A Wonderful Neighborhood

169 Prophet Drive

A More Permanent Home

427 North Chauncey 1950 - 1953

Married and First Apartment

Hilltop Apartments Building 21-8, sublet 3 months in summer of 1950

Soldiers' Home

fountain
slow car race

Columbian Park

Columbian Park is the oldest park in the Lafayette area. My grandparents took my mother there as a child, she took my siblings and me there, she accompanied my grandchildren on the rides and to the zoo, and her great grandchildren have also enjoyed the park's amenities! Let's see, that's five generations of the family who have spent time in Columbian Park!

As a teen/young adult, Fern spent time doing community theater on Columbian Park Memorial Island in the lagoon.

I have often wondered why it is called a lagoon instead of a lake or a pond, but lagoon it is! You can see the island in the background.

 HMS Pinafore, Student Prince, and Lowland Sea were some of the operas she performed in or directed. For HMS Pinafore, they took advantage of being on an island and had the lead make his entrance by boat!

I have to include this picture for personal reasons. Notice those ducks on the left? See the wake they are creating? They are hoping that I will be tossing them bread crumbs, and are speeding over to check me out as I stand on the banks taking pgotographs. Sorry, ducks, no bread from me today!

Purdue University Days

Elliot Hall of Music

Village

Union

Library

Alpha Z Delta (519 University)

West Lafayette High School

My mother was quite disconcerted as we tried to get photos of her high school. The original building has had many, many additions. And, that original portion has also undergone a facelift and looks nothing like it did when she attended the school. But, we took some pictures anyway, just to document the site.

Craig's dad, Carl (Cotton) also attended Morton Elementary and West Lafayette Junior and Senior High School. Because their names are so close alphabetically (Honeywell, Isenbarger) they were often seated close to one another. I have always enjoyed hearing the stories they told on each other from their school days.

From Mid-Elementary to All Grown Up

241 Connolly Street, West Lafayette, Indiana

 I think this home is beautiful! I love the light green siding, and how crisp and neat the home looks. Obviously, it has owners who care about it and take pride in its maintenance.

The upstairs dormer window on the west side of the home (above) was in Fern's bedroom. (Her parents had the east.) The Honeywells resided here from the time she was nine until she was twenty-one.

She told me that there had, until just recently, been a large oak tree in the front yard outside her bedroom window that was frequented by squirrels. Her father built a platform and an extension out to the tree so the squirrels could hop out of the tree and come to dinner. The animals became quite tame. One day she didn't have anything else to offer them but stale candy Easter eggs - they did not like that! Unfortunately, one of them fell down the chimney one day, and that was the end of my mother's squirrel feeding days! (Although, if you were to ask her now about the squirrels at her current home...)

My mom says about that tree:

The oak tree was just removed within the past year. The driveway had buckled around it, and had narrowed so it was impassable without infringing on the neighbors. Bet it cost a pretty penny to remove it.

The West Lafayette Public Library

Everyone in our family is a reader - everyone! Some of our family's early book-reading history began in this building nestled on the east side of the Purdue campus and a block or two from Morton School:

Doesn't look like much, does it? But what a history this building has - the West Lafayette Public Library, the West Lafayette Jail (er, my family has never known it in THAT capacity), and even a fire station. Now it is a business, and has been for years - the library outgrew this space long ago.

But my mother remembers borrowing books from this place and many happy times reading as a result. She writes:

Just a memory or two -- the children's department was on the second floor. There were activity tables there, and one of my favorite things to do was to snare a stereoptician from one of them, get a box of slides, and enjoy 3-D travels. You had to be pretty quick to get a steoptician as they were in big demand. Even when I was in high school, Dorothy and I used to walk to the library very frequently and haul home bunches of books. I never could understand why she liked "Dr. Dolittle" so well.

Early Grade School Home

Fern's early childhood years were spent in this home at 523 Dodge Street. She lived here from the time she was six until she turned nine years old.

She asked me to take this picture as she wanted to see the back yard and kitchen entrance. There used to be a beautiful grape arbor in the back by the alley, and Mom remarked that "the yard had seemed huge to me." The "grocery boy" came though that kitchen door with deliveries several times a week as did the ice man. She wrote:

The grocery boy may have been 50+, but he was always the grocery boy!  In those days almost all the neighborhood groceries (and they were all neighborhood -- no chains and megastores then!) delivered.  Mother would phone in an order several times a week, and the grocery boy would come into our kitchen and unload on the kitchen table.  I don't remember that she bought meat that way, and of course all dairy products were also delivered to the "milk box" on the back porch.  Grandpa would drive her to the grocery regularly so she could pick out staples.  Lux & Humphries in the Village and a store across from what is now the field house (don't remember its name) were her usual sources.

