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The unveiling of the Rochelle mural is scheduled for Memorial Day, May 28, 2007, just after the 10 a.m. parade.
Click here to find out more about the history of the Illinois Lincoln Highway
The entire Post family sends greetings and we are honored that Rochelle, Illinois and the Illinois Lincoln Highway Coalition chose to memorialize Emily Post’s visit in 1915 on her mission to cross the United States by motor car to attend the San Francisco Exposition. Before she was known as the ‘grande dame of etiquette,' Emily was a rather independent, adventurous woman, a published novelist and a true aficionado of the automobile. She and her sons had motored extensively in Europe, and hotly debated engine types and chassis styles. They had purchased a customized car in Europe the previous summer. Spotting an advertisement touting: “Travel luxuriously in your own car from your own front door over the world’s greatest highway to the Pacific Shore—$38,” Emily couldn’t resist!
The venture was sponsored by Collier’s magazine, and Emily’s assignment was to send back dispatches to the magazine, chronicling her adventures. Accompanied by her son, Edwin, as chauffer/mechanic and general dogsbody and her cousin, “Celia,” Emily, swathed in blue veiling and voluminous overcoat, set off from Grammercy Park in New York City, up Fifth Avenue, determined to cross the continent.
The original Lincoln Highway Commission must have been true visionaries and marketing geniuses. As Emily wrote, “…highway suggests macadam at the least. And with such titles as “Transcontinental” and “Lincoln” put before it, you dream of a wide, straight road like the Route Nationale in France…” What Emily, Ned and Celia discovered was that the highway was more dream than reality. And, as many of you know, Emily and her party were stymied in Rochelle when the rains turned the highway into a river of mud!
To her delight she found the town of Rochelle to be “…the sweetest, cleanest, newest little town imaginable. Its streets were all wide and smoothly paved with brick, and its houses, mostly white, were set each in a garden of trim and clipped green…” The local Fire Chief directed the party to the Collier Hotel, and the charming lobby, the charming proprietor and the very charming rooms – each with a new bath – sent Emily back to her companions, “grinning like a Cheshire cat…we have found a veritable Ritz!” The party spent several days in Rochelle, waiting for the road to dry out and harden up, falling in love with the “toy-land town” and its friendly, sociable people. Emily credits the gallant Fire Chief and other new friends with encouraging them to continue on when they were tempted to send the car ahead by rail. “Enthusiasm was no name for it! The town turned out to see us off; the fire chief drove out his engine in all its brass and scarlet resplendency. The ban of our cowardly leanings toward freight cars was lifted and they saw us off on our muddy way rejoicing! We are glad to have seen this little town. Maybe the contagion of its enthusiasm will remain with us permanently.”
Well, it did. Many adventures later, chronicled in her book, “By Motor to the Golden Gate,” Emily, Ned and Celia arrived in San Francisco and attended the exposition.
Ninety years later, we thank you again for your enthusiasm in recognizing a kindred spirit and honoring the adventurous Emily Post.
