Wheatfield Street

WHEATFIELD STREET
by Myra Wagenschuetz Rumbold

My memories go back to about 1906 in the home my parents built on Wheatfield Street, in the block between Payne Ave. and Oliver St.

Our house was one of the middle ones in a group of six which stood next to each other on the south side of the street near Payne Ave.

It was a long walk to Oliver Street.  One had to pass the family Homes of Fred Hyde, Frank Bush, a lumber inspector for the New York Central Railroad, and John Schmitt, then down a slight grade past a large apple orchard to reach the next two homes on our side.  They stood almost opposite Dahlgren place. There lived the Andrew Kohls and the Frederick Hildebrandts.

I remember walking down the block one summer evening, holding my mothers hand, to listen to music being played in a large tent set up in the Kohl's yard for their 50th wedding anniversary party.  Mr. Klinger, manager of the Oliver Theatre, later moved into this house.

Only two houses stood on the other side of the street, that of August Trosin, on the northwest corner of Dahlgren and Wheatfield, and Lewis T. Payne's, diagonally across from ours. Open fields extended northward as far as I could see.

The Paynes had an orchard and a large barn behind their home and a beautiful flower garden which extended to the home of Mr. Payne's parents, the Colonel and his wife.  This stood on Payne Avenue, between Wheatfield and what is now Chipman Place.  The peonies, which still bloom in the yards of our neighborhood, came from this garden when the Colonel's farmhouse was moved, the wisteria, which graces the west end of my veranda and blooms every spring, came from this farmhouse, too.

When Colonel Payne's home was dismantled, I remember running through the field and orchard with LaVerne Hyde, my only playmate, to Chipman to watch the horses pull the divided house on rollers down to Dahlgren place.  Here, each section became a cottage. I think there were two or three sections. Willard Dittmar, curator of the Historical Society's museum, lived in one of these cottages when he was a child. Never did we get into those fields that we didn't stop at the edge of the orchard to pick several spearmint leaves from a patch growing there.  The more we rubbed them, the more fragrant they became.

Occasionally the two Payne girls, Margaret and Helen, who were older than I, took me to play. A favorite game was to put me in their large “teddy wagon,” a sort of coaster wagon with big wheels. They covered my head with a blanket and hauled me around the neighborhood.  When we stopped, I had to guess where we were.  I still cherish a beautiful big doll the girls gave me one Christmas,  Often in winter, on a Saturday night, while my father was catering to the farmer trade in his hardware store, my mother would bundle me up to go to the Brauers' house next door for apples and cookies. I remember well the plates full of delectable German cookies made by Mrs. Karl Brauer and her three unmarried daughters.  There were pfeffernuesse, anise drops, chocolate drops, weisse und schwarze lebkuchen and the “popcorn cakes.” The latter had no popcorn, but the combination of citron, brown sugar and walnuts gave them the flavor.

Years later the two surviving Brauer girls moved to Buffalo.  Mother asked them to make a batch of each kind of cookie for us one Christmas. They did.  The cookies filled our big oval wicker clothes basket.  We brought them home, stored them in crooks in the basement and ate cookies until Easter. I still make the popcorn ones for Christmas from their recipe.

The orchard surrounding the Fred Rogalsky home, between Brauers and Payne Ave., was a popular place when the apples began to ripen.  In a neatly fenced yard, the Brauers had white leghorn chickens.  If I was around in late afternoon, I was allowed into the coop to help gather eggs.  An alley ran behind all these homes and was used for the collection of garbage and for the furnace ashes in winter.  Mr. Schmitt operated a large machine shop on the alley, a building big enough to store his inboard boat during the winter.  It was always a happy day when we were invited to join the Schmitts on the river in the summer.

We had no need for a barn as our carriage and cutter were kept at the store where my father kept his horse.  I still can feel that snow hitting my face on our sleigh rides as the horse kicked it up.  In the summer we swallowed dust, or if we crossed a newly oiled or tarred road, we were peppered.

