December 1988

The Rockwell Toy Collection

In the Rockwell Museum

by

Bill Treichler

About 1958 Robert Rockwell Jr. began collecting toys to display in the store windows and later on elevated shelves in the Rockwell store on Market Street in Corning. Seeing the fascinating toys that Mr. and Mrs. Rockwell kept adding to their collection and exhibiting in their store prompted visitors to make such exclamations as "Why, there is no other department store in the country like this!"

The toy collection still continues to grow as Bob Rockwell finds and purchases unusual old toys, like the cast iron train set he saw and bought in Natchez, Mississippi, not long ago. It is on display now in the second floor toy exhibits of The Rockwell Museum and a sketch of it is along the bottom of page six.

Trains have interested men ever since the first ones were built and toy trains continue to fascinate sons, fathers, and grandfathers. In the cases at The Rockwell Museum are many examples of toy trains from the solid cast iron run-on-the-floor toys made in the first years of this century through the early electric Lionel and American Flyer trains produced in the 1930s and again after the Second World War down through the "O" and "HO" model trains.

There were other machine toys made for fathers to purchase for their sons. In the display at the Museum is a model concrete mixer, a steam engine, a derrick, and trucks to ride and steer.

Not only have their always been toys for men and boys, but also there have always been many beautiful toys fashioned for little girls and enjoyed by their mothers, too. And the dolls at The Rockwell Museum are no exception. They are dressed in the fashions of their day with lace and ruffled shirtwaists, and wear stylish hats on their coiffed hair.

In the display cases at The Rockwell Museum are many toys that represent the household tools that mothers used eighty or more years ago. Girls had ironing boards and irons. In the Museum display is a working clothes washing machine complete with a hand wringer. The girl who had this toy may have gotten her small-sized replica when her Momma bought a full-sized "Columbia" washer from a Sears' catalog.

In the display cases are many cast iron toy cookstoves, even an embossed sheet metal range that is fired by a kerosene lamp and is complete with covered kettles and long-handled skillet. This stove and a tiny kitchen with a built-in stove that has a hood above it are pictured on this page.

Splendid carriages were made for little girls to take their dollies for rides, like the wicker carriage that has a jaunty suspended parasol and the stylish carriage with the bow top, both of them pictured here. The oiled fabric of the top looks like the same material used for Civil War knapsacks, and may indicate that it was made soon after the war.

Little girls had their dolls in all sizes with their furniture scaled proportionately. One scene in the Museum toy display has a number of dolls. Some are nearly life sized and are sitting in chairs and rockers. Other smaller dolls are tucked into their-sized beds and cribs. There is even a doll-sized trunk.

In another case is an early doll house of wood with a paper covering. With it are many examples of doll house furniture collected by Mrs. Rockwell.

In the toy collection there are examples of playthings for both boys and girls, like wagons, sleds and pedal-operated cars to use outside houses. For inside play times there are other toys that both girls and boys would enjoy.

On a shelf in the central shaft display area is a quaint toy theater with a revolving stage for easy scenery changes. It is just the size for a marionette show or a production with suspended paper doll figures. How much fun to change the scenes from the interior to the garden to the balcony and on and on with endless acts of improvisation.

Then maybe the most wonderful of all toys in the collection for prolonged play and fantasy is the marvelous Schoenhut Humpty Dumpty Circus. There is the gaudy circus wagon housing a wild Bison toy. There are elephants, camels and horses, a tiger, a rhinoceros, an elk, a polar bear, and even an ostrich. All are carved from wood with movable joints so that the animals can be placed in different stances.

In addition to the circus animals are clowns and acrobats who, with their jointed bodies and cleverly notched hands and feet, can be put in the amazing positions like real circus performers. There is the circus band, too, all dressed in brilliant uniforms.

The Rockwells acquired these circus dolls about 1960 in Elmira, still wrapped as they were put away years ago, rolled up in sheets of 1906 newspaper.

Displayed with the Humpty Dumpty Circus are several other circus wagons: one for a rhino and another with a gorilla looking out an open doorway from his barred display wagon.

The Schoenhut dolls were carved of wood. Their arms and legs with flexible wrists and ankles were fastened to their bodies with elastic cords. Their heads are also movable and have painted faces. Some heads are bisque. These remarkable dolls were made by the Philadelphia company of A. Schoenhut that had started making playable tiny pianos in 1872. Two Schoenhut pianos are in the Museum display and a larger Schoenhut grand piano is on a main-floor shelf in the Gates-Rockwell store on Market Street.

Go to The Rockwell Museum this Christmas season and see the kinds of toys your parents and grandparents played with and loved, and go also to the Gates-Rockwell store to see more of Robert and Hertha Rockwell's marvelous toys displayed on all the floors.

Merry Christmas!

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