Revised and expanded from an article originally published in Mechanical Music, Journal of the Musical Box Society International, Winter 1989 and Spring 1990.
Introduction
During its heyday Svoboda's Nickelodeon Tavern and Museum, located on the south side of Chicago, Illinois, was given more media attention than many other collections of coin pianos, orchestrions and band organs combined. This coverage by newspapers, magazines, collectors' publications, radio and television was well-deserved, as Svoboda's contained the largest collection of these instruments in working condition ever publicly displayed under one roof in their original environment, in the city where many had been manufactured. Over the years, the collection featured twenty-some Seeburgs including three Style Gs, an L Orchestra, and a KT Special; eleven Wurlitzers including Styles BX and C orchestrions, a flute-violin-xylophone Pianino, and a style B Automatic Harp; seven Mills Violanos, five Operators' Piano Co. instruments including a Coinola SO; and four Nelson-Wiggens, as well as Links, North Tonawandas, Reginas, Cremonas, Western Electrics and many others.
In addition to the nickelodeons and band organs, Svoboda's displayed a large collection of tum-of-the-century arcade machines plus over a hundred other small collections: spring-wound and early electric phonographs, music boxes, organettes, barrel organs, fans, antique cars, radiator and hubcap ornaments, mounted animal heads, old coins and paper currency, tools, early radios and televisions, old American flags, band instruments, clothing, shoes, animated figures, art glass lamp shades, sheet music, old newspapers, and just about anything else that was old and interesting. And then there were the gimmicks, the live entertainment and the parades ... but you'll have to read on to learn more about these later in the article.
Over the years, since working there during the mid-1960s, I've accumulated a number of old photographs, articles and other memorabilia from Svoboda's. Sorted into chronological order and combined with recollections of the people involved, the material helps bring to life the history of one of America's most fun nickelodeon collections. Not many taverns attract media attention when they go out of business, but when Al and his sons officially closed and vacated the old premises at 24th and Butler in Chicago Heights on January 31, 1987, even this was featured on Chicago television and in the Chicago Tribune. With that closure, the time had come for me to sort through the pile of old materials to write this article.
Words cannot describe the unique atmosphere experienced when driving into the old neighborhood and entering Svoboda's front door at ten o'clock on a busy night. Any combination of nickelodeons might be playing simultaneously in various rooms, combined with odd thumping noises and jovial laughter, while waitresses worked their way through crowds of well-dressed people waiting in line for tables. A peculiar mixture of odors—alcohol, cigarette smoke, bellows leather, and old rubber tubing with its faint hint of sulfur—always lingered in the air. The background was dark, lit only by small clear bulbs in the rows of pianos, colorful art glass shades and some screwy pictures hanging here and there. Dark, that is, until someone pitched a coin into a funnel hanging under the ceiling, triggering sirens, bells, flashing lights racing around the room, animated displays coming to life and bright spotlights for about 30 seconds. To paraphrase one magazine reporter, "Stepping back outside after an evening at Svoboda's was like walking into a tub of black JELL-O.®"
Nor can words duplicate the experience of walking through the same dimly lit labyrinth of rooms and corridors alone in the middle of the day. The stillness was broken then only when you deposited a coin in a slot, causing a cheerful-sounding nickelodeon to respond by performing its boisterous song just as loudly and willingly for its audience of one today as it did last night when it barely could be heard above all the racket.
While reading this article, keep in mind that the collection was begun before the 1950s, when many instruments could still be obtained in fairly good working condition for almost nothing. As years elapsed and the collection grew, repairs were performed as necessary but complete restoration as we know it today was still decades in the future. Art glass was removed and stored so the public could enjoy seeing the instruments work, external coin boxes were added to keep the price of play somewhat in line with inflation without removing the original mechanisms, and in general the collection was subjected to hard daily usage that is no longer practical with today's rising value and desirability of beautiful restoration.
Try to keep in mind also the crowds, the noise, the lights, and the good times, with Al and his family right in the middle of it all, entertaining and having more fun than a hundred normal bartenders ever did. With your imagination helping to recreate the atmosphere, read on and experience some of the enjoyment that so many people had over the years when visiting Svoboda's.
The Early 1900s—Albert B. and Anna Svoboda's New Tavern
In 1905 or 1906, Al's parents—Albert B. Svoboda and his wife, Anna (Galik)—immigrated to the United States from Prague, Bohemia. The name "Svoboda," a fairly common Bohemian name, means "liberty" in English. Settling in Chicago, they opened their first saloon south of the loop at 18th and Canalport, a little over a mile west of a point half way between today's Soldier Field and McCormick Place on the lakefront. The building also housed a blacksmith shop, and when a horse was being shod, the noise of the hammering could be heard in the saloon.
In 1907 Albert took a train ride sponsored by a land promoter from the south side. Like some of our contemporary auctions which offer prospective buyers a "free lunch" and alcoholic beverages, the promoter provided free sandwiches, beer and drinks in the baggage car. When Albert, a heavy drinker, stepped off the train about twenty-five miles south in Chicago Heights, there were no streets or sidewalks yet—only plots of ground being offered by real estate men who met the train with their horses and buggies.
In Al's own words, "When the Chicago Heights city officials learned that Dad wanted to build a three-story building with a dance hall, tavern and meeting hall, they offered him the best lot in Chicago Heights—the current site of the First National Bank building at 17th Street and Halsted. Dad rejected this site, as he preferred the outskirts of town, so one of the real estate men with a horse and buggy took him to the intersection which was to become 24th and Butler, where five paths led to a railroad car repair shop, two brickyards, and two manufacturers of roofing tile. The tile factories and brickyards were located there because Chicago Heights has very good clay.
"My Dad was so enthusiastic about these lots that he put a small amount down on each one—something like fifty cents or a dollar, which secured the property for him for thirty days. Having accomplished this, he went back to Chicago to tell my Mom what he had done. Mom got so angry about the expense that Dad finally agreed to buy just half the block instead of the whole thing! She was satisfied with this deal.
"In 1907 Dad built the saloon, and in 1908 they opened. Dad employed a man from the old country to teach the Slavs, Bohemians, Polish and Croatians who moved into the neighborhood to speak and read English, giving them lessons and the daily news in the big hall next to the tavern. Dad's services became so well-known that when immigrants from those countries came to Chicago, the people downtown would recommend that they come to see him in Chicago Heights.
"Dad bought used furniture at auctions, Mom would clean it up as best she could, and they would sell it to the people who came from the old country. One day Mom was cleaning a dresser. Inside the drawers were old newspapers, and when she took the newspaper out to wash one of the drawers, the bottom was lined with $100 bills—the big old ones!
"Every night we watched the neighborhood cows so they wouldn't stray out into prairie at 26th St. three blocks away. Dad bought horses at auctions—we had as many as seven of them behind the tavern—and he'd trade them for a motorcycle, or a cow, or anything else he needed. Once he bought a race horse. He tried to teach the horse to pull a wagon, but that never worked. Mom was so mad that she saw to it that Dad never raced that horse. Another horse was totally blind; if we forgot to take him over to the prairie, he would walk over there very slowly by himself. If he bumped into a parked car he would slowly make his way around it.