Morton Elementary School

Our family has a long history with Morton Elementary School. My mother attended it, Craig attended it, and so did I! (I only went for the first semester of second grade; Cumberland Elementary was completed at that time and I went over there for second semester.)

 The main entrance of the venerable old building (flowery language, but highly appropriate for this landmark!) The building is now a busy community center and is no longer used as a school.

 The south entrance was the one in which my mother entered daily. There is an entrance on the north side where her father would pick her up.

A close up of the words over the south entrance. All I can say is, AMEN!!

The Marstellar Street Days

Marstellar Street is right on the edge of campus. My grandparents and mother lived in two homes on this street. I never knew why until I took my mom back to the homes - the Horticulture Building is on the same street as the homes!

This is the entrance to the Horticulture Building that Earl used to enter and exit every day. It is on the side of building and almost catty-corner from their second home.

 Enjoying a moment in the gardens near the greenhouses. (Not those he worked in.)

The greenhouse where Earl Honeywell did some of his work.

254 Marstellar Street, West Lafayette, Indiana 

The family's first home on Marstellar Street and the home my mother came home to after her birth on September 21, 1928 in Home Hospital. It was a duplex, and the Honeywells lived in the south side. The Freemans lived in the other side, and their son Dick, and my mother are still good friends and in contact to this day!

One day my Grandfather decided to cook gruel. Not a good idea as he rarely cooked, leaving that duty to my grandmother. The concoction was so awful that he took it outside and threw it on the driveway, hoping the weather would cause it to dissipate. Well, that mess of food was so tough and thick, it would not melt in the heat or the rain!

24? Marstellar Street, West Lafayette, Indiana

Their second home on Marstellar Street looked like this and was located at 24? Marstellar Street and across from the Horticulture Building. Unfortunately, it has been razed and is now a vacant lot. The duplex in this picture is the building next door and looks the same as the Honeywell home was. 

My mother told the story of leaving this house for her first day of kindergarten. As she walked down the street to Morton Elementary, she went under a tree that was shading the sidewalk. That tree happened to have a flock of birds in it, and the inevitable happened. SPLAT!! Back home she went, crying, and to change into another dress.

(Story of crawling under the coal truck here?)

It was a very big deal when she was old enough to be allowed to walk down to the corner of Harrison and Marstellar Street by herself. There was a light post there that she remembered as the marker for as far as she was to walk. She and Dick Freeman would also walk to the post and one-up each other, touching the post and saying, "My father works on this floor of the building." "Well, MY father works on this floor!" (touching a higher point.) Mom laughed as she recalled, "Now we both know that the BEST offices were actually on the ground floor!"

Where the Honeywell Family Began

In July of 1927, Georgia Mary Crowl boarded the train in Manhattan, Kansas and travelled alone to West Lafayette, Indiana to marry her sweetheart, Earl Robert Honeywell.  They'd met at Kansas State University, and Earl, after doing graduate work at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, had accepted a professorship in Horticulture (specifically floraculture) at Purdue University.

Friends of theirs from Kansas, Doc (Charles) and Faye Nitcher, had also come to the Lafayette area, and offered their home as a place for the two to wed. The nuptials took place on July 7, 1927 at 412 Russell Street, West Lafayette, Indiana. No other family members were present - distances were just too great at that time.

The Nitcher home in 2011 at 412 Russell Street in West Lafayette, Indiana.

The Nitchers remained close friends of the Honeywells, and when Fern Marie was born in 1928, were added to the Honeywell will as guardians should anything happen to them.  Fern called them Aunt Faye and Uncle Doc all her life. Years later, the Nitchers built a home at 520 Carrolton Boulevard in West Lafayette.

The left side of the house was added after the Nitchers passed away; the original home is on the right.

The Honeywells' First Lafayette Residence

810 North Street, Lafayette, Indiana

This was my mother's parents' first home after they were married.

In August, 2011, she stands outside the home and strikes a pose her father frequently asked her to do when he was photographing her as a child. As she told me, "He liked to make things look interesting, so he would ask us to look in certain directions or pose one way or another. Pointing was a popular one." She and I had a good laugh as we took this photo.

Another funny story she told me was about her own mother. This home is across the street from St. Boniface Church's former nunnery. One day Georgia looked out the window and was shocked to see the nuns' underwear hanging out to dry for all to see! Apparently this was NOT a common sight in Kansas, and my grandmother was pretty flustered to see all those undies on the line in plain sight (the home, church, and nunnery are just a few blocks from downtown Lafayette!) It wasn't just the sight of the underwear, it was how heavy and multi-layered it was. After all, this was July in Indiana and HOT. 

Now, I never, EVER saw my grandmother in anything but a dress, and she passed away in 1978, so that tells you something about her sense of what was appropriate for clothing. I can only imagine how she felt as she looked out that window so many years ago.