The History of Heading Avenue
By Skip Cravens
Heading Avenue is not your run-of-the-mill residential street. The unusual composite of its earliest inhabitants has had a direct effect on the sights and sounds of that particular part of the West Bluff.
The street was named after John Heading, who opened the area in 1853, when he built his home for his wife and two daughters at the same time that the Peoria Hebrew Cemetery was established. St. Joseph’s Cemetery was laid out in 1865 for the German inhabitants of the city.
The bluff side of the street overlooking Farmington Road and the Kickapoo Creek bottom land to the west beckoned more than one early landowner, which included Dr. Warren Chapman and his wife Sarah, Weigand Heine, John Wenke, Oscar Meyer, and the Schoenbeck and Ringness families.
There was a narrow lane just east of the back yards of Edgehill Court that Mr. Heine used to reach his house on the edge of the bluff. He grew tobacco, and I am sure he dried the leaves in my grandfather’s greenhouse.
The site of St. Joseph Home was the corn growing area for Mr. Meyer. That is where we gathered corn that we used on Halloween to throw on porches.
Long before any of us can remember, the 28 acres at the far west end of the street belonged to Gottlieb Oesterle—winemaker, gardener, supplier for the Central Market downtown, and host to Oesterle’s Wine Garden. Although not a park, it was an out of the ordinary place for Peorians to meet. On a warm Sunday evening, the buggies lined up, and the patrons took their places under the shade of the big oak trees where they watched the sun set behind the next bluff and sipped their wine.
Bishop Dunne of the Peoria Diocese dedicated the new motherhouse and novitiate of the Heading Avenue Franciscan Sisters in 1912 and in 1913. Because the diocesan orphanage in Metamora had become crowded, Bishop Dunne arranged for the purchase of Osterle’s Grove, and the Guardian Angel Home was built on that spot and dedicated in 1914.
Directly across from the Franciscan motherhouse was the novitiate for the Third Order of St. Francis sisters from St. Francis Hospital. The novices shared the site with the hospital chicken farm and vegetable garden. There were chicken coops, garden areas, and a place to dump refuse from the hospital. Now this area belongs to Rosminian House.
Subdivisions were laid out; Julius Fisher planned Woodlawn Court and William Wittick laid out Edgehill Court, and people began coming from below the bluff. In 1926 John Schifeling built a two-story brick home with a sunken garden in the side yard and moved his family from their apartment above his wallpaper and paint store on South Adams. In 1928 the bottom fell out of the street, and the following spring the parkway was given up for the newly paved street.
As I said, certain sights and sounds were indigenous to the area. Walkers were plentiful—residents walked to the street car line at Main and Western, mothers walked to Schafer’s grocery, novices walked in groups as did the children from the orphanage.
Sister Regina was a regular with her charges from the orphanage. How can I explain the feeling we had when she walked her group down Heading. Our play stopped; we drew back as they passed. They stared and we stared. Such an ominous word “orphan!” To be led down the street for their exercise while we were as free as the wind, with loving parents and maybe even a room of our own as compared to their dormitory situation.
No one seemed to mind the lack of sidewalks in some areas. There was a boardwalk just west of Cedar, and if you stepped on the wrong board, the other end came up to meet you.
Another familiar sight was Sister Adeline hoeing at the hospital farm. The bottom of her brown habit was caked with mud, her sleeves folded up to bare her forearms, and her rough sun-tanned hands around her hoe were as strong as any man’s. She drove a flat bed truck and passed on the empty clay pots left at the hospital to my father.
A busy sight for the eyes was the Fall Festival and Chicken Dinner at Immaculate Conception. There were tents with games of chance and handiwork for sale. Down the street next to Edgehill Court, Mr. Harms grew his peonies and glads, and when he left, hoards of children used the space for flying kites over Farmington Road, playing a game of croquet or baseball, and sometimes even as a shortcut from the park after a day of sledding.
A few sounds could be heard no other place; the music and the drone of skaters from the roller rink behind Hunts or the curbie numbers being called from Hunts. Consider the wail of a motorcycle police escort in 1936 as it led Joe E. Brown out Heading for his visit at the orphanage. He was here for the world premier of Earthworm Tractor, a movie that had been partially filmed at Caterpillar. Neither Mr. Lewis nor the children that came out of the woodwork to watch him seemed to mind that it was 109.5 that day, after eleven days of over 100 degrees.
In August of 1943, the sound was hail breaking over two-thirds of the glass in both greenhouses (Becker and Geier florists on Heading). Not only did the panes have to be replaced, the soil in the beds inside had to be hauled outside, sifted, and returned to the beds. Small chrysanthemum cuttings already started were shredded.
During the war the sound was taps being played each time a soldier was brought home to rest at St. Joseph’s and there was always the sound of the street car screeching around the corner of Main and Western.
Heading Avenue had its share of notables. John Noppenberger, who coached Spalding football from 1928 to 1934 and later at Central High School, was credited with being one of the first high school coaches that taught high school athletes not only the important basic fundamentals of the game but also the psychology and spirit of motivation. Two doors away was the home of Max Bosler, editor of the Peoria newspaper. Further down the street was the home of Russell Strout, who delivered that paper and later became vice-president of Madison Park Bank.
Skip Cravens lived the first seventeen years of her life in this area—much of it on Heading Avenue. Her grandfather, Peter Becker, and her father, Charles Becker, ran a florist shop on Heading Avenue for over thirty years. Skip has preserved her own memories and those passed down to her so that she could, in turn, pass them to her five children. In 1984 Skip’s memories of Heading Avenue were published in the West Bluff Word. Now she is graciously sharing them with the readers of the West Peoria News. In an upcoming issue, the story will continue with the history of the two Heading Avenue florist shops—Becker and Geier.