"Dad bought a bunch of spittoons for the tavern, and it was my job to clean them. When a man would accidentally drop a coin into a spittoon he would never retrieve it, and Dad told me whatever coins I found would be mine. I washed them by soaking them in water overnight. One day I found a coin. I asked my dad what kind it was, and he told me I had found a $2.50 gold piece, worth more than our regular money. From then on I collected coins and when l began collecting nickelodeons I found a lot of interesting old coins that had fallen behind the mechanisms. I kept that first $2.50 gold piece for many years.
"When I was six years old my Dad bought me a billy goat, a little farm wagon, silk pants, a silk shirt, silk tie and white shoes, and I led the parade in town. At first I cried because of the goat's smell, but finally I got over it. I led the Chicago Heights parades from then until I was 65, when I decided that 60 years of being in parades was long enough."
Albert B. Svoboda's Tavern remained a center of neighborhood activities through the teens and twenties. Albert and Anna had five children—Al (Albert J., b. 1909), Margaret (b.?), Betty (b.1911), Ann (b.1913) and Frank (b.1915). The large hall adjoining the tavern served not only as a neighborhood meeting place and private "naturalization center," but also as a grocery store in front and dance hall in the rear. Al's uncle Frank Zajiceck, an immigrant from Prague who had been bandmaster with Barnum & Bailey's circus, led a band of as many as 21 musicians all crammed onto the stage at one end of the hall, playing popular Bohemian dance music of the day along with marches and waltzes. Each musician in the band received a generous wage each night, but often spent more than his wages on drinks. This band performed into the 1930s when it was finally replaced with a more modern dance orchestra.
In 1915, Albert B. bought a fine new Wurlitzer orchestrion for his tavern, and Al remembers it being one of the fanciest he ever saw. A technician came in regularly to adjust it and exchange the music rolls, and on one occasion Al remembers the technician disassembling it for thorough servicing with parts laying all over the floor of the tavern. When Al later bought his first beautiful new 78 rpm jukebox, he personally chopped up the big orchestrion in the alley behind the tavern and had it hauled to the dump! "Old coin pianos weren't collectors' items then," Al explained, "and nobody had any use for them."
When Albert B. passed away at the age of 44 in 1922, Anna continued to run the tavern. Although she was hauled into court for operating the tavern during prohibition, Chicago Heights was as lax as anywhere in the country about enforcing liquor laws during this period, and Anna never completely shut down the business even though taverns were supposedly “closed.” Al Capone maintained an office and warehouse two blocks away at 22nd and Butler, and when he visited Svoboda’s, he and his men always sat at the corner table toward the back of the bar room. Al Svoboda remembers when Capone first established his rules: “I don’t care where you get your wine and hard liquor, but you will buy your beer from me, okay?” Okay it was, and the Svoboda family never had any beer supply problems. Capone gave Anna another piece of advice: “Keep the kid out of the tavern, or he’ll end up being a bartender.” Fortunately for collectors, Anna didn't heed this particular piece of advice, and Al began helping out with the duties of running the tavern, tasting samples for his mother to see if they were tainted, and making his first batch of wine when he was' 16 years old.
Al remembers many colorful stories from prohibition days, including practices resorted to by some of the liquor distributors such as mixing ½ oz. ether with ½ gallon alcohol to induce grogginess in the imbiber, and nailing a plug of chewing tobacco inside a barrel of cheap whiskey, imparting a burned flavor in an attempt to camouflage the poor quality. He also remembers the trap door into the basement of the hall—where whiskey was stored—being nailed shut, with access only through a tunnel from the basement of the house next door. After the end of prohibition, an opening in the foundation was made between the tavern and the hall, but even in modem times, the basement under the tavern and hall buildings remained a labyrinth of passageways and rooms. Visiting Svoboda's tavern in February 1987, shortly after it officially closed, I was shown yet another basement room—with one end sealed off with a removable wall of bricks—that he had never seen before, despite having worked in that basement over a four year period. It had been used for storing records of the business.
The 1930s and 40s—Svoboda's Old Time Tavern
In 1929, Al Svoboda married Florence Balcer of Cicero. In 1934, Al's mother turned the tavern over to Al and Flo, although Anna still worked there until 1953. In 1932, beer was legal again, and in 1933 prohibition was lifted completely. Visitors to the tavern over the years would see a large collection of athletic trophies sitting on top of the Seeburg G and E in the bar room; Svoboda's tradition of sponsoring various teams began during the depression, when the teams would patronize the tavern after their games, which certainly didn't hurt business!
With the end of prohibition, Al was a beer distributor for the area including Chicago Heights and other suburbs as far north as Harvey. In 1934, a tavern owner owed Al for ½ barrel of beer worth $7, and Al agreed to take a small "Junior" Seeburg (style L keyboardless coin piano with mandolin) as payment. This Seeburg was the beginning of the nickelodeon collection, although Al didn't really feature it and later sold it for $150.
Al's second piano was a very rusty Seeburg E with xylophone found on the second story of a warehouse on the east side of Chicago Heights. This piano sat against the back (north) wall of the bar room where it entertained patrons for many years, until it was replaced with another E from Calumet City in the late 1960s.
His third machine, which always remained one of his favorites over the years, was a fine Cremona style 10 keyboardless orchestrion with mandolin, two ranks of pipes, triangle, tambourine and the rare tune selecting mechanism. Al bought this piano from its original owner, a barber shop at 25th and Butler, one block from the tavern. The barber insisted on trading it for a Barcelona hat, so Al went downtown to Chicago, bought a fine hat for $35—a lot of money for a hat in those days—and had his piano! It was first placed in the front of the bar room, later was moved to the east wall of the hall where it was displayed next to a rare John Gabel's "Entertainer" jukebox for many years, and finally was moved to the west wall of the mahogany room where it remained until Svoboda's moved into their new building.
Ironically, in the summer of 1967 when Dave Ramey and I were rebuilding this Cremona, there was a question about the correct retubing of the tune selecting mechanism, the answer to which could be found only by examining an unaltered M roll originally used with the orchestrion. About a month after the piano was restored, the barber from down the street walked into Svoboda's with three M rolls under his arm which he had just found on a closet shelf, about thirty years after trading the piano for his fancy hat! Winding through one of the rolls to the end, we found the hole punched just where we speculated there should be one, confirming that the tune selecting mechanism was tubed correctly.
During the early years of collecting, Al and Flo had two sons, Allan (b.1939) and Tom (or "Corky," b. 1944). While the boys were growing up after World War II, many of the smaller neighborhood taverns were being remodeled with drop ceilings of acoustical tile, chrome fixtures and fluorescent lights. Al knew that his tavern was the most deluxe one in the neighborhood, with its large Brunswick bar, terrazzo floor, extra high fancy tin ceiling, and other special features, so he made the decision to feature antiques rather than discarding them like everyone else was doing. At this time, he began advertising the business as "Svoboda's Old Time Tavern."
