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