History, Hogan’s Fountain Teepee & Williams Food Shop

Posted: October 8th, 2012 | Filed under: Community, Ruminations | 7 Comments »

The iconic teepee pavilion at Hogan’s Fountain needs to be saved at any cost.

Now.

Any high minded “conservationists” who feel otherwise, under cover of “preserving Olmstead’s legacy,” are wrongheaded dunderheads.

I shall have a few slightly more rational words, stating my case about the issue, in a moment.

First I want to talk about Williams Food Shop, which used to be at the corner of 5th and Market.

In the current Louisville Magazine, there’s a feature about some of our favorite restaurants that are now RIP. Dan Crutcher, bless his heart, laments the loss of the best burger joint this town ever knew, perceptively describing the scene with fondness.

He didn’t mention the Waldorf Salad, which I never ordered, but always thought to be the exotic dish on the menu. Nor did he indicate that the guy flipping those sublime burgers smothered in onions was the owner.

No matter. The blurb struck a chord. Williams was great.

My parents owned a boutique ladies purse store at 610 West Market, with the most chic of names: Handbag Mart. My pal Jimmy Grenburg’s father owned a furniture store across the street. Bernie and Bobby Rosenthal’s folks, Steve Sweitzer’s aunt and uncle, owned some shoe and ladies apparel stores on the same block. (It’s now the City Hall parking lot, but the spirit lives on.)

My buddy Ian Zlotolow’s dad owned a discount store on the next corner. My buddy David Fleischer’s father owned a hardware store on the next block.

From our junior high school years on, we all worked for our parents. During school, it would be on the weekends. In the summer, it was daily servitude.

The gang, more or less, in one combination or another, would always eat lunch together. We’d always eat at Williams Food Shop, taking up most all of the chairs. If another patron or two happened to beat us there, we’d surround them, talking through them, loudly, about Stan Musial, the girls at the JCC swimming pool or the funny guy shining shoes at DeVoe C. Hale’s barber shop.

As best I recall, Sweitzer — we always called each other by our last name — was the only one who would periodically order the Waldorf Salad.

After becoming an attorney with daily duties downtown, I continued to frequent Williams at least several times a week. Attorneys Doug Mann and his dad ate their every day, as best I recall.

I loved the burgers.

I loved the place.

I think I may have ordered that Waldorf Salad once or twice after I reached my 30s, when I was adventurous enough to venture beyond the cheeseburger, fries and slaw.

Williams Food Shop was more than just a counter and burgers and a thin mint or two on the way out. It was, and remains, a revered place from not only my youth, but my adult life also. I grew up there.

Every once in awhile the place will come up in conversation and will be spoken of with love and affection by those who savored the scene.

I cringe to this day when passing by and see the cigarette whatever store it’s become.

* * * * *

For a whole lot of people in Louisville, the Hogan’s Fountain Teepee is a Williams Food Shop kind of place.

They grew up there.

Maybe they played music there. Or played ball there. Or bought, sold or smoked pot there. Maybe they broke their cherry in the woods nearby. Maybe when they thought their parents hated them, they found solace there. Maybe they laughed there like they never had before. Maybe they took their babies in strollers there. Maybe they had family picnics there.

More than a few, I’m sure, fell in love there. Or, found out they weren’t in love after all.

So, listen up all you high-minded, condescending preservationista, it’s not really about the pavilion, or its roof or Olmstead’s vision (Or, what you wish to believe to be Olmstead’s vision).

It’s about memories. It’s about that funky space that has become, through the decades, iconic ground, a place for us to cherish our history.

Besides, how the hell do you all know what Frederick Law Olmstead would have thought of the teepee? It’s not a part of his vision you say. Really? Well, what about the basketball courts? And rest rooms throughout the parks? And the asphalt parking lots? And mountain biking paths? Or Daniel Boone’s statue, which, when I was a kid, sat alongside the road that runs up from Eastern Parkway down the hill from Hogan’s Fountain?

So, listen up, you woefully misguided Mimi Zinniels of the world. Make an appointment with your neighborhood surgeon for a sphincter loosening procedure. So what that teepees may not have been the habitat of choice for the Native American tribes around here. So what that Olmstead might not have designated the spot for Edward Schickli’s now esteemed teepee.

To move or tear down the Hogan’s Fountain Teepee would be a travesty of the highest order. This edifice is at least as important to the fabric and history of this city as those buildings along Main Street, upon which tens of millions of dollars are being spent for restoration.

You want to show how much you love this community? See that the money needed to preserve the roof and structure of the teepee comes available. Today.

The Williams Food Shops of this town are long gone.

The Hogan’s Fountain Teepee is not. If you care about Louisville, you’ll see that it stays that way. Right where it is.

 

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