What will a historic building give you when it is still dangerous to touch?
The discovery of a handgun that seemed to have been concealed in a space in Thornton, Illinois, associated with the history of brewing and bootlegging provided a shocking solution in the case of a founder of a distillery. It was a Colt Model 1908, made in 1921, located inside a wall of an old limestone well inside Thornton Distilling Company, the brewery currently in operation that is deemed by many as the oldest standing brewery in Illinois.
Andrew Howell who is one of the founders of the distillery reported noticing loose mortar when inspecting a walkway that could have a conduit. He discovered the weapon behind two masonry, in a sort of a neglected exhaust vent. The gun had been holstered and it was no dead weight: it was loaded with a full magazine, and the bullets seemed to be of the 1920s. In this one sentence Howell had captured the momentary feeling: “I’m relieved we found it before any guests did.”
The response was not merely one concerning shock or the lore of the gangster era of the location, but also just simple safety of the people. One thing is the presence of a concealed gun. Another one is a concealed gun with cartridges of old age. Instructions on the aging of ammunition indicate that degraded or exposed to heat aged ammunition may become unstable and unfamiliar rounds may pose dangers when corroded or damaged. Loose cartridges may pose a hazard in residential and other places even when there is no firearm, and there are issues with older lead projectiles that are toxic on the skin and might pose a health hazard.
Howell said the serial number was checked by local police officers who identified the gun was not related to a crime. The step is important in whatever surprise that discovery may be, not in the larger question that renders such discoveries so permanent, why this should be buried at all, and in what kind of daily terror it may once have been thought safe to consider a wall a safe.
The history of the building provides background, though the information becomes lost in gossip. Thornton location is situated above a source of artesian water which attracted early brewers many years prior to the Prohibition. Histories of the property date brewing on the property to as early as 1836, when a large building was built to house the brewer–a history that can be used to suggest an explanation of why improvements continue to reveal artefacts that none were aware enough to catalogue. In one account of the re-development of the distillery, there is an account of a cigar box of beer-order postcards falling out of the building, and notes in German and English, and a mere request: “Please send beer tomorrow.”
The associations of prohibition, Capone, Torrio, the Chicago Outfit, still cling upon the structure in the memory of the public, partly, because it has outlived long enough to accrue a stratum of habitation: brewery, factory area, tavern and restaurant versions, and, lastly, a contemporary distilling plant. It is also fortunate that the underground well remains as a physical reminder that the location was not selected in vain: water. The accounts of the spring highlight the applicability of limestone as a deep filter capable of removing some metals and introducing minerals, a factor which made brewers of both past and present value the natural supply in the area.
The pistol is not so new in that environment as it is a painful borderline between romance and reality. Objective objects can also be placed in the same walls that contain postcards and old signage to remain undiscovered. A very interesting point that Howell made is that the vent where the gun was discovered was quite offputting, which serves to underscore how violently simple curiosity can easily become dangerous when groups of people wander through areas in which no modern galleries of people were ever meant to wander.
The distillery will have the pistol on display with other recovered artifacts of Howell said, in addition to the bottles and pre-Prohibition items on display at the bar and the restaurant. This decision is indicative of an old dilemma of heritage sites: how to preserve the past without making it palatable and how to tell a story that gives consideration not only to what a historic structure created, but also what it attempted to conceal.