Father walked to his store at the corner of Oliver and Thompson Streets in the morning and back at night, but at noon he drove the delivery wagon home to save time.  I would stand in the window watching for that neat maroon colored horse drawn wagon to come up the street.  Father tied the horse to the iron hitching post at the edge of our dirt roadway when he came in for dinner.  Most of the men in the neighborhood came home at noon, but numbers of men, carrying tin lunch buckets, walked down our street to and from the “Bolt Works,” the “Iron Works,” and the lumber yards on the river.

Although we lived on what we thought was the edge of the city, we were by no means isolated.  Trolleys ran at each end of the block.  One line between Buffalo and Niagara Pails ran along Oliver Street, and another along Payne Avenue.  When Aunt Lydia visited us, we would watch from our parlor window for the beam of the trolley's headlight when it made the bend at Fredericka Street.  My aunt had ample time to gather up her things and get to the corner to board the trolley for Tonawanda.

Trips could also be made on the line which used the Erie Railroad tracks between Buffalo and Lockport where the lines crossed on Payne Avenue near Sommer, transfers could be made.  A “Subway” has opened on the original site of the “Junction.”  This was a landmark.  It was a waiting room, a ticket office, a tobacco and candy shop and a short order luncheon.  It was operated for many years by Ted Shook and Al Boyer. I was often sent there to buy a pint of milk or a 5 cent loaf of bread.

Across the trolley tracks, at the corner of Sommer, stood a building used by the trolley company.  Out of it at any time might dash the horses which pulled the “hurry-up-wagon” to the scene of trouble along one of the lines. This vehicle had wheels which fitted the trolley tracks.  Some of my Ironton School teachers commuted on these trolleys.  One was Miss Mason.  She was often accompanied by Miss Juvia Huntley, who substituted at that time.  Miss Huntley became a permanent teacher and then the principal of Col. Payne School.  My children, Paul and Mary, were as fond of Miss Huntley and Col. Payne School as I was of Ironton.

Among my other teachers were the Misses Marjorie Hayes, Marjorie Sanborn, and Esther Swetland, who lived in the Tonawandas.   Miss Heaver lived next door at the Hydes'.  For years, numerous teachers took their meals with this famous cook and several of her roomers.  Those where the days when houses were big enough to have spare rooms, when apartments and flats were uncommon, and it wasn't considered quite proper for single persons to set up housekeeping.  Mrs. Hyde's neighbor, Mrs. Bush, took in boarders and roomers even earlier.  Shook and Boyer cooked for trolley passengers, but they preferred Mrs. Bush's fare for themselves.

Around the corner from Wheatfield Street on Oliver stood the Christian Church of Christ, familiarly known as “George Rand's” Church, or the “Tabernacle,” well- known for its large Sunday school.  Between the Tabernacle and First Avenue, stood my grade school, Ironton No.2.  When I started school, the kindergarten was across Oliver Street in the building which is now Chester's Market.

Much of our shopping was done at the businesses clustered around the Oliver-Wheatfield intersection. Kohl's grocery was on the northwest corner across from the Tabernacle.  May Bros. grocery was on the southwest corner, with Charlie Kuhn's meat market in the same building connected to the grocery by swinging doors.  It wasn't so hard to wait with mother there, for every now and then Charlie would hand me a wiener around the end of the counter.  On down the block, was George Traver's first drug store and ice cream parlor and Adam Beltz's cigar store.  Across Oliver, also in the middle of the block, Fred Hyde and his brother-in-law, Glen Treichler, had a grocery next to Oran Wylie's bicycle shop.  Shoes were sold at Mang's located between Kohl's grocery and the kindergarten.

Women preferred to shop each day, especially in summer when iceboxes were not really reliable.  Clerks behind the long store counters trotted back and forth as each item was read from the shopping list, wrapping butter cut from the tub, cheese cut from the wheel, scooping sugar from the barrel into bags which had to be tied with string.  A row of shelves behind the counter reached the ceiling.  We were much impressed with the dexterity it took to reach down the cornflakes and other cartons with that long stick with the clamp at the end.  At Christmas time, small brown bags of candy went to the children of steady customers.