In addition to having the Seeburg E and Cremona style 10 in the bar room, it wasn't too long before Al was the proud new owner of a Seeburg G—acquired from a bar in Cicero on a tip from Flo's brother. This one cost $45! An oak single Mills Violano was added, and was featured on Svoboda's letterhead and advertising of the period. The G was placed between the E and the side door of the bar room, where it remained as long as the collection was in the building, and the Violano took its place next to the front door. Early photos of these pianos reveal that they still looked like new when they were moved into the tavern.
Other instruments, including spring-wound and electric cylinder and disc phonographs, player reed organs, music boxes, and roller organs gradually took their places on display in back of the big hall. A Cremona Style 3 A-roll piano with canary decals on the windows was placed on the stage where the band had played in earlier decades. At the same time, Al began filling display cases on the walls with old coins, hubcap and radiator ornaments, odd-shaped eggs, and other interesting items.
The 1950s and 1960s—Svoboda's Nickelodeon Tavern and Museum
Around the time that Al's mother retired in 1953, a pioneer Chicago collector—Alden Scott Boyer—was thinking about selling his lifetime collection. Boyer had begun collecting coin pianos, orchestrions and gambling machines when most other people were junking them, in part by advertising nationally in trade publications that he would pay the shipping on unwanted machines if their owners would send them to him! Al made Boyer's acquaintance, saw the large group of machines displayed at 2700 S. Wabash near downtown Chicago, and went home to ponder whether or not to buy them. '1 must be crazy," he thought. "What on earth am I going to do with all those pianos?" Nonetheless, every true collector dreams of buying an entire hoard of instruments in one group, and this was the chance of a lifetime!
The late Charlie Bovey later told me that he was simultaneously considering buying the Boyer hoard. After traveling from Montana to Chicago to view the collection, he and Boyer walked outside and locked the front door. The telephone inside the building rang, but Boyer didn't hear it. Charlie politely informed Boyer that his phone was ringing, whereupon Boyer quickly unlocked the door and rushed back into the building. While waiting outside, Bovey made up his mind to buy the pianos, but when Boyer came back out he announced, "That was a man named Al Svoboda, and he just bought my pianos." (Dave Ramey Sr. remembered that Al actually bought the instruments from Boyer’s widow, indicating that Boyer passed away shortly after agreeing to sell them in 1953.)
With this purchase in approximately 1953, the piano collection began to fill up the hall, and within a few years "Svoboda's Old Time Tavern" would become "Svoboda's Nickelodeon Tavern and Museum." Although the exact inventory of the Boyer collection is unknown, Al remembered the following instruments as likely coming from that hoard: two Seeburg KT's with xylophones, one of which became the famous "puppet machine" near the front door, two Seeburg L cabinet pianos and the L Orchestra, the Seeburg G that was displayed in the hall, one single and one double Mills Violano, a Nelson-Wiggen Style 4T with A.B.T. target mechanism, an acoustic John Gable Automatic Entertainer, a Western Electric Derby; and possibly a Regina Sublima, walnut Seeburg E, another Seeburg G which was never displayed, a Wurlitzer Style S, a Regina Hexaphone, a 27" Regina changer, and a tall barrel orchestrion sold by Schönau (possibly made by Josef Stern) with piano, reiterating mandoline effect, snare drum, cymbal and xylophone.
Also acquired from Boyer were seven large upright antique slot machines. Because Cook County and the state of Illinois had no tolerance for slot machines—including obsolete antiques that were no longer commercially usable—and because there was the possibility that if the authorities found one slot machine they might destroy the whole collection, the slots were stored away and never seen again until antique slots became legal a few years before the whole collection was sold.
By the mid-1950s, the collection completely filled the hall and overflowed into a long narrow adjoining room with a dirt floor. Soon a concrete floor was poured, the walls were paneled, the ceiling was wallpapered with old player piano rolls, and several more small display rooms for antique cars and other collections were added to the rear. The long narrow room was christened "the mahogany room," just wide enough for two rows of tables with an aisle in between, and a lineup of coin pianos and orchestrions down one wall.
Sometime before the mahogany room was finished, a young man named Dave Ramey from Danville, Illinois, was referred to Svoboda's by another Chicago collector, Angelo Valente. Dave walked in, saw the rooms full of machines, chatted with Al about his experiences fixing a few player pianos and coin pianos, and got his first job at Svoboda's repairing the four-door Seeburg L. Previously, Al had done what he could to keep the machines running, including covering a set of pneumatics himself now and then, and hiring various people who claimed to be able to do the work. It didn't take long, however, before Dave was rebuilding one machine after another in his spare time, taking parts home, fixing them and then returning to the tavern every weekend to reassemble them and do maintenance. In Dave's own words, "During the late 1950s and early 1960s, every weekend when I walked in, it seemed like Al had bought another nickelodeon." Undoubtedly, one reason Al bought so many pianos during this booming era was that he could count on Dave to put them into excellent playing condition.
Instruments added during this period included a National roll changing piano, a North Tonawanda Style B Pianolin, a Link 2E and a Nelson-Wiggen Style 8, all obtained from Michigan collector and dealer Don Robertson, who was affiliated with the House of David in Benton Harbor. Also, a very rare Wurlitzer violin/flute Pianino with xylophone from Bob Nelson in Atoka, Oklahoma, another Seeburg G—possibly from Boyer—which Al later traded to Ira Moody's Musical Museum in MacGregor, Iowa for a Wurlitzer Style B Automatic Harp (the G and Harp are now in the Bronson and Nethercutt collections, respectively), a Link C flute piano from a garage in Crown Point, Indiana, another Seeburg E from the Eagle's Club in Blue Island, and a Seeburg Celesta found in a mortuary on Archer Avenue. The Celesta was eventually transformed into the "Monster," a photoplayer incorporating the xylophone, drum and trap effects from a theatre organ, which could be played by hand or by a style H roll.
Organs included a North Tonawanda "Rand" band organ with brass trumpets, a North Tonawanda endless roll organ, a Wurlitzer Style 103, a Wurlitzer Style 105 obtained from Jack Kaplan, a large Anton Helfert Czechoslovakian trumpet/piccolo barrel organ from the Cloyd’s European Antiques Museum in Michigan City, Indiana, and a Welte barrel organ found disassembled in a fine antique store home on the north side of Chicago. The Style 103 Wurlitzer eventually migrated to the top of the Nelson-Wiggen style 8 in the big hall, where it was the loudest and one of the most popular instruments in the collection. Other coin pianos and orchestrions included a rare Peerless Wisteria from the Ranch House Tavern in Rockford, a Coinola Cupid, a Victor coin piano, a Seeburg Greyhound from Blue Island, and a Western Electric Mascot. Also, William Johnson and Eberhardt A roll pianos, a Seeburg Style F with flute pipes, two Wurlitzer IX coin pianos and an oak BX orchestrion, and a Cremona style "A-Art" coin piano with breathtaking art glass featuring a mountain lake scene with a church on one side and a stone bridge on the other with a steam locomotive chugging past a jeweled semaphore! Several barrel pianos appeared during this time, along with several more single Mills Violanos, Seeburg L's, an early Wurlitzer Pianino, a Regina Concerto, three Mills Panorams, several Reproduco piano/organs, a Seeburg K and hundreds of music boxes, barrel organs, tabletop organettes, phonographs and early radios.
