Last days for Maple City Dairy
MONMOUTH, Ill. — The news that the former Maple City Dairy building is slated for demolition brought back a flood of memories from current and former Monmouth residents who as children were treated to ice cream there after a ball game or other special events. Many of them later brought their own children and grandchildren to the distinctive art deco building, which has stood at 110 South A St. since 1941.
The business dated back to Jan. 1, 1933, when J. T. DeCoste of Galesburg opened Maple City Dairy at 216 East Broadway with brand new equipment for pasteurizing milk, manufacturing butter and retailing ice cream. Perhaps because of the worsening Depression, the business and equipment was put on the auction block just eight months later, but a buyer didn’t come forward until October, in the person of a Danish immigrant.
Christen Lauridsen Bertram had arrived in the United States in 1913 at the age of 18. He soon became a butter maker for a dairy in Litchfield, Ill., and shipped off to Europe with the Army as a bugler just as World War I was ending. In 1924, he married Mariea Reick in Moline, Ill., and became an employee of the Moline Pure Milk Co. By 1932, he was selling wholesale milk, and with accumulated savings was able to move his young family to Monmouth and began operating Maple City Dairy at the end of 1933.
After two years at the East Broadway address, which Bertram likely rented, the building was sold to the Farm Bureau, which had long been seeking a new location. While during the early days of the Depression there had been as many as 10 vacant stores in the business district, by 1935 the economy had recovered enough that there was not a single downtown vacancy. George Howard, who had constructed a number of commercial properties in Monmouth, decided to erect a new building at 208 South A Street — a one-story affair that he leased to Bertram.
It wasn’t long before Bertram outgrew the Howard building and started planning a state-of-the-art dairy building of his own just to the south. The main floor would contain 13 rooms — a sales room across the front, rooms for pasteurizing, bottle sterilizing, milk storage, ice cream hardening, shipping and general offices. Within the back of the building was a large garage for trucks and a private garage for the Bertrams, who would occupy an elegant penthouse apartment on the second floor.
In the basement was equipment that not only cooled and heated the dairy, but also the upstairs apartment.
Bertram built the dairy out of a novel new product called Waylite, which had been patented by the Cedar Rapids Block Co. The 8” x 8” x 16” white blocks contained thousands of dead air cells, which provided superior soundproofing and insulation. As a result, the upstairs apartment remained quiet even when the machinery downstairs was in operation. Waylite blocks were also sold in curved sections and frosted glass blocks, which gave the dairy’s exterior a streamlined look while providing excellent interior illumination with no glare.
The massive building had a footprint of 56 feet by 104 feet, with entrances on each side.
Several Monmouth residents were longtime employees of Maple City Dairy, including Bertram’s son-in-law, Ernie Bellis, who drove a milk truck for decades. Another employee was Herluf Petersen, an old family friend, whose father had also immigrated from Denmark and was in the creamery business. Petersen, who had graduated with a degree in dairy science from Iowa State, was hired as business manager in 1942. In 1966, he purchased part of the business from Bertram, who retired that year, and who died the following July.
As independent dairies faced increasingly stiff competition, Petersen joined the All Star family of dairies and later teamed up with the Model Dairy in Moline and Land-O-Lakes. In February 1982, Maple City Dairy finally closed its doors. It had outlasted other Monmouth dairies, namely Higgins, White House and later Erickson’s Sealtest.
One reason for its longevity was the quality of its ice cream, which was routinely entered at the Illinois State Fair. One year, its chocolate placed first, its vanilla placed second and its strawberry placed third. Former Monmouth residents from as far away as California would order Maple City ice cream, shipped in dry ice.
Peterson sold the business to Monmouth College admissions director John Fettig and his wife, June, who operated it as Fettig’s Maple City Dairy through 1985. After being vacant for a time, the building housed its final busines, the Wonder Dog restaurant, from 1987–90.
Jeff Rankin is an editor and historian for Monmouth College. He has been researching, writing and speaking about western Illinois history for more than 40 years.
