9 am – 12 pm

Thursday April 9th 2 – 5 pm

Saturday April 11th 9 am – 5 pm

Wednesday April 15th 10 am – 12 pm and 2 – 5 pm

Thursday April 16th 10 am – 12 pm and 2 – 5 pm

Tuesday April 21st 9 am – 12 pm and 2 – 5 pm

Wednesday April 22nd 2 – 5 pm

Wednesday April 29th 2 – 5 pm

Thursday April 30th 2 – 5 pm

Friday May 1st 9 am – 12 pm and 1 pm – 5 pm

Our LSTA grant project, Fifty Years of Life in Elmwood Park, is now online at the Illinois Digital Archive.  We are still finishing up our Metadata but you can view all the photographs along with a title, subject and date.  Most of these photographs have never appeared online before so it is a great opportunity to see over 400 images from the first 50 years of our Village.

We will let you know when the rest of our metadata has been uploaded as soon as we are done.

Feel free to drop by the library and visit the Local History Center during our open hours in March.

Tuesday March 17 2-5 PM

Wednesday March 18 2-5 PM

Friday March 20 2-5 PM

Tuesday March 24 2-5 PM

Wednesday March 25 2-5 PM

Thursday March 26 2-5 PM

Friday March 27 2-5 PM

Tuesday March 31 2-5 PM

Wednesday April 1 2-5 PM

Thursday April 2 2-5 PM

Friday April 3 2-5 PM

Of course, the Local History Center is always open by appointment.  Contact Russ Parker at rparker@elmwoodparklibrary.org for more information.

Don’t forget that our presentation, “Memories of Elmwood Park 1914-1965″ will be on Monday January 26th at 7:00 pm in the Ferrentino Meeting Room on the first floor of the Elmwood Park Public Library.  You can read more about it in the Elm Leaves.  This will be your first chance to see many of the photos from our newly digitized collection before they are put online.  We will be showing them on our new state of the art High-Definition theater system as well.  If you have any questions call (708) 395-1217.

Memories of Elmwood Park 1914-1965

Monday January 26, 2009 at 7:00 pm

Elmwood Park Public Library

1 Conti Parkway

Elmwood Park, IL 60707

Village Picnic Arrangement Committee 1915

Backstage Library Works has sent us a DVD containing 408 photographs and the corresponding metadata for our digitization project.  These images provide an online home to the visual record of the first 50 years of life in Elmwood Park.  Our next step in the project is to send the DVD to the LSTA Program Office at the Illinois State Library in Springfield.  They will begin uploading the content into the Illinois Digital Archives over the coming months.

In the meantime, we will be adding a sampling of the collection to our flickr page for you to preview.  As we mentioned in the previous post, Russ Parker will be giving a presentation here in the Library on January 26th at 7:00 pm featuring photographs from the collection and stories from the Village’s past.  We hope that you’ll be able to attend this presentation.