Svoboda's was one of the few public museums in the country where the Mills Violanos usually sounded very good. One reason for this was that Al hired Henry Weisensteiner to maintain them through the years. Henry had worked for Mills for a career, personally delivered the Home Model Mills Violano to the Smithsonian Institution in 1914, and still maintained Violanos in Chicago into the mid-1960s. When I first began working for Svoboda's in 1965, Al promised that he would introduce me to Henry and let me watch him tune and service the Violanos. Alas, Henry passed away before his next maintenance visit. (About ten years later when I was working for a Kimball piano dealer in Colorado, I had regular contact with Roger Weisensteiner, manager of Kimball’s piano service department. Under the category of "it’s a small world," it turned out that Roger was Henry’s son and he used to accompany Henry on some of his Mills Violano service calls. Roger and I later met at the Sanfilippo Collection in Chicago, and Roger took me on a tour of some of Chicago’s historic buildings related to the piano industry including the Mills Novelty Co. building on Fullerton.)
The Hunt
Al enjoyed relating the stories behind how he came to own some of his pianos. The Operators' Victor A-roll piano, one of his favorites, was found in a garage behind a tavern. Al drove his pickup truck to the tavern, arranged the purchase, and made the mistake of buying a round of drinks for all present. The bartender knew a good thing when he saw one, and kept stalling on the premise that Al needed more help before he ought to load that heavy old piano into his truck. Tiring of buying rounds of drinks for the good old boys, Al excused himself and went out to the garage to examine his new purchase. Spying a large stack of old boards, Al began placing them under the piano one at a time, first under this end and then the other, until the piano was standing at a level a little higher than the bed of the pickup truck. Calculating that the casters were just at the right height, Al then put the truck in reverse, popped the clutch, and drove right under the piano, just like the old trick of pulling a tablecloth out from under a table full of dishes in reverse. Strolling back into the bar, the bartender informed Al that he finally had enough help to lift the piano, whereupon Al had to take him back into the garage to prove that the help was no longer needed! (While this trick might sound impossible to the less adventurous, I know several other people who have successfully accomplished it. Nonetheless, it isn't recommended as the preferred way to load an old piano into a truck!)
When Al purchased his Peerless orchestrion in Rockford, one of the beautiful art glass lamps was missing. After moving the piano to Chicago Heights, unloading it and placing it on display in the mahogany room, Al got a call from the previous owner, who had found the missing lamp. Al made the trek back to Rockford, picked up the second lamp and spent the rest of the afternoon checking out local bars and junk shops to see what other neat goodies he could find. He then returned home late that afternoon with his prized lamp, only to find that the first one had been stolen while he was gone, so he still only had one lamp!
One day an employee who had been hired to do carpenter work around the tavern told Al that he remembered seeing a big old automatic piano in a restaurant in Tennessee, and that he would go get it if Al would let him borrow a pickup truck. Al loaned him the truck, not quite sure if he'd ever see the employee or truck again, but a week later both returned-along with one grease-encrusted Wurlitzer C orchestrion, removed from the kitchen of the restaurant.
On another occasion, Al visited an establishment called “The Court of Two Sisters" in New Orleans, Louisiana, and spotted a rare double Mills Violano in the outside seating area, just as it began to rain. He quickly found the owner, informed him that the Violano was about to get wet, and made a deal to buy it on the spot! It wasn't the best Violano that Al ever had, but it did make an interesting display toward the back of the mahogany room—although it tended to deliver 110 volt shocks through its coin slot when the concrete floor was damp, due to a poorly wired rectifier with which someone had replaced the original converter.
The extremely rare Coinola SO, now in the Crandall collection, was obtained in a disassembled state from a bowling alley in the basement of an alleged gangster's residence in Blue Island. "We had to remove that one from the premises very fast," remembers Al.
Other Displays and Gimmicks
Visitors to Svoboda's during the 1950s-1960s found may other interesting things besides the nickelodeons. Driving up to the building, it was immediately obvious that this was neither an ordinary tavern, nor boring musical museum full of lifeless, inoperable displays. Parked in front was a 1949 Plymouth with two front ends welded together, acquired from the owner of a gas station in Midlothian, accompanied by a row of ornate cast iron street lamps topped with red, white and blue Standard Gasoline pump crowns which had advertised three types of fuel at the gas station. Today some of the early gas pump globes have been reproduced, but Al was probably the first one to collect them, and the only one to display them on street lamps in a row outside his building! A cast iron horse trough, an old safe, a fancy entry way, and a beautiful wooden front door—complete with round bottom to fit the wear in the concrete stoop—all beckoned the curious to see what other interesting things lurked inside.
Stepping into the bar room, one was greeted by "Elsie," a life size animated rubber cow's head mounted over one end of the bar, quietly overseeing the situation and placidly chewing her cud day and night. A clock hanging on the wall opposite the bar had a backwards face, ran backwards and bore the slogan "Time Goes Back at Svoboda's." A concave molded woman's face mounted in a lighted picture frame appeared to follow whoever walked by. The Seeburg KT by the front door had a little puppet band of animated Slovak ragamuffins playing the piano and other instruments, directed by a chimney sweep, sitting in a lighted stage on top. Al happily demonstrated his "Pilot Radio"—one of the first television sets with approximately 1 ½" screen, still in working condition, sitting atop the beer cooler—to anyone who asked about it. A red funnel was mounted near the ceiling in one comer, and anyone who pitched a coin into it was rewarded with a noisy version of "How Dry I Am" played on a set of electric saucer bells tripped by contacts on a rotating wooden cylinder, accompanied by a rotating police car light.
The bar room was rigged with various other mechanical gimmicks, triggered by a row of buttons located behind the bar. Many a curious visitor, reaching down to tap on the large brass bell sitting on the floor next to two fun-house mirrors, jumped back a foot when it clanged loudly "by itself." The large round oak table in front of the Seeburg G was fitted with a jack mechanism to make it rise about six inches ... —very slowly. One booth was capable of tilting suddenly, another could glide away from the wall on little hidden tracks, and another had a noisy clapper mounted under the seat. The deadpan bartenders pushing the buttons never glanced at their victims, adding to the mystery; did these things happen automatically, or at random? Were there little electric eyes, or pressure switches, or what? What would happen next? One was never quite sure. One thing for certain was the popularity of all these gimmicks, as customers made advance reservations for specific booths and tables.
An obviously antique pay telephone hanging next to the fun-house mirrors had a little sign reading "Deposit nickel and wait for operator." (This was at a time when everyone knew that local calls made from legitimate pay phones cost a dime.) Depositing a nickel into its slot tripped a message tape that announced, "Please deposit another nickel." Successive nickels produced more and more demanding messages: "Will you please deposit another nickel?" "I told you to deposit another nickel." And so on. The message had been recorded by Dave Ramey's daughter Nancy, and on one occasion it was persuasive enough to coax eight nickels out a particularly curious patron!
