QuarterlySmr10 final.qxp:Quarterlywtr05 final layout

QuarterlySmr10 final.qxp:Quarterlywtr05 final layout
5/14/10
12:35 PM
Page 44
REMEMBERING
FOSSELMAN’S
Popular Ice Cream and Coffee Shop
B Y F L E T C H E R S WA N
There are probably a few people
who remember South Pasadena as it
was nearly 75 years ago when Christian A. Fosselman opened Fosselman’s Ice Cream and Coffee Shop. It
was in 1937 when one could purchase a large ice cream cone for a
nickel, a milk shake for a dime and,
of course, a cup of coffee with refills
for a nickel.
The shop was located in the heart
of South Pasadena’s bustling downtown business district at 1515 Mission
Street just west of Fair Oaks Avenue.
Just as a matter of interest, businesses
of that era that surrounded Fosselman’s consisted of two hardware
stores, three drug stores, two men’s
clothiers, a jeweler, two barber shops,
three women’s dress stores and three
banks, to mention a few. City Hall was
just a half block away.
People of this area have long associated the name Fosselman with
ice cream. Many years before he
opened his shop in South Pasadena,
he was brewing and bottling beer in
Waverly, Iowa. The small town is located on the Cedar River about 75
miles north of Des Moines. Business
was good but brewing beer came to
an end on January 16, 1920 when the
Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution went into effect, which
banned the manufacturing of intoxicating liquors.
At that time he turned most of his
manufacturing efforts towards soft
drinks, milk, and other dairy-related
products. Mechanical refrigeration
was unknown at that time and during the winters ice was removed
from the Cedar River and stored in
wood-lined, insulated vaults to preserve those items requiring refrigeration into the summer months.
Sometime prior to 1920, Fosselman was first introduced to ice
cream. The experience of tasting this
newfound delicacy prompted him
to start manufacturing what he
T
hoped would be a well-received
dairy product. You know the rest of
the story.
From the first batch, his focus
was always on quality and that fact
still remains in today’s Fosselman’s
Ice Cream.
In earlier days, there was a popular saying, “Go west young man, go
west.” In 1924 Christian Fosselman
did just that. It was a bold move at
the time, but he departed Iowa en
route to southern California to avoid
the severe winter weather and provide a better climate for raising his
family.
The family first moved to the
Pasadena area where he started the
Fosselman Ice Cream Company,
serving the area with delicious ice
cream. In the early 1930’s, he bought
the Montana Dairy and Crown City
Dairy and incorporated these into
his business, which was then known
as The Fosselman Creamery. The
Fosselman Creamery was located in
the 400 block of South Fair Oaks in
Pasadena. The building that housed
the creamery occupied half a block
and still stands today.
He served the Pasadena area
with ice cream, milk, butter, and
other dairy related products. A few
years later, Meadow Gold Dairy in
its expansion, purchased The Fosselman Creamery. In 1938, the family
moved to South Pasadena, where
some of the Fosselman family still
live today.
In 1937, Christian Fosselman
opened a retail store under the name
of C.A. Fosselman, which was located at 1515 Mission Street, where he
was producing ice cream on a small
scale. To meet the increasing demands from South Pasadena and
the newly opened Highland Park
shop which opened in 1939, he
transferred production in 1941 to a
location in Alhambra that was
equipped with greater refrigeration
44 THE QUARTERLY MAGAZINE • SUMMER 2010
capabilities, which enabled him to
produce a larger number of available flavors.
During my years at South
Pasadena-San Marino High School,
graduating in the Class of 1941,
three of us students would leave
campus at noon with our brown-bag
lunch and drive to Fosselman’s to
enjoy a milk shake with our homemade sandwiches. Mr. Fosselman
was a good-natured man, but we
were never quite sure whether or
not he was glad to see us. Nevertheless, he quickly made a ten cent
milkshake for each of us as soon as
we arrived, as he knew we didn’t
have much time during the noon
break. We did this nearly every
school day for three years, traveling
from the campus to Fosselman’s in a
Model A Ford with a rumble seat,
and the one riding in the rumble
seat got a little damp on a rainy day!
Of those three, I’m the only one remaining. One died during World
War II when his plane went down
and the other friend passed away
shortly after he retired.
Not long after the opening of the
South Pasadena shop in 1937, having just graduated from South
Pasadena-San Marino High School,
Mary Barber began working at the
PHOTOS COURTESY OF FLETCHER SWANN