June Heritage Days in Okawville, Illinois

Heritage Days in Okawville, Illinois, is an annual smalltown special event an easy drive east from St Louis that includes a unique museum tour. This year, the event is set for June 7th and 8th, 2008.

Heritage Days

Heritage Days takes place on and around the grounds of the Frank Schlosser Home Complex. There's music throughout the two-day weekend, flea market, book fair, craft demonstrators, surrey rides, and traditional food such as brats, homemade ice cream, hand-churned butter, homemade bread, and caramel corn, surrey rides. A highlight is the tour of the village's museums.

Schlosser House Complex

The nature of the museums makes for an unusual story. The complex consists of the Schlosser home and the neighboring garage-like harness shop and laundry.

As the Schlossers passed away, different areas were shut down. That started with the harness shop and laundry next door, closed when the father died in 1941. Then as the mother and the two elderly Schlosser sisters passed away, the house itself was shut down in part, until the upstairs area was closed entirely. When the final sister died in 1982, the doors were closed on the remainder of the house.

The house and shop remained tucked away in its quiet Walnut Street neighborhood and was forgotten. Even the vandals, so common even in small towns, left it alone.

Finally, someone decided to check it out and discovered an intact, ready-made museum representing a simpler time and day-to-day life in a family of German heritage. Everything the Schlossers had remained intact, from magazines to furniture to bed linens. And even up to the time the house closed, the Schossers did everything without electricity and electric-powered devices. The harness shop and laundry were also found fully equipped with period artifacts.

Preserved without restoration, the house has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places

The Other Museums

Across the street from the Schlosser home and shop is the Schlosser Brick House, once the home of Joseph Schlosser. Built in 1869, it is the last remaining Old World style brick house in Okawville. Joseph Schlosser operated a cobbler's shop in one room of the family home.

The Dr. Robert C. Poos home, built in 1883, is a Second Empire style home occupied until the mid-1980's. Poos was a general practitioner and druggist who was also staff physician at the Washington Springs Hotel and Bathhouse, which no longer exists. Medical paraphernalia used by Dr. Poos is on display in the Poos Home Parlor, and outbuilding once intended but never used as a bathhouse. A new garage/exhibit building was added to the property in 2001 and houses a Model A Ford and a horse-drawn hearse.

Visitors may also find of interest the Original Springs Hotel where mineral springs baths are still offered.  At one time, Okawville was a popular vacation spot for St Louisans, especially those drawn by the mineral waters.  The hotel, by the way, is reputedly haunted.  You can read all about it at Troy Taylor's Ghosts of the Prairie <a href="http://www.prairieghosts.com">website</a>.

Tours

Tours of the houses by knowledgeable guides are offered throughout the Heritage Days weekend.

Okawville, Illinois, is located an hour east of the Gateway Arch on I-64, best known as the home of the Original Springs Hotel, where mineral springs baths are still offered.

For information on related topics check out my Gather group, http://illinoisroadtrip.gather.com/.