At the back of the bar room was the most infamous gimmick of all—the men's room. From the outside, the door looked like any other men's-room door in any other early 1900s tavern. Once inside, however, the patron found himself accompanied by an exceptionally well-endowed female mannequin who watched him do what he had to do. Microswitches were installed in strategic places under the mannequin's clothing, and when one of these switches was pressed, the loud "rrrring" of an electric doorbell resounded through the bar. The inside of the men's room door had fancy Victorian brass hinges—with no hinge pins—mounted on the side that actually opened. When the patron finished his business and attempted to return to the bar, turning the fake doorknob—which was actually mounted on the hinged side—caused another attention-getting bell to ring. By this time, everyone in the bar room had their eyes fixed on the men's-room door, ready to greet the poor soul with laughter once he finally figured out how to open it! The ladies’ room had a large framed drawing of "Adam" on the wall above the toilet, with a fig leaf hanging strategically over his private parts. Whenever a lady raised the fig leaf to see what was underneath, a concealed pump sprayed her in the face with a shot of water out of a little hidden tube.
Meandering into the second room, which had been the old dance hall, visitors found the walls lined with "nickelodeons," a term that referred to all sorts of coin-operated instruments. Each nickelodeon had an electrically operated animated display sitting on top—a Chicago Coin band box on one, three ballerinas on another, animated dancing figures here, a giant mechanical clown over there. Normally the room was calm and dark except for the lights inside the pianos and a row of antique hanging art glass shades each with a motif of grape and cherry clusters. The observant visitor was quick to notice another large red funnel lurking near one comer of the room, a row of small light bulbs located every couple of feet around the perimeter of the ceiling, and a control panel stuffed full of old pinball-machine sequencers, automatic telephone dialing equipment, switches, relays, and wiring bundles. Every fifth bulb had a control wire running down to one of the animated displays, and at any given time, just one bulb was lit. Each time a visitor lobbed a penny into the funnel, a sequencing relay moved one step, lighting the next bulb. Every fifth penny would step the system over to the next animated display, causing it to light up, do its thing for about thirty seconds, and then shut off. A nickel in the funnel tripped a different switch, advancing the system by five light bulbs and guaranteeing that one display would be activated. A dime advanced the system ten steps, tripping two displays.
When the relay advanced all the way around the room to the comer where the funnel was mounted, the last step hit the jackpot: the ceiling perimeter lights swept around and around like theater marquee lights, all of the displays and their spotlights turned on at once, and the whole show was accompanied by the raucous noise of an electric klaxon, a police car siren, and a huge alarm bell playing in sequence. After a short time, everything reverted to darkness again, except for one of the little light bulbs left on at whatever random position the rotating sequencer stopped. With luck, the system stopped just a few steps in advance of the jackpot, and a penny or nickel would set it all off again. If the sequencer stopped closer to the beginning, it either took a whole bunch of pennies, nickels, or dimes, or the adventurous soul could try tossing a quarter, which guaranteed the jackpot—if it didn't miss the funnel. Of course, there was a large box under the funnel, which caught all the near misses. I never won any prizes tossing a basketball through a hoop, but working at Svoboda's Tavern, I learned to pitch a quarter into a funnel with 95% accuracy!
The electrical wizard who built the early pitch game was the only person alive who understood everything about its overcomplicated mess of unidentified wires, and as the old switches got dirty, things tended to overheat when a coin got stuck in the funnel, as evidenced by a number of charred spots in the wooden cabinet. When the system finally had its last nervous breakdown in the late 1960s and its designer was no longer around to repair it, Dave Ramey finally replaced the firetrap control box with much simpler system: a nickel in the funnel always tripped one certain display, a dime tripped two, and a quarter did what it had always done. The complexity was gone, but patrons didn't care. By that time a penny wasn't worth much, so most people were happy to pitch quarters, trying for the jackpot every time. On crowded weekend nights, it wasn't uncommon for three or four people to stand side by side, pitching one quarter after another and keeping the jackpot going almost constantly.
In the tradition of many old taverns, Svoboda' s served tasty fish dinners at a reasonable price every Friday night, prepared by Flo and a few helpers in a small kitchen at the rear of the family living quarters behind the tavern. This continued through the mid-1960s, at which time a restaurant was added in the back room of the house next to the mahogany room, with access through a doorway added between the two buildings. Decorated with old western artifacts like branding irons and barbed wire samples, the restaurant was christened the "Chuck Wagon," and featured buffet dinners served from an old farm wagon that Al made into a covered wagon. The food preparation was handled primarily by a caterer who set up his kitchen in the front half of the house. The "Chuck Wagon" featured one nickelodeon: a fine little Western Electric "Mascot" A-roll piano from the Boyer Collection, adjusted to play slowly and quietly, to provide pleasant background music for dining.
Even in the restaurant, visitors were surrounded with Al's penchant for the unusual; where else but Svoboda' s would you find a. ceiling made of doors? Not just old doors, mind you, but brightly painted old doors, fitted with fancy old brass hinges, latches and doorknobs. "The developers of the townhouses built in Park Forest after the war gave the buyers the option of having a door between the dining room and kitchen. Nobody wanted the doors, so they ended up in storage, and I got an excellent deal on them," says Al. "Why not feature them on the ceiling?"
Al’s Showmanship
More than just a collector, Al was a showman, and Svoboda's Nickelodeon Tavern was his showplace. He not only enjoyed displaying his collection of interesting old curiosities, but he also participated in entertaining the crowds. When patrons brought in their families during the day, he often made an appearance to perform magic tricks for the children, lighting up their faces with wonder and delight.
At odd times during the evening, he would spontaneously stroll through the series of corridors and rooms cranking a beautiful little Molinari barrel organ. But the main show was at night when the place was really jumping and Al made his appearance by tooting on a deafeningly loud, compressed-air-operated factory whistle to announce his hourly "Zing-A-Boom" show and the infamous "eight piece ladies' band."
The Zing-A-Boom—Al's own invention—had a large tom-tom, sizzle cymbal, cowbell, wood block, and several ratchets mounted on a spring-loaded staff with a brass doorknob for a handle. Accompanied by an accordionist playing old-fashioned songs, Al transformed the Zing-A-Boom into an entire percussion section on a stick, and the raucous enthusiasm that he generated with it is hard to put into words. After working the crowd into a boisterous foot-stamping mood, Al then dragged an old tattered canvas duffel bag into the center of the room, dumped out an assortment of beat-up musical instruments and sound effects onto the floor, and then appointed eight of the ladies in the crowd to join him in his "eight piece band." Resuming the musical racket, Al then proceeded to "direct" the "band members" by pointing at them one by one, eliciting various "solos" on their motley assortment of "instruments."
