Maplewood History: If You Can’t Tell A Bollard From A Guard Stone…

Oct 17, 2023

Well, neither can I sometimes. I have been considering doing this post for quite awhile because I had become convinced, wrongly as I now know, that the Scheidt Hardware building, originally the Maplewood Theater, had cast iron bollards on each of the front corners.

To begin, I have no idea how long vehicles with wheels have been around. The Egyptians had chariots, didn't they? If so, they must have had other sorts of machines with wheels? Doesn't matter in this case because this article is not about them. This article is about a problem that arose when a wheeled vehicle passed too close to a building or some other immovable object. The rear wheel closest to the object being passed could easily become hung up on that object causing an immediate cessation of forward momentum with all of the accompanying travail; i.e., damage to the wheel, the vehicle and the operator.

Someone many eons ago came up with a clever solution to this problem. It's a solution that's still around today. Wheel guards. Some of the first ones were probably made of wood because wood is easier to shape than stone. But as you might suspect the better buildings and the better neighborhoods would probably have gone with stone. In modern times, cast iron was used in a wide variety of styles from the very simple to the very elegant.

Some wheel guards survive in Maplewood. A pair of the most visible are on the corners of the Scheidt Hardware store. If you’re new in town and think of the hardware store at 7320 Manchester as a True Value, I still call it by its original name, even though the Scheidts have fled the scene.

Reluctantly I have to quit thinking of the corner protectors on the Scheidt building as bollards and will have to refer to them, ever after, as the less romantic wheel guards.

The wheel guards on the Scheidt Hardware building can easily be seen in this image from 2008.

A view of the western most wheel guard.

Ditto. It is easy to see how this design would prevent a carriage wheel from hanging up on the corner. This building was built in 1910. By then the age of the automobile was well under way but carriages and other types of horse-drawn vehicles still outnumbered them.

The eastern most wheel guard has been made useless by the construction of the building next door but it is a visual clue that the building wasn't there when the Scheidt building was first constructed.

One day, this past winter, I was at the National Building Arts Center in Sauget, Illinois. A friend and I had delivered the coal stove that once heated the Maplewood Depot to their collection.

While we were looking through their splendid library, ably assisted by the curator, Emery Cox, I had the idea that perhaps information on these cast iron relics might be found in some of the old foundry catalogs in their collection. I didn't find the information at that moment but found quite a bit later on as you will see. Mr. Cox gets the credit for aiding the search and the final very satisfying discovery.

This and some of the other catalog information was found at this link that I was given by Mr. Cox. The Association for Preservation Technology's Building Technology Heritage Library (APT BTHL) is a repository for digitized catalogs and trade publications, and NBAC has contributed many scans. It's searchable (insofar as the text is correctly recognized by computer) and browsable at https://archive.org/details/buildingtechnologyheritagelibrary

This site is an amazing source!

I am always struck by the beauty of utilitarian objects such as these.

Well, now I knew what a wheel guard was but I still needed to clarify what a bollard was.

Here is a mooring bollard from somewhere on the internet.

Ditto.

A bollard made from a cannon in the Netherlands.

Old cannons are useful. Here are two used as wheel guards also in the Netherlands.

Some wheel guards are made of stone like this one in Germany.

Or these in France.

In France, they are called chasse-roue, like this elegant one in Paris.

Recently I noticed this marooned wheel guard in the walkway between the parking lot and Sutton, here in Maplewood.

I sent this photograph to Emery at the NBAC and, man, did he come through on this one. See the following image.

He found a copy of one of the actual catalogs that this wheel guard, No. 420, could have been ordered from!! Good job, Emery.

A little searching on the internet turned up that Banner Iron Works was very close to where O’Connell's Pub is today. Right next to it, in fact.

As for what is a bollard? There are thousands of different types. Many of them are simply short poles, some permanent, some removable, to keep you from driving down a certain street. That sort of thing.

But to further complicate things, there are a few that seem to be both bollard and wheel guard.

This one is identified as a Roman bell bollard from Herculaneum. It appears to be both bollard and wheel guard.

So does this more modern one that is identified as a bell bollard.

As of this writing, I only know of three wheel guards in Maplewood. There must be more out there. If you find one, send me a photo or let me know the location and I’ll take one of it. They are an attractive relic of an earlier age.

As always, I appreciate the interest and support that you all have shown and continue to show.

Doug Houser August 13, 2022