Pleasant Home Foundation closed a loop at their annual meeting April 12 when they brought Robert Ridgeway in to tell the story of how a nut magnate came to donate a mechanical musical marvel, produced by a peanut king, to the home where the king once lived.
And thanks to a $1,000 donation by Lake Theatre owners Willis and Shirley Johnson, the foundation took the first step toward funding the restoration of their Violano Virtuoso.
The violano was the crowning achievement of the Mills Novelty Company, located at 4100 W. Fullerton on the West Side of Chicago, and owned by Herbert Mills, the second?#34;and last?#34;owner of Pleasant Home before the Mills family donated the landmark to the Park District of Oak Park.
A glass-faced cabinet containing a violin and 44-note piano innards which ran on electrical current, played music arranged on paper rolls, and was coin-operated, the violano was a popular addition to many bars and ice cream parlors in the first three decades of the 20th century, and the Mills family had one in their drawing room.
Fast forward to 1963 when one Jasper Sanfilippo, a mechanical engineer by training, revolutionized an entire industry by automating Evon’s Nuts, the company he inherited from his father. In a business where nuts had always been shelled by hand, he suddenly increased production a hundredfold.
With his subsequent fortune, he could indulge an interest in mechanical music devices and began collecting them in 1976. According to Ridgeway, the curator of Sanfilippo’s “Victorian Palace” in Barrington Hills, Jasper now owns the “largest collection of restored automatic musical instruments in the world.”
Included in that collection are 44 Violano Virtuosos. Over a number of years, a connection slowly formed between Sanfilippo and Mills which culminated last October in Jasper agreeing to donate a violano if Pleasant Home would pay the $15,000 it would cost to restore one.
The most interesting coincidence, Ridgeway said during an entertaining monologue in which he discussed the instrument, its wealthy patron and its progenitor, is that Mills got his start as a concessioneer, selling peanuts at the 1893 World’s Fair. At one point, Mills had virtually “cornered the world market on Spanish peanuts,” Ridgeway said, and became known as “The Peanut King.” That gave him something in common with Sanfilippo.
Mills also became the early “slot machine king” as his company popularized “one-armed bandits,” but because of municipal ordinances prohibiting the use of machines that operated purely as gaming devices, he created slot machines that played music, so with each nickel, a customer received a song as well as a spin.
Eventually that evolved into machines playing only music?#34;in effect, the first jukeboxes, Ridgeway noted?#34;culminating in the Violano Virtuoso, invented by one of his workers, Henry Sandel, and touted as one of the greatest inventions of the first decade of the 20th century.
Violanos can still be found in backrooms around America, Ridgeway said. They came across one in Eagle River, Wis. a few years back that once made $6,500 in a year, one nickel at a time, which comes out to over 130,000 plays. When they found it, he said, the violin had been worn out, but it still played. Of the 4,500 violanos the company produced, Ridgeway estimates, some 1,500 still exist. During his presentation, he played a number of CD recordings from the violano, including one of the University of Illinois fight song.
Even unrestored, the machines go for up to $48,000 in auction, Ridgeway said, so the $15,000 restoration price is a bargain for the foundation.
How the foundation came to the attention of Sanfilippo is also a circuitous tale. About eight years ago, a local history buff named David Wendell dragged WEDNESDAY JOURNAL out to the Sanfilippo mansion for a tour. The article we ran?#34;and subsequent, periodic editorial nagging?#34;made the foundation aware of the instrument’s existence and foundation board member Peg Zak took up the cause.
Meanwhile, Willis and Shirley Johnson, owners of Tivoli Enterprises which owns Classic Cinemas, including the Lake Theatre in Oak Park, were becoming acquainted with Jasper Sanfilippo independently (they shared an interior decorator, Joseph Ducibella, who worked on both the Lake Theatre renovation and the Victorian Palace).
Willis and Shirley are longtime supporters of the Pleasant Home Foundation, and when they learned that the foundation had an interest in obtaining a violano, they mentioned it to Jasper on several occasions.
But Sanfilippo was in the throes of health setbacks over a period of several years, Willis said, and his focus was elsewhere. Willis and Jasper share an interest in old theater pipe organs, however, and the Johnsons found themselves attending annual fundraising events where the centerpiece of Sanfilippo’s collection was featured in concert. And every time, they would remind him of the connection.
Willis noted, by the way, that they have a Hammond pipe organ in Theatre 7 at the Lake and would love to hear it played during special performances if any local organists have an interest and would like to contact them.
Finally, last October, Laura Thompson, the new Pleasant Home Foundation director happened to attend an unrelated fundraising event at the Sanfilippo mansion (he hosts many each year, Ridgeway said, including, potentially, one for Pleasant Home). When she introduced herself and mentioned the violano connection, Sanfilippo offered the donation.
“Timing is everything,” said Willis Johnson, but the donation makes sense. “Mills was a fascinating person,” he said. “How could Pleasant Home be without one of the items that allowed him to afford the house in the first place?”
But the foundation still needs to raise the money. The Johnsons made their contribution immediately after Ridgeway’s presentation.
“It needed to start someplace,” Willis said. “Now I hope others step forward.”
? To make a donation to the Violano Virtuoso restoration fund, call Laura Thompson at 383-2654 or e-mail: mahergw@sbcglobal.net.