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Delavan Historical Society moving to Lake Lawn property

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“Lake Lawn” by Ellen Baker Bell will be available Monday through Arcadia Publishing. The 128-page softcover is $21.99. Visit www.arcadiapublishing.com.

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Gordon W. Yadon

DELAVAN — The group devoted to preserving Delavan’s past will rent a room from Wisconsin’s longest-operating resort.

The Delavan Historical Society will move into office space at the Lake Lawn Resort airstrip at 2375 E. Geneva St., Delavan.

The society does not have its own space at this time, President Patti Marsicano said. The society’s belongings are stored in her house and the homes of four other members, she said.

The building has plenty of parking and is a great size for a “starter” museum, Marsicano said.

“Idealistically, we’d love to be in downtown Delavan,” Marsicano said. “We looked at a couple places for rent, but it wasn’t realistic for us.”

The society will rent space from the resort. Lake Lawn has been painting and improving the building and will donate office furniture, Marsicano said.

The building at the Lake Lawn airstrip might not be a permanent home for the society, but it will be a good start, Marsicano said. She anticipates that donations to the society will increase once they’re settled in the space.

“They will deliver things to us for safekeeping,” Marsicano said. “People have said, ‘Once you have your place, I have some stuff I want to give to you.’”

The building at the Lake Lawn airstrip will be a place for people to do research, Marsicano said. The society has not decided on the hours of operation, but Marsicano expects they will be open three days a week.

Among other things, the society will have a rotating feature display. The first will be about Lake Lawn, Marsicano said.

The society’s first big event in its new digs will be a book signing Thursday with author Ellen Baker Bell. Arcadia Publishing tomorrow will release Bell’s book, “Lake Lawn.”

The Delavan Historical Society has been looking for a new home for many years, Marsicano said. The society has its eye on the brick public works building near Veterans Memorial Park on the city’s west side.

The city council several years ago approved a resolution stating that if the public works department were to move, the historical society would have first dibs on the building, Marsicano said.

It will be fun to unpack the historical treasures from their hiding spots and spread them out in the building at the Lake Lawn airstrip, Marsicano said.

“We’re going someplace we’ve never gone before,” she said. “We’re going to try to make it what people want it to be.”

New book filled with Lake Lawn’s past

Some might look through the book and exclaim, “I remember that!”

Others might think, “I can’t believe girls had to wait tables in that get-up!”

In either case, the pictures and captions in the book “Lake Lawn” are a genuine slice of Delavan History.

Arcadia Publishing on Saturday, June 27, will release “Lake Lawn,” a book written by Chicago native Ellen Baker Bell. The book is part of the “Images of America” series.

Priced at $21.99, “Lake Lawn” features a wide variety of black-and-white photos describing the history of the resort that’s known as the oldest continually operating hotel in Wisconsin.

The pictures show guests, staff members, vintage hotel literature and buildings. The captions describe many of the resort’s former owners, popular staff members and special occasions.

The book describes the importance of the circus in Delavan’s history and the native Americans who lived on Lake Delavan long before the resort was founded in 1878.

Delavan historian Gordon Yadon wrote a foreword to the 128-page paperback.

As a pre-teen, Yadon caddied at the resort during the Great Depression, he told the Gazette. He writes a regular column about Delavan history in The Delavan Enterprise newspaper.

“The author has made a valuable contribution to the recorded history of the Delavan area,” Yadon wrote. “Every page between the covers is valuable and interesting.”

Yadon told the Gazette he contributed most of the information Bell collected about the Lake Lawn Ball Room, a popular venue in its day.

Yadon has a record of every dance band that played in the hall from 1935 to 1955, he said.

Baker Bell grew up in the Chicago suburbs. Her parents honeymooned at Lake Lawn, and she and her family spent many summers there.

“‘Somebody should write a book about Lake Lawn,’” Baker Bell wrote in her acknowledgements. “Little did I know as I said those fateful words in the Lake Lawn gift shop that I was about to embark on such a wonderful journey.”