For no reason at all, looters and arsonists destroyed the historic Central Camera Co. store, 230 S. Wabash during the May 30 Chicago protests following the murder of George Floyd. Not long after the store was ruined, third-generation owner Don Flesch began a personal journey to see if there was anything he could salvage from his upstairs office.

Maybe he would find a lost letter from his grandfather Albert Flesch.

Or, a family photograph, of course.

Instead, he found sweet music hidden in a distant shelf.

During the early 1900s, Central Camera had a record label. Flesch discovered a cracked, smoke-tinged 78 by Peluso’s  Orchestra. It was a waltz called “Watch Where the Crowd Goes By,” released on Central Records.

And the intro was, “We’ll Be Together When The Clouds Roll By.”

So perfect.

Fans from across the world have come together to raise more than $214,000 to help the 72-year-old Flesch rebuild Central Camera. He has set up a temporary shop on Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons in front of his empty store. Loyal staffers like Timothy Shaver, Charles Ian Ezaki  and Katherine Greenleaf are on hand and they’re still giving away wrapped York Peppermint Patties, a long-standing Central Camera gesture of goodwill. On Sept. 1, Central Camera will reopen in a rental space directly north of the flagship store. With good luck,  the original location could be back up and running in January or February 2021.

Central Camera, 7/22/20;( Photo by D. Hoekstra)

Central Records was attributed to the Central Camera Co. with two addresses: 31 Adams St., and 195 Wabash Ave., Chicago.

Flesch has never listened to the record because of the crack in it. He looked at the vinyl and said, “Grandpa had two partners when he started the business because he didn’t have any funding. One of them was an optometrist. The other was a rep for Victrola. He convinced them to have records. This record would be from 1905, 1910. They had a whole  catalog of things they distributed in the music industry.”

I found a second Central Records release from the same time period: “The Little  Songster,” a polka which looks to be from the Bob Dunato Orchestra.

Central Records would have made sense.

The Lyon & Healy instrument store and music publishing company were at  the southwest corner of Wabash Avenue and Adams Street, which corresponded with the label’s address. Lyon & Healy were also major distributors of the Victrola record player.

Also, during the early 1900s, a label known as Vim Records was headquartered nearby at 39 S. Clark St. They also recorded Peluso’s Orchestra. More importantly, they were known as a “Department Store Label” where stores entered into agreements with record companies in order to have the name of their establishment printed on the label.  Vim also deployed red ink, similar to the Central Records label.

I visited Central Camera last week. I’m still struck by the lack of activity in downtown Chicago. The Loop was a ghost town on a sunny July afternoon. Central Camera is still taking special orders and processing film as they have for years. “For us, the Loop had maybe 800,000, 900,000 people coming in every day,” Flesch said. “Now you can’t go to eat. How do you catch a train? You don’t want to be near people. It seems like ten percent of the people are coming back. Does that mean somebody’s volume goes down 90 per cent? It’s possible. How do you live? When I’m there we have four people. We lose money.

“But it’s important so show resilience.”

Katherine Greenleaf, a friend of Central Camera (D. Hoekstra photo)

One of the greatest signs of resilience is the Central Camera neon sign that will not shut off. It ran through the fire and continues to illuminate the future of the store.

The exterior White Way steel and neon sign was installed in 1930, one year after Central Camera opened at its current location. The sign was running when I visited what was left of Central Camera last week. “I always left it on,” Flesch said. “I would let it rest between one and four in the morning. It may still be on that schedule. The timer was in the sub sub basement (where the fire started.)”

As of July 29, the Central Camera GoFundMe rebuild account was nearly at  $214,000 of its $250,000 goal. “It’s been amazing and the messages are heartbreaking and warm,” Flesch said. “Someone gave $1,899, the year the store started. Wow. Just, wow.”

Flesch has been sustained by the connections of his customers. One 89-year-old client has been collecting glass negatives throughout his life. During the 1940s he obtained a negative of a man taking pictures from the west side of the Chicago River with a 5 by 7 camera that he tilted horizontally.  “And he’s photographing Chicago burning in 1871,” Flesch said. “So someone is taking this guy’s picture of him photographing Chicago burning.”

The customer enlarges the rare negatives into large prints. He had prepared the Chicago Fire print from the negative and Flesch was going to install it in January. “I said I wasn’t ready,” Flesch said. “Thank God I didn’t. It is 12 feet long and three and a half feet tall. It will fit perfectly in the store when we come back.”

Not all historical items were lost in the fire.

“I spent a lot of time sneaking upstairs when nobody was supposed to be there,” Flesch said with a sly laugh. “I was rescuing things off the floor, off my Dad’s desk, my uncle’s desk. I didn’t get everything. On the south wall there was a picture of Grandpa. It had to be about 1908. It was a black and white they had retouched into color. Everything was in chaos. I went up there a week ago and they cleaned the stuff off all the cabinets. And there, standing up is the top of Grandpa’s head. I move the cabinets away and there’s the picture. It’s all blackened out because of the smoke. At the bottom left-hand corner where he’s holding his straw hat in his right hand, the glass is cracked. But the colors were perfect. That was one of my happiest moments.”

Flesch is thinking of installing photos of his father and uncle in the new space. “They carried the store on from Grandpa’s death in 1933,” he said. “My Dad Harold Richard died in ‘83. My uncle Stanley Julian died in ‘93. And I’m going out in 2063. I’m only halfway to 144.” And he laughed. And then he laughed some more.

Why has Flesch kept laughing through the fires and clouds?

Record photo images courtesy of Central Camera.

“I don’t want to retire,” he answered. “I like people. I like the store and the store is an important thing for people who like photography. And the people who work there? You don’t find those people anywhere. We have a living history. Every showcase had a photographic history, chemicals, paper, the enlargers. You go forward. It was like reading the Bible from right to left. Or left to right. You covered 150 years of photography in 160 feet.

“And we still have ten feet to go!”

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