After cuing the cymbals, pans, whistles and other noises amidst the dulcet tones of the accordion and Zing-A-Boom, Al pointed to the lady holding the long strap of sleigh bells in her hand. When she rattled her sleigh bells on cue, Al stopped the music and informed her in a most gentlemanly manner that the proper way to play her instrument was to wear it around her hips and do the shimmy. Of course, Al would never premeditate his selection of the most appropriate woman in the audience to "play" the sleigh bells with her hips. No, not Al. Starting once again, the music continued until Al finally pointed to the lady holding the old army bugle, who invariably sounded more like a worn-out whoopee cushion than a brassy fanfare. Al politely took the bugle, demonstrated the proper tone quality, and courteously handed it back, but regardless of how talented the bugler and no matter how hard she blew, only pathetic bleating noises emanated from the bugle. With that, Al in his most gracious way, pointed out the little hole drilled in the tubing and showed the musician how it had to be covered with one finger in order for the bugle to work. With that "music lesson" over, the band resumed its play and finished the "concert." Over the years, Al's sons Allan and Corky became proficient at playing their own Zing-A-Booms, and the show was really raucous when all three played in chorus! As described here over fifty years later, the entertainment might sound simplistic, but in person Al’s energy and blue-collar humor attracted crowds from all over the city of Chicago for several decades.
Expanding the Collection
Beyond the restaurant, through the back end of the mahogany room, visitors in the mid-1960s found a group of three more small rooms. The first had large display cases along one side, containing many shelves full of music boxes, early phonographs, radios, small automata, table-top organettes and barrel organs. Along with the more common items such as Edison phonographs and roller organs were a number of rarities, including two Amo roll-operated music boxes, and a small upright barrel organ with a rank of flute pipes that played Gem roller organ cobs. Other display cases in the room were filled with everything from high-button shoes to fancy antique accordions and concertinas. In the center of this room was a cluster of nickelodeons including at various times a Reproduco piano/organ, the Coinola SO, Wurlitzer Automatic Harp, Seeburg F, Regina Sublima, Wurlitzer C, Wurlitzer S, Seeburg L, a coin-operated Mills Novelty Co. acoustic disc phonograph, and later a tall 0-roll orchestrion made from the Reproduco. The back of this room had large windows through which visitors could view several antique cars: a 1921 Ford model T, a 1910 Overland and a beautiful, bright red 1908 EMF with brass radiator. Lining the walls surrounding the cars were several fancy reed organs including an ornate Aeolian Orchestrelle, the remains of another Seeburg K and a collection of antique automotive artifacts. To the side of this room was another room used as an assembly area for whatever nickelodeon or organ was being worked on.
During the late 1960s, a dozen or so more nickelodeons were added to the collection, including another cabinet-style Nelson-Wiggen, another oak single Violano, a Seeburg K with violin pipes, another Seeburg L, a rare Empress style L solo expression twin tracker piano, an early "pregnant" Wurlitzer Pianino, a Seeburg KT Special, an early Wurlitzer style A, and a Cremona style 20 M-roll piano with tune selector, as well as a Tangley calliope mounted on a beautiful trailer in a little parade wagon pulled by two large wooden carousel horses. At the same time, one piano after another was pulled out of storage, repaired, and added to those already on display.
This era was the busiest time Svoboda's ever had, with the most rebuilding work being done, the largest number of instruments maintained and kept in tune, and the biggest crowds. On the busiest nights, a long waiting line developed, extending down the sidewalk along the side of the building and requiring the services of professional ushers. With all this business, Al was able to hire the largest repair staff in his history, including Dave Ramey, Tom Sprague and me to work on the music machines all at the same time, as well as a number of other people to handle general maintenance of the other mechanical equipment. The shop in the basement was equipped with all the necessary tools and supplies. With three nickelodeon technicians, it was possible to keep nearly everything working well and sounding good, and during this time, customers could drop a coin into almost any slot in the place and hear good-sounding music.
Two major additions were made to the collection during the mid-1960s. The first was a beautifully preserved 92-key Decap dance organ complete with a large library of cardboard book music, acquired from De Soepper's beer garden in the Detroit, Michigan, area. Mr. De Soepper loved his big Decap, took good care of it, and enjoyed listening to it regularly, right up to the day of his daughter's wedding, when he died of a heart attack during the reception while the organ was playing. In the summer of 1965, Tom Sprague heard about the organ and told Al about it. Al went to see it and made a deal to buy it. I had just begun working at Svoboda's, and to this day I clearly remember Al standing on the stairs to the basement workshop exclaiming excitedly, "Art, wait until you see the huge piano I just bought! It has accordions, and a saxophone, and all sorts of drums, and hundreds of pipes!!" I had no idea what he was talking about, as none of Dave Bowers' books had been written yet, and this was the first cardboard-operated Belgian dance organ to make its public appearance in the Chicago area in modem times. The stage in the hall, which over the years had been home to Uncle Frank's Czechoslovakian band, then the 1930s dance orchestra, later a Cremona coin piano, and finally a beautifully ornate antique upright piano, a Lyon & Healy Welte reproducing grand and a North Tonawanda "Rand" brass trumpet organ, was now enlarged to accommodate the big Decap.
Dave Ramey, Tom Sprague and I worked for about a month, recovering pneumatics, replacing bad tubing and wiring, cleaning thirty-some years of nicotine off of every surface, and installing the organ on the stage. One very busy, very warm Friday night the whole thing was finally installed except for the accordions as the crowd began to fill the hall. Around supper time, we hoisted the accordion section into place, connected the junction blocks, and…the accordions played gibberish because the tubing had been mixed up during restoration in the shop.
Dave and Tom didn’t know exactly what to do, but my musical background made it a simple task for me to connect the tubing correctly. They watched in disbelief and then left for supper while I removed all the tubing and threw it in a box. Al became very nervous and periodically checked my progress, each time jokingly warning me that I’d better be wearing my running shoes if it still didn’t play right when we reassembled it, after going through hundreds more feet of tubing. By 9 P.M., with the hall completely packed with people, we finally lifted the accordion section into place for the second time, junction blocks were connected, the blower and key-frame motors were started, and the organ performed its first number perfectly with saxophone and xylophone solos, accordion choruses, lighting effects, and energetic rhythm accompaniment. It was a rare, exceptionally gratifying moment for all of us when the crowd broke into applause after its first performance, and continued applauding each time the organ played another waltz, samba, fox trot or polka. From that time forward, the big Decap was one of the prominent features at Svoboda's.
As a P.S. to the above story, when I returned to work on Monday morning, Al said "Art, you really understand how to make my instruments sound good. Yesterday I told Dave and Tom that from now on, I want you to work on anything you want; you know what needs to be done."
The other major acquisition of the 1960s was the antique penny arcade. From the time Al was a little boy, he remembered going to a penny arcade on State Street in downtown Chicago, just south of the "Loop." Complete with shooting gallery, photo studio, and a large room full of arcade machines, it must have been one of the biggest arcades ever to grace the Windy City. Al sadly remembered going there at a later date sometime in the 1930s or 1940s and finding the building empty. Inquiring around the neighborhood, the only thing he was able to learn was that one neighbor remembered seeing a large van with Tennessee plates being loaded full of the machines and driving away.
Imagine Al's surprise when he got a call one day twenty years later from a man on the south side of Chicago who had the entire arcade packed into garage buildings in his neighborhood! Wasting no time, Al and Dave Ramey made a beeline to the man's house, and upon being shown garages packed so full of arcade machines that it was impossible to walk in, Al bought the entire collection. Moving them to temporary storage in an old railroad box car located on a farm near Chicago Heights, Al began sorting through them and bringing the best ones into the tavern workshop for restoration and display. One machine, an old penny scale, was exceptionally heavy, and when Al and his sons opened the back of the cabinet, they found the whole thing completely packed full of old coins! Al later said that by selling the coins at various coin shows he was able to recoup not only the cost of the entire collection of unrestored machines, but also for their restoration!
