RAVENSWOOD MANOR — Remember Ben the butcher, phosphates at Izzy's Drugstore and Pete's Candy?
Longtime residents of Ravenswood Manor share memories of the neighborhood, the way it was more than 50 years ago, in a series of oral histories recorded in 2014 and now available online.
Interviews were produced in association with StoryCorps during the centennial celebration of the Ravenswood Manor Improvement Association and are archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.
"Bygone businesses" is just one of the themes that emerged during the interviews.
Among the nine residents participating in the project, 99-year-old Ruth Robbins claims bragging rights, having moved into the Manor in 1924.
"I was 6 years old when my mother and father [and] I moved here and I’ve been in this house ever since," Robbins said in a transcript of her interview.
"We would play on the street which was — I don’t think it was even pebbles or anything — I think it was a mud street at that time. And we would play ... a game called ‘Three Feet Across the Mud Puddle,’" she said.
For more from Robbins and other Ravenswood Manor memories, click here.
