THE CHRISTIAN ERA: 1935--1951

When the Great Depression, Aurora residents suffered many foreclosures, and the Baker family was not exempt. When his horses died of distemper in 1934, Frank Baker could no longer work as a teamster, and he foreclosed on the house. Kane County Investment Company took possession, and in March, 1935, Andrew Christian purchased it for himself and the family of his son, Harold.

The Christian family found much repair work awaiting them. The hardwood flooring downstairs was worn; the oak staircase was rough and knotted; and the wide floorboards upstairs had outlived their usefulness. Harold's wife, Edna smoothed and refinished the staircase, in spite of chronic ill health. Their teen-age daughter, Charlotte, worked tirelessly resurfacing the hardwood floors and putting linoleum over the worn-out floorboards in the upstairs bedrooms. A grown son, Gale, worked for Masonite in Chicago, and he contributed masonite flooring for the den and ceiling tiles for the dining room. Even Vera, the five-year-old, stripped wallpaper.

Vera Christian Hunger, 79 years old, is the only surviving family member, and she revisited the home this April for a “then and now” tour. She showed us how the downstairs bathroom had been a pantry, the kitchen sink where the shower is today, and how the basement stairs had come down from the bathroom wall where the sink is today. Her memory is extraordinarily sharp, and she remembers the exact positions of furniture. Grandfather Andrew's armchair sat on the south wall of the den, and a library table stood in the hall. Her family also owned a record player on which they could create their own records to send Gale when he was away during World War 2.

Harold Christian, a carpenter, took a cabinet that an apprentice had measured incorrectly and forced it to fit into the space above their sink. In those days, cabinets often lacked doors, and closets were a rarity; the house had only two real closets, one in the master bedroom and the other under the oak staircase, and neither closet had doors. Harold also removed a kitchen cabinet so he could install the family's first refrigerator, a Servel which used gas. Aside from these projects, though, Harold did little carpentry work on the house. According to Vera, he was too busy creating things for other people to do work on his own property. He designed the "San-Tree," a wooden Christmas tree stand that was marketed and sold.

The house was heated with a coal furnace, and Harold installed a stoker when he was working at the Shipyards during World War 2 and would be away from home for several days at a time. The kitchen stove operated using both coal and gas, and a stovepipe ran across the kitchen ceiling and up between the two windows in the back bedroom. Coal was kept in a small room in the back basement. The side yard, where perennials grow today, was the driveway, and the barn stood where the driveway is today.

Like the Baker’s, the Christians had a colorful family history. Andrew, the grandfather, was born in 1866, and immigrated to the United States from Norway when he was six years old. His education stopped after third grade, when he was bound out as a farm hand, but he found successful work in adult life as a machinist. Harold began his career as a fireman for the railroad, but later became a mill-worker and operated his own business out of the barn and, later, the shed which he built on the property in 1946. Oldest son Gale fought in World War 2 and was stationed at Pearl Harbor. Kenneth became a professional clarinet and saxophone player in addition to establishing a career as a foreman at the railroad’s roundhouse. Charlotte married late in life and worked for sixty years as a legal secretary; although she never had children, she was extremely sociable in the community, riding the commuter train and playing bingo at area churches. Vera, the baby of the family, was born nine years after her next oldest sibling, Robert.

Perhaps the most colorful chapter in the family history was that of Harold’s mill-working business. Although others in the neighborhood operated businesses out of their homes, including Bauman’s Bottling mentioned in the previous post, a hostile neighbor reported Harold to the city for a zoning violation. The city of Aurora sued Harold in 1950, the year that Edna died. According to Vera, this neighbor was, himself, constructing and selling furnaces in his own basement. Harold justified his operating the business on the grounds that it been grandfathered to him, as Baker had used the barn for business purposes before he bought it. The case was still in progress when he suddenly died of congestive heart failure in June, 1951.

Harold died virtually penniless; his total cash, on hand and in the bank, totaled less than $100 upon his death. His Servel refrigerator, 1940 four-door Nash Sedan and 1946 Ford Pick-up were sold, and the property went into probate. He left many debts, and the house was listed in poor repair. Gale, executor of the estate, sold the property from his front porch, and an investor bought it for $2000 in 1952.