Another room was added for the arcade machines, next to the antique car display. This room, like the "Chuck Wagon" restaurant, had its walls and ceiling completely paneled with old brightly-painted doors. The arcade collection included dozens of clamshell Mutoscopes, Cail-O-Scopes and Quartoscopes, as well as many rarities such as an Exhibit Supply Co. Donkey in the Gold Mine, Braying Jackass Lifter, Grandfather's Clock, Striking Clock, Electric Vitalizer' and Automatic Bowling Alley. Other machines included a group of Cail-O-Phone coin-operated ear-tube cylinder phonographs, a Mills Sibille fortune-telling gypsy and New World Horoscope, Cupid's Post Office, and a variety of electric-shock machines and ABT target machines. Two of the rarest machines were fortune tellers, one featuring a gypsy who pulls a card out of a supply chute, drops it into the bin and then blows a kiss, and the other including a mule which reaches up with its front leg to spin a wheel of fortune. Altogether, there were probably between 150 and 200 machines, over 50 of which were restored and displayed.
Getting the Business
Through the decades, Al applied his showmanship to the promotion of the tavern in every conceivable way. Parades, grand openings, parties, county fairs, fund-raising events-you name it, Al was there with business cards, match books, posters, fake dollar-bill advertising cards, straw hats, brochures and post cards.
It was quite a sight to watch one of the local Memorial Day or Fourth of July parades and spot Svoboda's contingent coming down the street. The lead vehicle was usually the old black model T Ford, weaving from side to side and spraying the sweaty crowds with a welcome mist of cool water from a nozzle on the radiator ornament! This was followed by the Overland, the big brass-radiator E M F, and then the bright yellow Plymouth with two front ends looping around every which way with two drivers spinning the two steering wheels. (One "front" of the Plymouth was actually the rear end, and that steering wheel was a fake, but the illusion was fun anyway.)
Next came three Chinese pedal-powered rickshaws, followed by Al's Cadillac pulling a small flatbed trailer with a band organ. In earlier years, the North Tonawanda "Rand" brass trumpet organ was used. Later, a yellow Wurlitzer 105 took its place, and finally the whole rig was replaced with the beautiful Tangley calliope trailer "pulled" by two carousel horses. Various drivers and passengers threw out matchbooks and business cards to the crowds, and the effect was inevitably like the Pied Piper—a whole bunch of cars followed the procession back to the tavern. During the 50th Anniversary of Svoboda' s Tavern in 1958, Al had his own parades through Chicago Heights every weekend.
For many years, Al took one of the antique cars, a hand-cranked barrel organ, a band organ, or the calliope to an event somewhere in the Chicagoland area on every weekend whenever he could schedule an appearance. Zing-A-Boom in hand, he entertained the public everywhere he went, checked all the local haunts to see what he could buy for his tavern, and led yet another crowd back home for an evening of fun. The great success of the old Svoboda's Tavern was due in large part to all the hard work that Al put into promoting it, together with the equally hard work that Flo put into running the day-to-day operation of the business.
Svoboda's Junior Nickelodeon Tavern and Museum
Around the same time the arcade collection was acquired, Al purchased an old tavern/restaurant building on a large piece of land at the intersection of routes U.S. 30 and Illinois 83, in Lynwood, Illinois near Dyer, Indiana. Christening it "Svoboda's Junior Nickelodeon Tavern and Museum," or "The Junior" for short, Al and his sons proceeded to duplicate the original place on a smaller scale, filling it with nickelodeons and arcade machines and installing some of the same gimmicks. Allan and Corky spent most of their time managing the Junior, while Al and Flo continued to operate the original tavern.
Several factors led the family to move in this new direction. For one thing, Al had collected 13 warehouses full of antiques that he never had room to display in Chicago Heights: more old cars, arcade machines, nickelodeons, jukeboxes, a complete blacksmith shop, etc. His lifetime dream had been to build a "street of yesterday" populated with artisans demonstrating the skills and crafts of a bygone era, something which he knew he would never have room to do at the old location. For another thing, the ethnic makeup of the old neighborhood in Chicago Heights had changed and was no longer appropriate for the old business. Nickelodeons first displayed at the Junior included the Seeburg L Orchestra, the Seeburg F, a K with violin pipes and one of the cabinet model Ls, the Wurlitzer C, a Nelson-Wiggen cabinet A-roll piano, a mahogany single Mills Violano, the endless-roll North Tonawanda band organ, the Anton Helfert barrel organ and a few others. These were soon joined by a number of unrestored machines in an adjacent room. The old place—even with the Welte organ, Regina Concerto and other instruments sold, and over a dozen nickelodeons moved to the Junior—was just as full as it ever had been, due to the addition of all the arcade machines. Behind the Junior building, Al erected a huge warehouse and packed it completely full of nickelodeons, arcade machines and other antiques. He parked a steam traction engine in front of the building, and added a row of seminude concrete statues under the roof overhang to help hold it up.
Svoboda's New Nickelodeon Tavern and Museum
The Junior never experienced the great success that the old place had, mostly because it was just a smaller clone. At about the same time, each of the three restorers went his own way, with Dave Ramey continuing to provide maintenance only on a limited basis. The "last hurrah" of the original Svoboda's at 24th and Butler was the annual convention of the Musical Box Society International in September 1972. Just one week prior to the convention, Dave Ramey, Tom Sprague and I converged upon the tavern for one last maintenance session, putting things back into reasonably good playing condition for the MBSI gathering. On Friday, September 29, the family put together one last buffet meal for the conventioneers, none of whom realized that this would be the last time most of them would ever see the place intact. With neighborhood conditions continuing to change, the family soon thereafter made the decision to move everything into a totally new building on the site of the Junior.
In 1974, the new building was completed on the property in Lynwood, all of the antiques from the old place were moved in, and the old Junior building was tom down. The new Svoboda's, opening in August of that year, was substantially bigger than the original. A large banquet room capable of seating 300 people was decorated with the art glass lamps and display cases full of music boxes, organettes, barrel organs and radios from the old place. The bar room featured a beautiful ornate back bar which had been in storage, and displays of railroad emblem watch fobs, hub caps, old keys, cigar bands and other items removed from the walls of the original bar room. The booths and tables were rigged, and the Seeburg G took its place as the sole nickelodeon in the bar. Another huge room contained the rest of the nickelodeons and organs lined up around the walls, a new pitch game, and the Decap organ at the far end as it had been in the old hall. This room also featured a revolving gazebo in which a Dixieland band played on weekends, and a set of belt-driven Casablanca ceiling fans. The arcade was located in a separate room in the basement.