Since much of the clothing of local residents was made by the three Brauer sisters, there was little time for them to shop. The Brauers' favorite market was Fred Fetzer's at the corner of Oliver and Robinson, diagonally across from Mr. Klinger's Oliver Theatre.  They had no phone, so Tony Kreitmayer from Fetzer's called there every afternoon on his bicycle to get their order.  The next morning Tony delivered in a two-wheeled horse drawn cart such as most of the local butchers used.  It resembled a chariot.  The orders were in the box at the front of the cart and Tony stood on the back about a foot above the ground to drive.  Tony is now retired from his job as custodian of the Carnegie Library.

Housewives with a telephone and no strong wish to watch their hamburger ground from the round “with a pork chop thrown in,” or to hand pick their produce, could have a boy deliver a phone order.  Early every morning, the milk man woke us with the rattling of glass bottles in a wire basket which he carried from his wagon or sleigh to the back door.  In winter, someone bad to go down quickly to bring in the milk before it froze, pushing the cream out of the top.

Clothing and materials for home sewing were sold at Joseph Jaeger's Dry Goods store on the corner of Wheatfield and Oliver, formerly Hildebrant's now Jetter's.  This was an exciting place in December.  Two long islands were set up in the center of the store and filled with irresistible toys and games: Dolls, doll carriages, wind up trains, teddy bears, horse drawn fire engines and milk wagons, balls and iron banks.

School supplies and penny candy were sold in several places.  I remember best the little shop in the front room of Mrs. Millichamp's house at the corner of Oliver and Miller where the Star Cleaners stood.  She had great patience as we stood deciding what to buy with that penny.  Should I get two maple creams or four coconut squares, or maybe four chocolate caramels?  There was always a penny sucker, or a string of candy beads to tempt me.

Roller-skating was summer fun, especially on the Schmitt's concrete walk, but we had to be careful clumping across the Bush's wooden sidewalk to reach it.  In winter, Payne's Hill was the popular playground.  I was forbidden to play there when I was small.  Naturally, one afternoon when Mother was at a missionary meeting, I gave myself permission to go to the hill.  I joined the line of waiting sledders at the top of the slope.  When I got home, Mother said, “I saw a little red coat on the hill.”  That was enough.  I asked Mother's permission after that.

This oval shaped hill was only 20 or 30 feet higher than the general level, but extended from Payne Avenue almost to Nash Road.  It had been cut back somewhat along Payne for the trolley tracks, but that was the highest point and favorite spot for sledding down into Wheatfield Street. Payne's Hill was removed to supply fill for the elevated right-of-way along Division Street of the High Speed Line, the Niagara Falls to Buffalo trolley line which began service in 1918.

Edward Payne, Colonel Payne's older son, began to develop the area.  He planned a street which would curve off north and east through the Payne holdings, but the Church of Christ was built on that corner and the little curved parkway we had looked forward to gave way to the usual street pattern.

The number of homes on our block has increased from 10 to 45, and as each was built, more apple trees disappeared.  I don't believe a single one is left.  The street is now paved.  The old carbide street lamps have been replaced by electric lights.  The trolleys have been replaced by buses.  The Tabernacle was demolished after the congregation moved to the new church at Payne and Wheatfield.   The alley has become a well lighted roadway.

Elsie and Stella Schmitt reminisced with me recently about Wheatfield Street. They recall a “friendly, kindly neighborhood.”  We are still friendly, and any family which experienced trouble in the past 70 years has learned that we are still a kindly neighborhood.

Article: Transcribed from a collection of "Try To Remember" articles developed by the Historical Society of the Tonawandas, which appeared in the Tonawanda News from 1976 - 1978, by Melville J. Batt. This collection was provided by Melville's son, Douglas Batt.