After getting everything set up in the new building, Al and Flo began making the transition into semi-retirement, leaving more and more of the operation of the new place in the hands of their two sons. Allan and Corky ran the new Svoboda's, while Al and Flo spent their time running the bar at the old place for neighborhood regulars, referring all other patrons to Lynwood. At the old place, the house next to the mahogany room was eventually tom down, and Al moved the antiques that had been kept in the basement of that house and other storage buildings into the various rooms of the old tavern. No longer a museum, the original Svoboda's was now simply a small neighborhood bar and large, deteriorating storage place for antiques that Al had for sale.
The End of an Era
Without Al and Flo there spending the time and energy that they had always devoted daily to promoting and running the old place, the new Svoboda's business slowly declined. The Dixieland band was eventually replaced with rock bands, the crowds got rowdier, the nickelodeons didn't work very well, and the mystique of the old tavern with its many rooms and connecting hallways was never duplicated by having most of the instruments in one large room despite the old decor. Svoboda's new Nickelodeon Tavern was closed by early 1982.
For about two years, Al and Flo continued to run the old bar at 24th and Butler on a limited basis. After being robbed several times, Al installed a remote controlled solenoid on the front door and kept the other doors locked. Friends now had to identify themselves in order to enter after dark. The nickelodeons remained in the new building awaiting its potential sale. A few were sold quickly, including the remaining Seeburg G and the Decap organ. In early 1984, everything was moved out of the new building into a local warehouse, and the remaining nickelodeons were advertised for sale in the February 1, 1984, issue of the Antique Trader. In early April 1986, Flo died, and Al wound down what was left of the limited bar business. By January 1987, he had sold both buildings, and on the 31st of that month he officially went out of business.
Over the last few years prior to the final closing, I paid a number of visits to Al and Flo at the old place, usually accompanied by Dave Ramey, Tom Sprague, John Hovancak and Jerry Biasella, late at night after the other customers had left. Although it was sad to see the building without the art glass, nickelodeons, antique cars, arcade machines, animated displays and other "old friends," these last visits bring back some of the best memories. Each time, we wandered through the old building, picked up various artifacts and asked Al for his stories behind them, and then sat at the bar reminiscing about his career.
On February 2, 1987, Dave, John and I paid one last visit. The safe and other remaining furnishings of the bar room were pushed against one wall, and the bar and back bar were sitting in pieces, ready to be moved out. A copper water supply line on the front of the bar had been broken and pinched off, but was leaking into a hole in the floor, slowly covering the basement floor with big puddles. Most of the antiques had been sold out of the hall and back rooms, leaving large piles of old papers, boxes and remains of the bar business. By spending one last hour rummaging and wading through the building, I managed to turn up a number of additional interesting photographs and newspaper clippings which were useful in composing the present article.
Al also related the story of how he used to make bets with customers on whether or not he could throw a penny over his shoulder behind his back and have it land behind the back bar. He then showed us the pile of pennies on the floor behind the full length of the back bar, approximately two feet from front to back and several inches thick, proving his consummate skill! Even on this last visit, Al entertained us with his stories, and we all had a good time.
After we said goodbye to the old building for the last time, Al escorted us to the apartment into which he was moving. As independent as ever, he showed us the hole he had made in the ceiling so he didn't have to cut down the headboard of his beautiful antique bed. He told us about the warehouse that he had rented so he could still buy and sell antiques, and related his plans for a possible new business venture with his sons. Commenting on the closure of the old tavern, he said, "I had a lot of fun over the years ... a lot more fun than anyone else in my business ever had."
Postscript
To paraphrase the sign over the backwards clock in the bar room, "time went back at Svoboda's." Stepping into the old tavern brought the visitor into a whole different world of sights and sounds that has never been duplicated anywhere else. Today, collecting nickelodeons, band organs and other mechanical musical instruments has taken on the new aspect of investment potential, but this wasn't always the case. Many beautiful, interesting music machines exist today only because a small handful of early collectors like Al Svoboda thought they were interesting and wanted to preserve them during the 30s, 40s, and 50s when they had little, if any, monetary value. Thanks, Al, for collecting and displaying them, and making it possible for so many people to see, hear and enjoy them.
The opportunity to work at Svoboda’s on more than 50 automatic pianos and organs with Dave Ramey and Tom Sprague during four years of vacations and breaks while attending the University of Illinois provided me with the best possible training for my career in restoring automatic instruments and arranging music for them. Nowhere else in the U.S. could this experience have been duplicated, and I’ll always be thankful to Al, Dave, and Tom for their guidance and encouragement.
Acknowledgments
Two people deserve credit for providing help with this article: Al Svoboda and Dave Ramey. Over the years, Al let me rummage through hundreds of boxes of photographs, newspaper and magazine articles and other printed materials that he had saved, and on the day after closing the old tavern in early 1987, he once again let me go through the whole building to see if I could find anything of interest. In November of that year, he paid a special visit to my residence in Colorado with another suitcase full of old papers that he had sorted out. Most of the interesting old photos in the article exist only because Al saved old paper just like he saved everything else. Over the years, he also spent many hours reminiscing about building his collection and operating his business.
Dave Ramey began working as Svoboda's in 1955, shortly after the acquisition of the Boyer collection, and he remembered more about the nickelodeon collection from that time onward than anyone else. Dave provided many details about where instruments came from and when they first appeared at the tavern, and related one entertaining anecdote after another about the history of the old place. The countless hours that I spent talking with Dave and Al during the preparation of this article brought back a lot of happy memories, helping to make it the most enjoyable writing project I've ever done. Without their enthusiastic cooperation, it wouldn't have been possible.
Thanks also to Angelo Rulli for creating the original the page layouts for the MBSI Journal, and to Terry Hathaway for creating the version for this web site.
About the Author
Arthur A. Reblitz, a 1968 high honors graduate of the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, is the author of many books and articles on the subject of pianos and mechanical musical instruments, including Piano Servicing, Tuning and Rebuilding, Treasures of Mechanical Music (with Q. David Bowers), Player Piano Servicing and Rebuilding, The Golden Age of Automatic Musical Instruments, and the forthcoming Reblitz-Bowers Encyclopedia of American Coin-Operated Pianos and Orchestrions (with Q. David Bowers).
With a life-long interest in automatic pianos and organs, Art began working on these instruments in the Chicago area in 1964 and worked for Svoboda's Nickelodeon Tavern from 1965 through 1968. His shop in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Reblitz Restorations, Inc., has specialized in the complete restoration of orchestrions, coin pianos and reproducing pianos for customers across the United States since 1972. Art also has created over 500 new music rolls and MIDI arrangements for orchestrions, band organs, calliopes and coin pianos.
His work has been featured in Radio City Music Hall, the Rose Bowl Parade, Knott's Berry Farm, Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus and House on the Rock, in advertising for McDonald's, Anheuser Busch and Coca-Cola and on national television including the 1987 National Geographic Special Treasures from the Past., P.M. Magazine, Ripley's Believe It or Not, the Gannet syndicate and The Collectors.
Art is the 1982 recipient of the Literary Award of the Musical Box Society International for Outstanding Literary Contributions To The Field Of Automatic Music, the 1993 and 2004 recipient of the Leo Ornstein Literary Award of the Automatic Musical Instrument Collectors Association, the 2015 AMICA President’s Award, and the 2018 Musical Box Society Trustees’ Award.
